Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell
Blackwell not only serves as the Secretary of State in Ohio, but also served as the Campaign Chair for Bush/Cheney '04. His state was identified as a likely battleground state many months before the election. Many thought Ohio would be the "new Florida" and go a long way toward determining the outcome of the presidential race. Unfortunately, Ohio was the "Florida" of 2004 in more ways than one. Blackwell has been strongly criticized for a number of policies he implemented for the 2004 election, as well as his coordination of the vote count and recount. Here are some key things raised by his critics, but they're by no means exhaustive:
--Blackwell issued an order that county boards were required to strictly enforce the provision that all registrations must be on eighty pound stock paper or should be ruled invalid. This order came within just four weeks of the deadline for registration. Problem is, this paperweight rule was not widely known or distributed, and for several months, Board of Elections' web sites encouraged voters to print out an online registration form and mail it in, with no mention of paperweights. Under heavy pressure, Blackwell finally retracted this order shortly before the registration deadline. However, the order likely discouraged registration during a critical registration period. It's also not clear how many registrations were invalidated during the time the ruling was in effect or after it was rescinded, especially given that the paperweight directive continued to be posted on official Secretary of State and BOE web sites through election day.
--Blackwell also issued an order (described in this motion) that those who had requested but not received an absentee ballot could not vote by provisional ballot on election day, contrary to the Help American Vote Act (HAVA). Since thousands of voters reportedly did not receive their absentee ballots prior to election day, this order would've deprived them of their right to vote. Blackwell was sued in Federal court, and a judge granted a temporary restraining order, but not until 2 p.m. on Election Day. Prior to that, anyone who was on the absentee ballot list was not allowed to vote.
--Blackwell also issued an order (described here, p. 31-36) that provisional ballots would only be counted if cast at the correct precinct. This, too, is contrary to the intent of HAVA, and the order came down despite well-known reports of a misinformation campaign in which voters were told that their polling location had changed when it had not. It's especially troubling that the "wrong precinct" was, in some cases, just the wrong table in the right room of the right building. In many urban areas, the same location was used for multiple precincts, with one table for one precinct, another table for a second precinct, etc. So if a voter went to the wrong table--easy to do give the poor signage, massive crowding, etc.--then they wouldn't be on the registration list, would therefore be instructed to cast a provisional ballot, but then that ballot was disqualified as being cast in the wrong precinct (i.e., at the wrong table). Thousands of provisional ballots were rejected on the basis of this wrong-precinct rule (400 in one polling location alone). This undoubtedly had a differential impact on democratic voters since the multiple-table scenario was specific to urban polling places.
--BOE documents from Franklin County (including Columbus) show that at least 81 voting machines were not deployed on election day despite frantic calls from precincts (with other reports suggesting as many as 125 undeployed machines). One election official stated under oath on election day that there were no additional machines available, and has since backtracked. The failure to deploy the machines still has not been explained and there is no indication that it's being investigated.
--Ohio election laws require full access to all voting records. Failure to give access is defined by Ohio code as a prima facie case of election fraud. Nonetheless, Blackwell ordered a lockdown of the polling books, absentee ballots, and provisional ballots in the weeks that followed the election, and the lockdown continued even after the official count and recount. In at least one county, those who asked to see these materials were told that they will not be available until mid-January, which is of course after the January 6 casting of the electoral votes.
--Blackwell took six weeks to certify the election. States with similar or larger populations took two weeks. This precluded an examination of many of the election records (since Blackwell could claim it was still the "canvassing period"), and effectively ran out the clock on potential investigations into irregularities before the casting and counting of the states electoral votes.
--Blackwell also failed to enforce his own office's rules for conducting a recount. The recount rules on the Secretary of State web site specifically requires that precincts be selected randomly for the 3% handcount. Yet Blackwell directed BOEs to select precincts however they wanted to, and it turns out that many counties did not use random selection. Recount rules also require a full hand count if there is a mismatch between the 3% handcount and machine count. There are at least six cases in which there were mismatches but a full hand count was not conducted, yet Blackwell has not stepped in.
--Blackwell also failed to enforce Ohio law that says all members of the board and entitled observers must be present during all interaction with ballots during the canvassing period. There are reports from the Cobb/Badnarik observers that spoiled ballots had been removed, other ballots had been altered, and/or ballots had been sorted prior to the recount without witnesses present.
--Blackwell also failed to enforce Ohio law that prohibits election machinery from being serviced, modified, or altered in any way subsequent to an election, unless it is done so in the presence of the full board of elections and other observers.
Blackwell allowed Triad and other company officials to access to voting machinary prior to the recount (without observers present) to test the machines and suppress all counts other than the presidential race. In some cases, technicians were given remote access to the tabulators via modem. This was allowed despite the fact that one reason the recount was requested was due to concerns about the security and accuracy of vote tabulating computers.
--There are some very clear cases of miscounts, such as in Cuyahoga County, where third-party candidates received nearly as many votes as Kerry in some precincts. This likely resulted from ballots from one precinct being counted on tabulators programmed for another precinct housed in the same room (but which used a different ordering of candidates). In other precincts there were more votes counted than there were voters. Yet Blackwell certified even these clearly anomalous results without any inquiries.
--The primary duty of the Secretary of State as defined in the Ohio Constitution is to protect the right to vote for all citizens and investigate all problems and irregularities they may have affected that right. Yet there are no indications that Blackwell has investigated the problems and miscounts cited above. There's no indication that he's investigated the unauthorized access of an ES&S technician to a vote tabulator shortly before the election, even though this was reported to him. There's no indication that he's investigated the election-night lockdown in Ohio. Yet this is precisely the job he swore to do when he took his oath of office.
--Finally, Blackwell used his post as supervisor of elections to actively lead a campaign to pass the Marriage Amendment initiative...another clear conflict of interest to go along with his position as the Bush/Cheney '04 Campaign Chair.
Letter from the House Judiciary Dems
The democrats on the House Judiciary Committee sent a letter to Blackwell in early December to ask about some of the problems in Ohio. The letter included 34 specific questions on the Warren County lockdown, discrepencies and peculiarties in Perry County, unusual results in Butler and Cuyahoga Counties, spoiled ballets, overvotes in Franklin County, discrepencies in Miami County, machine problems in Mahoning County, machine shortages, invalidated provision ballots, and the directive to reject voter registration forms. A follow-up asked two additional questions about unauthorized access to a voting tabulator prior to the election.
Among the questions asked were the following:
--Why did Warren County officials exclude members of the press from observing vote counting on election night, claiming an FBI agent had warned of a terrorist threat that was a "10" on a scale of one to ten, but the FBI has no knowledge of such a warning?
--Why did precincts in Perry County apparently record more votes than voters?
--Why did historically Democratic precincts in Cleveland record up to twenty-two times more votes for the Constitution Party Presidential candidate than all third-party candidates combined received in the 2000 election?
--Why did voters in Mahong County report that when they attempted to record a vote for John Kerry their vote was displayed as being cast for George W. Bush?
--Why did there appear to be a shortage of voting machines in traditionally Democratic precincts on election day, causing up to ten hour delays for voters, while there was an apparent surplus of voting machines in traditionally Republican precincts?
Blackwell gave a terse response to that letter and did not address any of the specific questions that were asked. He's repeately brushed off all legitimate questions about the election, has characterized the election as having gone very smoothly, and has recently referred to inquiries about the election as amounting to "harassment."
Blackwell finally speaks out! To his "friends" at least...
Blackwell has been very vocal in the last week, however. You see, he has aspirations of running for governor. In support of that effort, he recently gave a talk called "Ethics in Leadership." The latest news is that he sent out a letter just last week to solicit funds for his campaign. You might find some of his opening comments rather interesting:
Dear Friend,
As Co-Chairman of Bush/Cheney '04 in Ohio, I want to say thank you for helping deliver the great Buckeye State for George W. Bush.
Without your enthusiasm, generous support and vote, I'm afaird the president would have lost...
...And an unapologetic liberal Democrat named John Kerry would've won.
Thankfully, you and I stopped that disaster from happening!
My friend, not only would that have been a terrible result for Ohio -- it would have been a horrible outcome for the families and taxpayers of America.
(continued)
Here's a link to the full letter in case you feel compelled to donate.
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