This concerned Shaffer for several reasons. Provisional ballots are a second class form of voting designed for those who show up at the wrong precinct. Those voters are given a special ballot to cast their vote. The ballot is considered "provisional" until verification is obtained that the voter is a registered in another precinct. These ballots require special research by the board of elections or special actions. In Ohio last election, 22% provisional ballots were not counted. Those that are ultimately counted don't show up in election night totals.
The automatic issuance of a provisional ballot simply for making a call to the board of elections about a precinct location takes voters' ballots out of the vital Election Day vote count, and creates a one in five chance that those ballots simply won't be counted.
Shaffer contacted the Ohio Secretary of State's office and spoke to a senior attorney. She requested an immediate inquiry regarding this policy. In a return voice mail from the state attorney, she was told that her statements were "categorically false" and that "internet rumors started (about this incident) are highly problematic." Schaffer knows of no internet "rumors" about Stark County's policy on inquiring voters nor is there any evidence of such "rumors" online through a search using various search engines.
Stark County has a troubled history in the 2004 election. According to a letter to Secretary of State Brunner in May 15, 2007 (p. 215) the county destroyed all of its "soiled ballots" (damaged and uncounted) within 60 days of the presidential election. This violated both Ohio and Federal law requiring that federal ballots be preserved for two years after the election. The county offered no explanation for the policy, just a description of the procedure.
There is speculation that Ohio will again lead the nation in provisional ballots for the presidential election. If it's close in Ohio, the courts will become the venue for the final decision. The state gives parties a 10 day post election grace period for challenges to individual provisional ballots.
Four Years Later and Still "Waiting for Godot"
The array of problems already exposed and those awaiting citizens on Nov. 4, 2008 comprise a sever indictment of the bureaucrats and politicians responsible for an election system that inspires real doubt by the public.
Voting machines that fail, flip votes, lack real security, and "malfunction" in numerous ways on multiple occasions, all in private with quality assurance data available only to the vendors who routinely block access by the public and elections officials: that's what you will see when you vote this on Tuesday.
Vote counting that's conducted in private with machines performing shielded calculations on invisible ballots: that's another feature of an election system that's anathema to true democracy.
The systematic exclusion of the poor and minorities, a problem present for over a century, will be in full bloom. Federally mandated registration databases will play a key role in this process. These were outlined and mandated by the federal Elections Assistance Commission which apparently didn't notice the grotesque parallel to Florida's voter purges that stole the right to vote from tens of thousands of legitimately registered black citizens in the 2000 election.
Over 2.5 million ex-felons will be denied the vote even though they've served their time. This disenfranchisement plus voter suppression programs aimed at black citizens have a direct lineage to programs initiated in the period following Reconstruction by the "Redeemers" and the Ku Klux Klan.
These and other problems are not that difficult to fix. They're certainly less expensive to fix than the $6.5 billion spend on federal subsidies for electronic voting, etc.
The fact that they remain unfixed, that these problems show up election after election indicates that those in charge actually endorse the outcome of the problems. They sit in legislative bodies and fret over "voter fraud," a "crime" that produced only 24 convictions (p. 9) by a focused three-year Department of Justice effort. They allow unrestrained legal bribery in the form of campaign contributions and do nothing to promote a dialog on the real concerns of the people. Rather, they define complex criteria for selecting technologies and making policies that distance the elections process from voters.
But they never really attempt to fix anything in an effective way. They're the guilty parties in the upcoming crime against the people.
END
Permission to reproduce part of this entire article granted with attribution of authorship, a link to this article, and acknowledgement of images, where indicated
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
