Has American Democracy died an electronic death in Ohio 2005's referenda defeats

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Sun, 13 Nov 2005 11:17:31 -0800 (PST)

Ohio's Votes Flipped Last Tuesday?? Has American Democracy

died an electronic death in Ohio 2005's referenda defeats?

 

 

 

 

Has American Democracy died an electronic death in Ohio 2005's

referenda defeats?

by Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman

November 11, 2005

 

While debate still rages over Ohio's stolen presidential election of

2004, the impossible outcomes of key 2005 referendum issues may have

put an electronic nail through American democracy.

 

Once again, the Buckeye state has hosted an astonishing display of

electronic manipulation that calls into question the sanctity of

America's right to vote, and to have those votes counted in this

crucial swing state.

 

The controversy has been vastly enhanced due to the simultaneous

installation of new electronic voting machines in nearly half the

state's 88 counties, machines the General Accountability Office has

now confirmed could be easily hacked by a very small number of people.

 

Last year, the US presidency was decided here. This year, a bond issue

and four hard-fought election reform propositions are in question.

 

Issue One on Ohio's 2005 ballot was a controversial $2 billion " Third

Frontier " proposition for state programs ostensibly meant to create

jobs and promote high tech industry. Because some of the money may

seem destined for stem cell research, Issue One was bitterly opposed

by the Christian Right, which distributed leaflets against it.

 

The Issue was pushed by a Taft Administration wallowing in corruption.

Governor Bob Taft recently pleaded guilty to misdemeanors stemming

from golf outings he took with Tom Noe, the infamous Toledo coin

dealer who has taken $4 million or more from the state. Taft entrusted

Noe with some $50 million in investments for the Ohio Bureau of

Workers' Compensation, from which some $12 million is now missing. Noe

has been charged with federal money laundering violations on behalf of

the Bush-Cheney campaign. Taft's public approval ratings in Ohio are

currently around 15%.

 

Despite public fears the bond issue could become a glorified GOP slush

fund, Issue One was supported by organized labor. A poll run on the

front page of the Columbus Dispatch on Sunday, November 6, showed

Issue One passing with 53% of the vote. Official tallies showed Issue

One passing with 54% of the vote.

 

The polling used by the Dispatch had wrapped up the Thursday before

the Tuesday election. Its precision on Issue One was consistent with

the Dispatch's historic polling abilities, which have been uncannily

accurate for decades. This poll was based on 1872 registered Ohio

voters, with a margin of error at plus/minus 2.5 percentage points and

a 95% confidence interval. The Issue One outcome would appear to

confirm the Dispatch polling operation as the state's gold standard.

 

But Issues 2-5 are another story.

 

The Dispatch's Sunday headline showed " 3 issues on way to passage. "

The headline referred to Issues One, Two and Three. As mentioned, the

poll was dead-on accurate for Issue One.

 

Issues Two-Five were meant to reform Ohio's electoral process, which

has been under intense fire since 2004. The issues were very heavily

contested. They were backed by Reform Ohio Now, a well-funded

bi-partisan statewide effort meant to bring some semblance of

reliability back to the state's vote count. Many of the state's

best-known moderate public figures from both sides of the aisle were

prominent in the effort. Their effort came largely in response to the

stolen 2004 presidential vote count that gave George W. Bush a second

term and led to U.S. history's first Congressional challenge to the

seating of a state's delegation to the Electoral College.

 

Issue Two was designed to make it easier for Ohioans to vote early, by

mail or in person. By election day, much of what it proposed was

already put into law by the state legislature. Like Issue One, it was

opposed by the Christian Right. But it had broad support from a wide

range of Ohio citizen groups. In a conversation the day before the

vote, Bill a primary official spokesperson for the opposition to

Issues Two through Five, told attorney Cliff Arnebeck that he believed

Issues Two and Three would pass.

 

The November 6 Dispatch poll showed Issue Two passing by a vote of 59%

to 33%, with about 8% undecided, an even broader margin than that

predicted for Issue One.

 

But on November 8, the official vote count showed Issue Two going down

to defeat by the astonishing margin of 63.5% against, with just 36.5%

in favor. To say the outcome is a virtual statistical impossibility is

to understate the case. For the official vote count to square with the

pre-vote Dispatch poll, support for the Issue had to drop more than 22

points, with virtually all the undecideds apparently going into the

" no " column.

 

The numbers on Issue Three are even less likely.

 

Issue Three involved campaign finance reform. In a lame duck session

at the end of 2004, Ohio's Republican legislature raised the limits

for individual donations to $10,000 per candidate per person for

anyone over the age of six. Thus a family of four could donate $40,000

to a single candidate. The law also opened the door for direct

campaign donations from corporations, something banned by federal law

since the administration of Theodore Roosevelt.

 

The GOP measure sparked howls of public outrage. Though again opposed

by the Christian Right, Issue Three drew an extremely broad range of

support from moderate bi-partisan citizen groups and newspapers

throughout the state. The Sunday Dispatch poll showed it winning in a

landslide, with 61% in favor and just 25% opposed.

 

Tuesday's official results showed Issue Three going down to defeat in

perhaps the most astonishing reversal in Ohio history, claiming just

33% of the vote, with 67% opposed. For this to have happened, Issue

Three's polled support had to drop 28 points, again with an apparent

100% opposition from the previously undecideds.

 

The reversals on both Issues Two and Three were statistically

staggering, to say the least.

 

The outcomes on Issue Four and Five were slightly less dramatic. Issue

Four meant to end gerrymandering by establishing a non-partisan

commission to set Congressional and legislative districts. The

Dispatch poll showed it with 31% support, 45% opposition, and 25%

undecided. Issue Four's final margin of defeat was 30% in favor to 70%

against, placing virtually all undecideds in the " no " column.

 

Issue Five meant to take administration of Ohio's elections away from

the Secretary of State, giving control to a nine-member non-partisan

commission. Issue Five was prompted by Secretary of State J. Kenneth

Blackwell's administration of the 2004 presidential vote, particularly

in light of his role as co-chair of Ohio's Bush-Cheney campaign. The

Dispatch poll showed a virtual toss-up, at 41% yes, 43% no and 16%

undecided. The official result gave Issue Five just 30% of the vote,

with allegedly 70% opposed.

 

But the Sunday Dispatch also carried another headline: " 44 counties

will break in new voting machines. " Forty-one of those counties " will

be using new electronic touch screens from Diebold Election System, "

the Dispatch added.

 

Diebold's controversial CEO Walden O'Dell, a major GOP donor, made

national headlines in 2003 with a fundraising letter pledging to

deliver Ohio's 2004 electoral votes to Bush.

 

Every vote in Ohio 2004 was cast or counted on an electronic device.

About 15%---some 800,000 votes---were cast on electronic touchscreen

machines with no paper trail. The number was about seven times higher

than Bush's official 118,775-vote margin of victory. Nearly all the

rest of the votes were cast on punch cards or scantron ballots counted

by opti-scan devices---some of them made by Diebold---then tallied at

central computer stations in each of Ohio's 88 counties.

 

According to a recent General Accountability Office report, all such

technologies are easily hacked. Vote skimming and tipping are readily

available to those who would manipulate the vote. Vote switching could

be especially easy for those with access to networks by which many of

the computers are linked. Such machines and networks, said the GAO,

had widespread problems with " security and reliability. " Among them

were " weak security controls, system design flaws, inadequate security

testing, incorrect system configuration, poor security management and

vague or incomplete voting system standards, among other issues. "

 

With the 2005 expansion of paperless touch-screen machines into 41

more Ohio counties, this year's election was more vulnerable than ever

to centralized manipulation. The outcomes on Issues 2-5 would indicate

just that.

 

The new touchscreen machines were brought in by Blackwell, who had

vowed to take the state to an entirely e-based voting regime.

 

As in 2004, there were instances of chaos. In inner city, heavily

Democratic precincts in Montgomery County, the Dayton Daily News

reported: " Vote count goes on all night: Errors, unfamiliarity with

computerized voting at heart of problem. " Among other things, 186

memory cards from the e-voting machines went missing, prompting

election workers in some cases to search for them with flashlights

before all were allegedly found.

 

In Tom Noe's Lucas County, Election Director Jill Kelly explained that

her staff could not complete the vote count for 13.5 hours because

poll workers " were not adequately trained to run the new machines. "

 

But none of the on-the-ground glitches can begin to explain the

impossible numbers surrounding the alleged defeat of Issues Two

through Five. The Dispatch polling has long been a source of public

pride for the powerful, conservative newspaper, which endorsed Bush in

2004.

 

The Dispatch was somehow dead accurate on Issue One, and then

staggeringly wrong on Issues Two through Five. Sadly, this impossible

inconsistency between Ohio's most prestigious polling operation and

these final official referendum vote counts have drawn virtually no

public scrutiny.

 

Though there were glitches, this year's voting lacked the massive

irregularities and open manipulations that poisoned Ohio 2004. The

only major difference would appear to be the new installation of

touchscreen machines in those additional 41 counties.

 

And thus the possible explanations for the staggering defeats of

Issues Two through Five boil down to two: either the Dispatch

polling---dead accurate for Issue One---was wildly wrong beyond all

possible statistical margin of error for Issues 2-5, or the electronic

machines on which Ohio and much of the nation conduct their elections

were hacked by someone wanting to change the vote count.

 

If the latter is true, it can and will be done again, and we can

forget forever about the state that has been essential to the election

of every Republican presidential candidate since Lincoln.

 

And we can also, for all intents and purposes, forget about the future

of American democracy.

 

Updated November 13, 2005

--

 

Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman are co-authors of HOW THE GOP STOLE

AMERICA'S 2004 ELECTION AND IS RIGGING 2008, available at

http://www.freepress.org/ and http://www.harveywasserman.com/, and,

with Steve Rosenfeld, of WHAT HAPPENED IN OHIO, available from The New

Press in spring, 2006.

http://www.freepress.org/departments/display/19/2005/1559