Cuyahoga County Election Director Resigns

NewsNet5 reports:

Cuyahoga Co. Elections Director Resigns

POSTED: 11:37 am EST February 6, 2007
UPDATED: 4:36 pm EST February 6, 2007

CLEVELAND -- The Cuyahoga County Board of Elections on Tuesday announced that it has accepted the resignation of its embattled chief.

Executive director Michael Vu's ouster marks the end of a tense term that thrust Cuyahoga County and its voters in the national spotlight. Under Vu, the county weathered a botched primary election and convictions of two workers who mishandled the 2004 presidential recount.

.........

At age 28, Vu was hired in 2003 to take over the largest and arguably most problematic elections board in the bellwether state during a hard-fought and close presidential campaign.

In November 2004, Cuyahoga, which has more than 1 million registered voters, was among the counties with long lines and complaints over provisional ballots. The election ended with Ohio giving President Bush the electoral votes needed to narrowly win the White House over Democratic U.S. Sen. John Kerry.....

Complete article

Two Cuyahoga County, Ohio, Election Officials Convicted of Felony and Misdemeanor for 2004 Election; One Official Acquitted

The Cleveland Plain Dealer reports that two of the three Cuyahoga County election officials indicted for misconduct in connection with thwarting the recount of the Ohio 2004 presidential election have been convicted of one felony and one misdemeanor each:

2 election workers convicted in '04 tally
Thursday, January 25, 2007
Jim Nichols
Plain Dealer Reporter

A jury found two Cuyahoga County elections workers guilty Wednesday of charges that they skirted Board of Elections procedures to thwart a countywide ballot recount after the divisive 2004 presidential election.

The jury convicted Kathleen Dreamer, 40, of Cleveland and Jacqueline Maiden, 59, of Richmond Heights on one felony and one misdemeanor each.

They each had been charged with seven counts and were exonerated on five apiece, including all charges that they knowingly conspired to break the law and violate their duties. Instead, they were found guilty of being criminally negligent.

Complete article

Cuyahoga Election Officials on Trial

Cleveland Plain Dealer reported on January 18th:

Elections workers accused of mishandling ballots go on trial
1/18/2007, 2:18 a.m. ET
By M.R. KROPKO
The Associated Press

CLEVELAND (AP) — Three elections workers in the state's most populous county are set for trial on charges that they mishandled ballots during the 2004 presidential election recount.

Opening statements were scheduled to begin Thursday [January 18th].

Charged with six counts each of misconduct are Jacqueline Maiden, the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections' coordinator, who was the board's third-highest ranking employee when she was indicted last March; Rosie Grier, manager of the board's ballot department; and Kathleen Dreamer, an assistant manager.

The charges allege that Ohio laws were not followed in the selection and review of ballots for the recount. The most serious charges carry a maximum sentence of 18 months in prison.

Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Bill Mason removed himself from the investigation because his office represents the elections board. Erie County Prosecutor Kevin Baxter was appointed special prosecutor.

Complete article

CASE Ohio Newsletter -- Report on Elections 2006

December 2006
CASE OHIO NEWSLETTER

Thank you! CITIZENS ALLIANCE FOR SECURE ELECTIONS would like to thank everyone who worked as election observers, pollworkers, videographers, election protection workers, or otherwise helped monitor the November 7, 2006 election.

The general consensus in the mainstream press is that the election was a success, with only a few "glitches". We believe that the landslide nature of this election minimized some continuing flaws in the system. CASE will continue it’s work to report on election issues and to improve the system. The Adopt a Board of Elections program continues and is in need of volunteer adopters.

> CASE members Phil Fry, Ron Olson, Stuart Wright, and Pete Johnson met with Secretary of State elect Jennifer Brunner, and have been invited to serve on the Voting Rights Institute’s Advisory Council.

> Cuyahoga County Commissioners may want to replace Diebold Electronic Voting Machines

www.cleveland.com/news/plaindealer/index.ssf?/base/cuyahoga/1164794175139720.xml&coll=2

CASE is working with the Greater Cleveland Voter Coaliton, local League of Women Voters, and members of both major parties to help evaluate the effectiveness of Cuyahoga's current system and possible alternatives.

Contents:


The Road to Reliable Elections NY Times Editorial
18,000 undervotes in Sarasota Fl congressional race; An Electronic Canary by E.J. Dione; Washington Post
When Votes Disappear by Paul Krugman
Black Box Voting on Sarasota undervote
Touch-Screen Votes Flipping in Arkansas Run-off Election
Election Defense Alliance reports 4% exit poll differential
Thank you from Harvey Wasserman; NY Times Letter to Editor
1. The Road to Reliable Elections NY Times Editorial, Dec 11 2006



Two influential federal advisory groups have added their voices to an emerging national consensus that voting machines must produce a voter-verified paper record if they are to be trusted. One of those groups, the one dominated not by scientists but by election officials, was more grudging than it should have been. But their analyses should give further support to members of Congress who plan to push next month for a strong federal law requiring voter-verified paper records.

More than half of the states now have laws requiring electronic voting machines to produce paper records that voters can review to ensure that their votes were correctly recorded. Voters understand that without this paper, there is no way of knowing if the software registered their choices incorrectly, either by accident or by design.

The National Institute of Standards and Technology, an agency that promotes good standards in everything from medical devices to smoke detectors, recently concluded that paperless electronic voting is unacceptable. The agency's scientists said that for electronic voting to be trustworthy, it must be "software independent," meaning there has to be a means apart from the machines' own software to prove that the vote tallies are correct.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/121106K.shtml

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2. An Electronic Canary By E. J. Dionne Jr. Nov 24, 2006



Friday, November 24, 2006;The Sarasota undervote in the congressional race amounted to nearly 15 percent. Kendall Coffey, Jennings's lawyer, has pointed out that in the other four counties in the district, the undervote ranged from 2.2 to 5.3 percent. Put another way, roughly 18,000 of the 21,000 undervotes in the contest came from Sarasota County.

It's hard to believe that Sarasota's voters had a different view of the race than voters everywhere else in the district, considering that the undervote on the county's absentee ballots, cast on paper, was only 2.5 percent. The upshot: Any reasonable statistical analysis suggests that only 3,000 to 5,000 of Sarasota's undervotes were intentional, meaning that 13,000 to 15,000 votes were probably not counted.

< snip>

For complete article:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/11/23/AR2006112300965.html

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3. When Votes Disappear,

By Paul Krugman, The New York Times, Friday 24 Novmber 2006



You know what really had me terrified on Nov. 7? The all-too-real possibility of a highly suspect result. What would we have done if the Republicans had held on to the House by a narrow margin, but circumstantial evidence strongly suggested that a combination of vote suppression and defective - or rigged - electronic voting machines made the difference?

Fortunately, it wasn't a close election. But the fact that our electoral system worked well enough to register an overwhelming Democratic landslide doesn't mean that things are O.K. There were many problems with voting in this election - and in at least one Congressional race, the evidence strongly suggests that paperless voting machines failed to count thousands of votes, and that the disappearance of these votes delivered the race to the wrong candidate.

Here's the background: Florida's 13th Congressional District is currently represented by Katherine Harris, who as Florida's secretary of state during the 2000 recount famously acted as a partisan Republican rather than a fair referee. This year Ms. Harris didn't run for re-election, making an unsuccessful bid for the Senate instead. But according to the official vote count, the Republicans held on to her seat, with Vern Buchanan, the G.O.P. candidate, narrowly defeating Christine Jennings, the Democrat.



for entire article: http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/112406C.shtml

4. Black Box Voting on the SARASOTA undervote problem:

www.bbvforums.org/cgi-bin/forums/board-auth.cgi?file=/1954/45231.html



18,000 undervotes. It's one thing to know about these figures, but another to hear the actual missing vote numbers -- the undervotes were like a third candidate in the race. To hear nearly as many under-votes as actual votes for either candidate really drove the point home about how ridiculous it was to claim that so many people chose not to vote in this race, but in all the others. An amazing effect.



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5. Touch-Screen Votes Flipping in Arkansas Run-off Election, by Brad Friedman, Brad Blog - November 19, 2006


Mayoral Candidate's Own Votes Repeatedly Flipped in County Clerk's Office — in Front of County Clerk — Told 'Election Must Go On, Go Get Court Order'

This article appeared on The Brad Blog. It is reposted with permission of the author.

Heber Springs, Arkansas, mayoral run-off candidate Jackie McPherson began to suspect problems when both his mother-in-law and her mom told him their attempted vote for him flipped over to McPherson's opponent during early voting. He went to the County Clerk's office to test the problem for himself — in front of the County Clerk, who at first told him it was not possible — and then they were both able to watch the vote flip about 20 times in a row.

McPherson says the head of the local Elections Commission then told him "the election would have to go on," and that he "would have to get a court order to review the machines and the problem that obviously exists." Read the Entire Article

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6. Landslide Denied!

Election Defense Alliance: Nov. 17, 2006

Major Miscount in 2006 Election: Were 4% of Votes "Misplaced"?



Election Defense Alliance, a national election integrity organization, issued an urgent call today for an investigation into the 2006 election results and a moratorium on deployment of all electronic voting equipment after analysis of national exit polling data indicated a major undercount of Democratic votes and an overcount of Republican votes in congressional races across the country. These findings are an alarming indictment of the American election system in which 80% of voters used electronic voting equipment.

As in 2004, the Exit Poll and the reported election results do not add up. But this time there is an objective yardstick in the methodology that establishes the validity of the Exit Poll and exposes the inaccuracy of the election returns. These findings are detailed in a paper published today on the EDA website.

For entire article: www.electiondefensealliance.org/

For review of exit poll data: www.electiondefensealliance.org/ExitPollData



7. Harvey Wasserman; (Letter posted by NYTimes, November 14, 2006)

The biggest winners in the election

To the Editor:

The most significant long-term outcome of the nationwide vote last Tuesday may be the coming of age of a grass-roots election-protection movement.

Based on the experiences of Florida in 2000 and Ohio in 2004, citizens across the country contributed intense scrutiny of electronic voting machines, voter registration requirements and other essentials of our modern democracy.

By and large, their efforts have been well respected and reported.

There is no way to know exactly how this volunteer police work might have affected the results of Tuesday's election. And it is disturbing to see the use of exit polls severely restricted, as they were in reporting the results.

But it is gratifying to see both Republicans and Democrats refusing to concede close races until the last vote is recounted. And it is reassuring to know that a salutary national debate has begun in earnest about exactly what is needed to guarantee a full and fair electoral process.

In the long run, this could make American democracy itself the election's biggest winner.

Harvey Wasserman

Bexley, Ohio, Nov. 8, 2006

The writer is a co-author of a book about the 2004 election in Ohio.

CITIZENS ALLIANCE FOR SECURE ELECTIONS:

Case website: caseohio.org/index.html

Yahoo newsgroup: groups.yahoo.com/group/CASE_OH/.

Contacts:

Pete Johnson Pete@caseohio.org
Phil Fry Phil@caseohio.org
Ron Olson Ron@caseohio.org
John Burik John@caseohio.org
Susan Truitt Susan_Truitt@yahoo.com
Stuart Wright StuartWright@att.net

Important Action Memo from Nancy Tobi and Paul Lehto

Stopping H.R. 550 because we can't compromise on democracy
by Nancy Tobi and Paul Lehto

The premise of the Help America Vote Act (HAVA), that public oversight
of elections can be outsourced to corporate interests with secret vote
counting technology, is dangerous to American democracy. We need a
moratorium on new legislation; an accounting of HAVA monies spent, on
what, to whom, and to what end; and a recovery plan from the HAVA
disaster. We reject compromise legislation like H.R. 550, because
there is no compromise on democracy.

For complete memo and actions to take:

http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_nancy_to_061118_stopping_h_r__550_be.htm

Were 4% of Votes "Misplaced"?

Major Miscount of the Vote in 2006 Election:
Reported Results Skewed 4 Percent Toward GOP
Election Defense Alliance Calls for Investigation

BOSTON, MA - November 17, 2006
CONTACT: Jonathan Simon 617.538.6012

Election Defense Alliance, a national election integrity organization, issued an urgent call today for an investigation into the 2006 election results and a moratorium on deployment of all electronic voting equipment after analysis of national exit polling data indicated a major undercount of Democratic votes and an overcount of Republican votes in congressional races across the country. These findings are an alarming indictment of the American election system in which 80% of voters used electronic voting equipment.

As in 2004, the Exit Poll and the reported election results do not add up. But this time there is an objective yardstick in the methodology that establishes the validity of the Exit Poll and exposes the inaccuracy of the election returns. These findings are detailed in a paper published today on the EDA website.

The Edison-Mitofsky media Exit Poll, posted Election Night on CNN.com, had a sample base of more than 10,000 voters, and showed Democratic House candidates winning over Republicans by an 11.5 percent margin.

The reported vote count showed Democrats winning by a 7.6 margin, 3.9 percent less than the Exit Poll and far outside the poll’s +/-1-percent margin of error. This discrepancy entailed at least 3,000,000 votes.

The Exit Poll was then adjusted, by a process known as “forcing,” to match reported election vote totals. The final result, posted at 1:00 p.m. November 8, showed Democrats winning by a 7.6 percent margin, exactly mirroring the reported vote totals.

The objective yardstick was the proportion of respondents who indicated they had voted for Bush or Kerry in 2004. The sample in the already weighted Election Night Exit Poll had 47 percent Bush voters and 45 percent Kerry voters, a valid sample given the very conservative assumption that Republicans and Democrats turned out with equal enthusiasm in 2006. However, after the forcing process, the sample contained 49 percent Bush voters and only 43 percent Kerry supporters. This 6 percent gap is more than twice the size of the 2004 Bush win of 2.8 percent. It indicates a significant over-sampling of Republican voters in the adjusted 2006 Exit Poll.

Such a gross oversample of Republicans was necessary to match the actual vote counts, which therefore could not have been an accurate count of the actual electorate. Had the intended votes been accurately tallied, this election would have produced a Democratic landslide of epic proportions.

Read the Full Report: http://www.ElectionDefenseAlliance.org.



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Dan Ashby
Co-Founder, ElectionDefenseAlliance.org

E-mail: ca.voteraction@sbcglobal.net
EDA mail: Dan@electiondefensealliance.org

"The right of voting for representatives is the primary right by which all other rights are protected.
To take away this right is to reduce a man to slavery. . . "
Thomas Paine

Electronic Frontier Foundation Reports: Widespread Problems With Electronic Voting All Across Country

The Electronic Frontier Foundation reports that electronic voting problems on Election Day 2006 left many voters wondering whether their votes had been counted:

Electronic Voting Machine Headaches Shut Out Citizens

Delays Mean Long Lines for Voters in Florida, Utah, and Other States

San Francisco - Problems with electronic voting machine failures kept some polls from opening, created long lines, and left many voters puzzled about whether their votes were counted in Tuesday's high stakes election.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) joined a nationwide team of technology lawyers and other experts staffing nationwide call centers and legal command posts on Election Day. The volunteers chronicled election problems, assisted voters, and worked with election officials to pull malfunctioning machines wherever possible. By 8:00 pm ET on Tuesday, over 17,000 incidents, including machine-related problems, had been reported to the Election Protection Coalition's 866-OUR-VOTE hotline.

The types of machine problems reported to EFF volunteers were wide-ranging in both size and scope. Polls opened late for machine-related reasons in polling places throughout the country, including Ohio, Florida, Georgia, Virginia, Utah, Indiana, Illinois, Tennessee, and California. In Broward County, Florida, voting machines failed to start up at one polling place, leaving some citizens unable to cast votes for hours. EFF and the Election Protection Coalition sought to keep the polling place open late to accommodate voters frustrated by the delays, but the officials refused. In Utah County, Utah, more than 100 precincts opened one to two hours late on Tuesday due to problems with machines. Both county and state election officials refused to keep polling stations open longer to make up for the lost time, and a judge also turned down a voter's plea for extended hours brought by EFF.

"If election officials insist on depending on this unreliable technology, they should be prepared to react appropriately when things go wrong," said EFF Legal Director Cindy Cohn. "Voters should not have to bear the brunt of this poor planning. We are very disappointed that the court did not recognize that."

"Jumping vote" problems -- touchscreen machines displaying selections not intended by voters -- once again appeared across the country and across machine models. Some voters again encountered difficulty making or changing selections on touchscreen machines, resulting in long lines and frustrated voters leaving polling places. Optical scan machines also broke down in many places, most prominently in Cook County, Illinois, but also in Los Angeles, California, also leading to long delays for voters.

Complete report.

Important Memo from Marc Baber of Truth in Voting About the 2006 Election

Marc Baber is a fantastic guy associated with the great Oregon-based voters rights group, Truth in Voting. Mark and TIV have been in the forefront from Day One in the battle to challenge and investigate the 2004 Ohio election. Here is an important reminder from Marc:

According to Fox News, "the exit polls this election (2006) were still skewed 6-8% in favor of the Democrats" (They think backwards at Fox, of course).

The only attempt to explain the "skew" in 2004 was known as the rBr theory ("Reluctant Bush Responder"). According to the theory, Republicans avoid participating in exit polls in greater numbers than Democrats. But statistical analysis of the data in 2004 showed that in more heavily Republican precincts where you'd expect higher rates of non-participation (if rBr were true) and, therefore, more highly skewed exit polls-- the opposite occurred, indicating that rBr doesn't fit the observed patterns.

The 2004 raw exit poll data was never released for full analysis and we'll see even less of the data for 2006.

The most likely explanation is that our entire vote counting system favored Republicans by 6-8% in this election and that the exit polls are correct while the official results are corrupt.

The only reason the Democrats did so well in 2006 is that Democrats actually won by margins of 6-8% greater than the official results showed.

I ran through the list of close races where Republicans won and there was only one race (Tennessee Ford(D) vs. Corker(R)) on the Senate side, however in the House, at least 15 races were within 6%, meaning that the Dems probably should have won an additional 15 seats or so in the House if the Republicans hadn't rigged the system this year, assuming that the error is in the official results (not the exit polls) and that the bias was a fairly uniform 6% nationwide. These are, of course, very rough estimates. And alarming too.

So, the Democratic victory was no mere "Thumping" as Bush described it. We smited them. We devastated them. We completely overwhelmed, stomped, creamed, killed, slaughtered and trounced them. We beat them so bad, they couldn't even win by cheating.

Yes, indeedy, we sure did. Oh, yeah. Big time.

But, make no mistake, they're still cheating. There were at least 30-40 different cheating tactics used in 2004 and they weren't just invented in 2004-- no organization can build such a smoothly operating racket overnight. What we're up against has a measure of business-as-usual to it, developed over decades of corrupt "worst practices" that may take another decade or two to expose and stop.

But stop it we must. As it turns out, in 2006, "within stealing distance" meant about 6-8%. In 2008, it will probably be a higher number. If we don't level the playing field in the next two years, we may never get another chance. It shouldn't be too much to ask of our new Democratic Congress to enact verifiable elections with paper ballots, since 92% of Americans want that. Just imagine how bad Bush would look vetoing paper ballots. Imagine how bad Congress people would look if they didn't vote yes in an attempt to override the veto with a 2/3 majority. I hope you'll contact your Representatives in Congress and let them know that you expect nothing less.

Thanks for everything you DID to get us this far! Celebrate our victories, but don't let up!

Marc

* A "paper trail" is necessary but not sufficient to ensure verifiable elections and I am strongly in favor of a system of paper ballots, handled in a multi-partisan-observed unbroken chain of custody and counted by redundant "dumb" optical scanners. (I know, "optical scanners" is a hot button among Election Reform people who typically favor hand-counting, but please read my full paper to understand why redundant "dumb" optical scanners would be safe and practical).

The system I propose and presented at We Count 2006 is detailed in the paper I delivered, "A Practical Election System with Integrity" online at http://www.marcbaber.com/ElectionReform.htm (click on the "PDF" link).

My hope is to get endorsements of this system from a coalition of Election Reform groups and launch a new election business to facilitate elections carried out in the fashion I've described.

A Salute to the People

During some dark days in 2004, I witnessed firsthand the courage and patriotism of the people of Ohio. As the forces of darkness arrayed to deprive them of their right to vote, they fought their best to stand up for their rights. They lost that battle, but never gave up the fight, and resolved to come back even stronger next time.

In these days of 2006 I have seen their quiet courage again, overcoming all of the chicanery and fraud and disenfranchisement levelled against them, and coming back to throw the cheaters out of office.

In 2006, all across the country, people of good conscience came out in droves, and despite thousands and thousands of incidents of disenfranchisement and vote fraud, managed to send a clear message, that we are not taking it any more.

Our leader, Congressman John Conyers, can now lead the House Judiciary Committee, instead of having to run shadow hearings because Republican members failed to honor their oaths.

I salute the people of Ohio and am proud to be your friend.

I salute the voting rights activists of Ohio, who never gave up.

I salute the people of America, for taking us back a step from the brink.

I remind all of us that despite our celebration of this great victory, our next step is to return to the ramparts to resume our watch, for it is only through "eternal vigilance" that we can keep the precious flame of democracy alive.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

-Ray Beckerman

Plain Dealer Reports: "Another glitch for Cuyahoga election"

Reported by the Cleveland Plain Dealer:

Another glitch for Cuyahoga election
Judge OKs scanning absentee votes early, but machines malfunction
Saturday, November 04, 2006
Joan Mazzolini and James F. McCarty
Plain Dealer Reporters

A judge ruled Friday that scanning of absentee ballots can start early, but the ruling could be meaningless in Cuyahoga County unless election officials overcome a potentially devastating glitch in their scanners.

Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Judge Dan Gaul's ruling, which applies to all 88 counties in Ohio, says scanning may begin at 7 a.m. Monday, 19 hours earlier than Secretary of State Ken Blackwell planned to allow.

County Commissioner Jimmy Dimora and County Prosecutor Bill Mason asked for the ruling to make sure as many as 100,000 absentee ballots get counted in Cuyahoga County by the end of Election Day.

Complete article