On October 23, 2004,  the NY Times (Big G.O.P. Bid to Challenge Voters at Polls in Key State By Michael Moss) wrote:

Republican Party officials in Ohio took formal steps yesterday to place thousands of recruits inside polling places on Election Day to challenge the qualifications of voters they suspect are not eligible to cast ballots.

Party officials say their effort is necessary to guard against fraud arising from aggressive moves by the Democrats to register tens of thousands of new voters in Ohio, seen as one of the most pivotal battlegrounds in the Nov. 2 elections.

Ohio election officials said they had never seen so large a drive to prepare for Election Day challenges. They said they were scrambling yesterday to be ready for disruptions in the voting process as well as alarm and complaints among voters. Some officials said they worried that the challenges could discourage or even frighten others waiting to vote.

Okay, maybe it’s just me, but I don’t see any harm in “aggressive moves” to register new voters.  Given that the United States has one of the lowest voter turnouts among developed countries worldwide, that seems like a good idea.  Additionally, the article goes on to say, and this isn’t surprising; both parties have waged huge campaigns in the battleground states to register millions of new voters, and the developments in Ohio provided an early glimpse of how those efforts may play out on Election Day. 

This is one issue that the New York Times did have some facts about, in addition to the partisan spin from both sides.  These next few lines are very important.

Republicans said they had enlisted 3,600 (challengers) by the deadline, many in heavily Democratic urban neighborhoods of Cleveland, Dayton and other cities. Each recruit was to be paid $100.  The Democrats, who tend to benefit more than Republicans from large turnouts, said they had registered more than 2,000 recruits to try to protect legitimate voters rather than weed out ineligible ones.

Ohio election officials said that by state law, the parties' challengers would have to show ''reasonable'' justification for doubting the qualifications of a voter before asking a poll worker to question that person. And, the officials said, challenges could be made on four main grounds: whether the voter is a citizen, is at least 18, is a resident of the county and has lived in Ohio for the previous 30 days.

Elections officials in Ohio said they hoped the criteria would minimize the potential for disruption. But Democrats worry that the challenges will inevitably delay the process and frustrate the voters.

''Our concern is Republicans will be challenging in large numbers for the purpose of slowing down voting, because challenging takes a long time,'' said David Sullivan, the voter protection coordinator for the national Democratic Party in Ohio. ''And creating long lines causes our people to leave without voting.''

The preparations for widespread challenging this year have alarmed some election officials.

''This creates chaos and confusion in the polling site,'' said R. Doug Lewis, executive director of the Election Center, an international association of election officials. But, he said, ''most courts say it's permissible by state law and therefore can't be denied.''

In Ohio, Republicans sought to play down any concern that their challenging would be disruptive.

Democrats said they were racing to match the Republicans, precinct by precinct. In some cities, like Dayton, they registered more challengers than the Republicans, election officials said. But in Cuyahoga County, where the Republicans said they had registered 1,436 people to challenge voters, or one in every precinct, Democrats said they had signed up only about 300.

So to summarize the important things noted in this article:

• Republican took formal steps to place thousands of recruits inside polling places in heavily Democratic neighborhoods on Election Day to challenge the qualifications of voters.
• Election officials were scrambling to be ready for disruptions in the voting process as well as alarm and complaints among voters.
• Some officials said they worried that the challenges could discourage or even frighten others waiting to vote.
• Having challengers at the precincts creates chaos and confusion in the polling site.
• Democrats tend to benefit more than Republicans from large turnouts.

Also noted in article:

Nader Loses Ohio Ballot Bid
COLUMBUS, Ohio, Oct. 22 (AP) -- The Ohio Supreme Court on Friday rejected an effort by Ralph Nader to get his name on the ballot, most likely ending his chances in the state for the Nov. 2 election.  Mr. Nader wanted the court to force election boards to review their voter registration lists, a process he said could have led to the validation of petitions to place him on the ballot. The court ruled 6-1 against him.

11/05/04  The Columbus Dispatch

FRANKLIN COUNTY VOTING

Suburbs were busiest, even with more machines

As seasoned voters in many of Columbus’ predominantly black neighborhoods waited in long lines Tuesday, they quickly recognized that the crush of new voters wasn’t the sole cause of congestion. There also were fewer voting machines. 

Many voters complained of poor planning by elections officials — or worse. In fact, many polling places in inner-city neighborhoods had fewer voting machines than during the last presidential election.  Even so, the busiest places to vote — as measured by the number of ballots cast per machine — were overwhelmingly in suburban areas, according to an analysis by The Dispatch.

Nearly half of Franklin County’s 146 wards had fewer machines than four years ago.

There appeared to be little geographic pattern to the imbalances in voting-machine activity, except that most of the busiest machines were scattered around the Outerbelt and in suburban areas. All precincts use electronic voting machines.

In Summit County, which includes Akron, voting machines averaged 86 ballots — about half the volume as in Franklin County. In Cuyahoga County, an average of 68 ballots were cast per machine. Both counties use punch-card ballots.

The Columbus Dispatch

Applying the tried-and-true formula for success, Democrats were scratching their heads yesterday, wondering how Sen. John Kerry lost Ohio to President Bush by 2 percentage points.

"We met every single one of our goals," said Brendon Cull, a Kerry Ohio campaign spokesman.

• He took giant Cuyahoga County by nearly 220,000 votes.

• He won second-biggest Franklin County by 8 percentage points.

• He kept Bush’s winning margin in GOP Hamilton County to 24,683 votes, well below the 60,000-vote standard.

Exit polls showed that deeply religious people — white evangelicals and self-identified born-again voters — comprised 25 percent of those who cast ballots in Ohio, and 76 percent of them voted for Bush.

And just out of curiosity, who did those exit polls show as the winner?

"Benefiting from the strong support of evangelical Christians, Bush maximized his vote in Ohio’s largely conservative rural and exurban counties," said Mark R. Weaver, a GOP strategist.

I'm sorry, but I find it extremely hard to believe that all of these deeply religious people are die-hard supporters of a guy who lied about WMD (thou shall not lie), not only did he illegally invade a country, but he illegally invaded and is currently destroying what many consider to be the holiest land on earth, the land where much of the bible took place!  Additionally, tens of thousands of innocent civilians have died in the process! (thou shall not commit murder) And he says he thinks God is on his side? (Thou shall not misuse the name of the Lord your God) and finally, "thou shall not steal"(elections)

Akron Beacon Journal

Since the 2000 presidential election, the Summit County Board of Elections has eliminated 149 of its precincts -- more than any other Ohio county.

Several election watchdog groups reported longer delays -- as long as three hours -- in Akron, especially in the city's predominantly African-American wards. The reduction in precincts hit Akron harder than the rest of the county, with the city losing 81 of 234 precincts -- more than a third.

"I think that caused us a lot of problems in this election,"

Four years ago, Summit County had an average of 568 registered voters per precinct. Today, the countywide average is 777. In Akron, the average ballooned higher -- to 855 voters per precinct.  "That's way too high,'' Jones said. ``I did not want to go over 600 because of the lines that it would cause."

But both Jones and Pry said they understood that the county had no choice but to reduce precincts. ``We were under a mandate from the secretary of state to consolidate,'' Pry said.

The average number of ballots cast per precinct increased 89 percent compared with four years ago. In four of the city's 10 wards -- 2, 3, 5 and 9 -- the number of voters per precinct more than doubled.

John Kerry won Summit County by 38,000 votes, according to official returns. Take Akron's votes out of the totals, and President Bush would have won the county by 423 votes.

Last year, a second round of cuts reduced the number of precincts to 475, after the elections board raised the bar for the number of registered voters per precinct from 650 to 800.

Forty-five of the city's 153 precincts have more than 900 registered voters, and 10 top 1,000.  Thirty-three other precincts in the county also top 900. 

And the early Election Day polls, conducted for a consortium of television networks and The Associated Press, which proved largely inaccurate in showing Mr. Kerry leading in Florida and Ohio, continued to be offered as evidence that the Bush team somehow cheated.

Hold on a second....the exit polls were proven to be largely inaccurate?  When was this?  I'd certainly like to hear the explanation.  All I've heard was the one about the one about women being represented disproportionally, but that was "quickly debunked" when on Nov. 3, ironically, the New York Times wrote: An official with the National Election Pool, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said it did appear that women -- who tend to prefer Democrats -- were overrepresented in the national poll. But, this official said, the same problem did not appear in the state polls, which were far more important and indicated Mr. Kerry was ahead. And producers at three major news organizations said they had come to the same conclusion.   And the only other explanation, which oddly seems to be the "official" one throughout the corporate media and was, yes, once again, printed in the New York Times on Nov. 3rd, was that of the Bush camp: Bush campaign officials gathered producers who were huddled at their Virginia headquarters and hit the phones and BlackBerries with a message: ''The early exit models undercounted Republicans.''

Well of course!  Silly me, I should have known......."undercounted Republicans"?????  Talk about a conspiracy theory!  That one's right up there with "exit polls are never right".

But while authorities acknowledge that there were real problems on Election Day, including troubles with some electronic machines and intolerably long lines in some places, few have suggested that any of these could have changed the outcome.

"There are real problems to be addressed," said Doug Chapin of Electionline.org, a clearinghouse of election reform information, "and I'd hate for them to get lost in second-guessing of the result."

Yes, it would be such a tragedy if all of the votes got counted, or even worse, if everybody who wanted to vote was able to do so in a reasonable abount of time.  God forbid!  And we certainly wouldn't want to look into the possibility of the long lines in Ohio being deliberately in heavily Democratic precincts, as it seems to have been.  And since the NYT thinks that the opinion of a man whose only two statements contradict eachother is worth printing, they might be interested in some of the findings of his analysis of the election, oddly titled "2004 Election: "Exceeded The Margin Of Litigation"".  One of the problems included in his unusually short list of problems in Ohio was Franklin County recorded an extra 3,893 votes for President Bush due to an error on an electronic voting machine. Franklin County cast a total of about 600 votes, which is an anomoly identical to the one "debunked" ealier in this article? The reported: A Kenyon College student waited in line for 10 hours in order to vote on Election Day. At her precinct, there were only two voting machines for 1,300 voters. Each machine was designed to handle 20 voters per hour.  I wonder how many left?

It is that second-guessing, however, that has largely characterized the blog-to-e-mail-to-blog continuum. Some election officials have become frustrated by the rumor mill.

"It becomes a snowball of hearsay," said Matthew Damschroder, the director of elections in Columbus, Ohio, where an electronic voting machine malfunctioned in one precinct and allotted some 4,000 votes to President Bush, kicking off its own flurry of Web speculation. That particular problem was unusual and remains unexplained, but it was caught and corrected, Mr. Damschroder said.

My God!  First the NY Times quotes a guy whose report disagrees contradicts something in this article.  Now they just go ahead and print it themselves!  And maybe a lot of this is "hearsay", but it's pretty damn logical hearsay that is entirely based on documented facts! If the claims being made are incorrect, they would certainly be easy to "debunk".  Apparently, that's not the case.....

Clay Shirky, an adjunct professor in the interactive telecommunications program at New York University, suggests that the online fact-finding machine has come unmoored, and that some bloggers simply "can't imagine any universe in which a fair count of the votes would result in George Bush being re-elected president."

Well after witnessing the 2000 election, which he won despite receiving less votes and now after seeing what he's done to our country after four years, no, I cannot imagine any universe in which a fair count of the votes would result in George Bush's re-election.  I would imagine there are some logically thinking Republicans who would agree with me.  

Jake White, the owner of the Web log primordium.org, argues that he and other election-monitoring Web posters are not motivated solely by partisan politics. "While there are no doubt large segments of this movement that are being driven by that," he said in an e-mail message, "I prefer to think of it as discontent over the way the election was held."

Mr. White also quickly withdrew his own analysis of voting systems in Ohio when he realized the data he had used was inaccurate.

Well that's unfortunate Mr. White had to withdraw his own analysis of voting systems in Ohio.  Is that included in the article just to embarass him for using inaccurate data, or is there actually a point?  He ought to get online and go to some blogs.  Every single blog I've seen has only used numbers released by the Secretary of State of the state they are analyzing.  I think that's consistently the case.

For its part, the Kerry campaign has been trying to tamp down the conspiracy theories and to tell supporters that their mission now is to ensure that every vote is counted, not that the election be overturned.

Well I'm pretty sure that the so called "conspiracy theories" would be "tamped down" completely if we could actually count every vote!  That's kind of one of the main points....why does that seem to be impossible?

A preliminary study produced by the Voting Technology Project, a cooperative effort between the California Institute of Technology and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, came to a similar conclusion. Its study found "no particular patterns" relating to voting systems and the final results of the election.

Another main point of the "conspiracy theorists" is that there wouldn't be any patterns!  Electronic vote fraud is usually undetectable!  So unfortunately the MIT/CIT report really doesn't answer any questions.

"I'd give my right arm for Internet rumors of a stolen election to be true," said David Wade, a spokesman for the Kerry campaign, "but blogging it doesn't make it so. We can change the future; we can't rewrite the past."

But we can recount the past, in order to insure that it was written accurately, something the New York Times apparently ought to consider doing with it's articles.