Two election workers convicted of rigging 2004 presidential recount
This is not postal news but it may add to the growing chorus to implement voting by mail in all states.
(Cleveland, Ohio) Two election workers in the state’s most populous county were convicted Wednesday of illegally rigging the 2004 presidential election recount so they could avoid a more thorough review of the votes…A third employee who had been charged was acquitted on all counts. .Jacqueline Maiden, the elections’ coordinator who was the board’s third-highest ranking employee when she was indicted last March, and ballot manager Kathleen Dreamer each were convicted of a felony count of negligent misconduct of an elections employee…The felony conviction carries a possible sentence of six to 18 months
…they worked behind closed doors three days before the public Dec. 16, 2004, recount to pick ballots they knew would not cause discrepancies when checked by hand so they could avoid a lengthier, more expensive hand recount of all votes.
Ohio law states that during a recount each county is supposed to randomly count at least 3 percent of its ballots by hand and by machine. If there are not discrepancies in those counts, the rest of the votes can be recounted by machine. A full hand-count is ordered if two random samples result in differences.



January 27th, 2007 at 11:51 am
With apologies to Neil Young “Brain dead in Ohio, Brain Dead in Ohio!”
February 3rd, 2007 at 3:08 pm
OHIO 2004: 6.15% Kerry-Bush vote-switch found in
probability study
How Kerry Votes Were Switched to Bush Votes
http://jqjacobs.net/politics/ohio.html
“In a sample of 166,953 votes (1/34th of the Ohio vote),
the Kerry-Bush margin changes 6.15% when the population
is sorted by outcomes of wrong-precinct voting.
“The 6.15% vote-switch differential is seen when the large
sample is sorted by probability a Kerry wrong-precinct
vote counts for Bush. When the same large voter sample is
sorted by the probability Kerry cross-votes count for
third-party candidates, Kerry votes are instead equal in
both subsets.”