(no subject)

[theweaselking]

Get yourself to a news source, and look up Gahanna, Ohio. I'll wait.

See the voting pattern? 4,258 voters cast an electronic ballot for George Bush while only 260
voted for John Kerry. This is interesting, considering that only 638 votes, total, were CAST in that district.

"To view the vote count for yourself, click on this link and scroll to page 23 (Adobe Acrobat Reader required)."

Also interesting, Gahanna, OH had a voter turnout *above* 100%. 20,130 citizens of voting age, 20,736 votes cast.

Comments

[thathatedguy.livejournal.com]

And Gahanna thinks there is a wild lion running around. People swear to have seen it, but police and park rangers have not found any lion shit laying around.
I live about three miles from Gahanna.

[spartonian.livejournal.com]

Maybe the lion should be president?

[missysedai.livejournal.com]

Diebold machines down there?

Of course, nothing will be done. We screamed and fought and tried to make sure that Diebold couldn't keep its promise to deliver Ohio to Shrub, and they managed to do it anyway.

(I will take a small measure of comfort in the fact that, although the Republicans tried everything they could, Toledo and Lucas County went for Kerry. Only a small measure, though.)

[wizwom.livejournal.com]

The link you give points to an unofficial tally.
It looks like a data entry error to me... 2 being below the 5 opn a numeric keypad.

Cool down, man, it's not even your election. Should I try to police the elections in Calgary?

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

> Should I try to police the elections in Calgary?

If the people in Calgary don't do it?

[zenten.livejournal.com]

Why is it ok for the US to ensure democracy in the rest of the world, but it's not ok for the rest of the world to ensure democracy in the US?

[wizwom.livejournal.com]

Well, we are an established country with rule of law and a democratic tradition?

We have a system in place for assuring accuracy and fairness in elections?

We have 200+ years of dealing with the problems of voter fraud?

[zenten.livejournal.com]

>>Well, we are an established country with rule of law and a democratic tradition?<<

Plenty of horrible places have the rule of law, and have for some time. As to the democratic tradition, I fail to see how your joke of a presidential election counts as democracy.

>>We have a system in place for assuring accuracy and fairness in elections?<<

I'm suggesting that it's not working very well.

>>We have 200+ years of dealing with the problems of voter fraud?<<

Except you only seem to be able to identify problems, and then ignore them, instead of overturning the results of the election because of them.

I'll admit that your system doesn't look that bad on paper (better than Canada honestly), but in terms of execution, it stinks.

[missysedai.livejournal.com]

Yeah, and look how well it's "worked". Criminy, Jon, pick up your head and look around!

[thathatedguy.livejournal.com]

Friday, November 05, 2004
Jim Woods
THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH

A computer error involving one voting-machine cartridge gave President Bush 3,893 extra votes in a Gahanna precinct.

Franklin County’s unofficial results gave Bush 4,258 votes to Democratic challenger John Kerry’s 260 votes in Precinct 1B, which votes at New Life Church on Stygler Road. Records show only 638 voters cast ballots in that precinct.

Matthew Damschroder, director of the Franklin County Board of Elections, said Bush received 365 votes there.

The remaining 13 voters who cast ballots either voted for other candidates or did not vote for president.

Damschroder said he received some calls yesterday from people who saw the error when reading the list of poll results on the election board’s Web site.

"It’s why the results on election night are unofficial," Damschroder said.

The error would have been discovered when the official canvass for the election is performed, he said.

Election workers will start certifying the official election results later this month. The final, official tally will be available by the end of the month.

This is what happened, Damschroder said:

Gahanna Precinct 1B has three voting machines. After the polling station closed, the cartridges were taken to a computerized reading station.

When one of the cartridges from the precinct was plugged into a reader, it generated the faulty number.

The reader also recorded zero votes in the race between Arlene Shoemaker and Paula Brooks for county commissioner.

Damschroder said the cartridge was retested yesterday and there were no problems. He couldn’t explain why the computer reader malfunctioned.

When workers checked the cartridge against memory banks in the voting machine yesterday, each showed that 115 people voted for Bush on that machine. With the other two machines, the total for Bush in the precinct added up to 365 votes.

So far, Damschroder said, no other problems have surfaced.

When election workers do the official canvass, all cartridges from voting machines are rechecked.

[publius1.livejournal.com]

I can't help but seeing you sitting at your desk saying "But it couldn't have happened. IT COULDN'T HAVE HAPPENED!!!!! NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!"

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

Not quite. Think of it more as "Wow, there are a LOT of idiots around".

Because, really, either you have voter fraud going unchecked, you have millions upon millions of people voting violently *against* sanity, reality, and the interests of their entire country, or both. You can't tell me there are fifty-nine million white, male, wealthy Baptists over the age of 30 in the USA.

The scary thing is that not only *can* it have happened, it did, and while it's *depressing* that there are sixty million Americans who apparently don't understand basic economics or cause and effect, it's not *surprising*.