Democrats Report Voting Problems in Ohio 2004 Election

This might have been a useful report, except that it was done by the Demosprats.

Democrats said the analysis by election experts was not designed to question the results in Ohio, but to determine the extent of the problem and possible solutions.

Yeah, sure.

The report is called Democracy at Risk. The issue of race seems to be very central to the report. Just in reviewing the Executive Summary you find that nearly all the findings relate to minority and low income voters having more issues than other voters. I'll have to look at the details, but something strikes me as odd on this issue. How is it that minorities voted at such large levels using provisional ballots? Is there a correlation between registering to vote and the vote performance seen?

I also enjoy the "feelings" statistics.

Statewide, 16 percent of African Americans reported experiencing intimidation versus only 5 percent of white voters.

I wonder what the statistics look like for a different though common experience and the racial variations on the feeling oh, excuse me, "experiencing" intimidation.

The voting machine issue pops up as usual. I still find this one bizarre. Every type of machine is called flawed by someone. The DNC chooses to rail against the DRE. They still come to this conclusion though:

While there is no reliable evidence of actual fraud in the use of these machines in Ohio in 2004, our expert advises that DRE (touchscreen) machines are not sufficiently safeguarded against fraud and are less usable for the broad population of voters than earlier simpler technologies; and that existing standards and practices for certification are insufficient to ensure the security requirements of DRE (touchscreen) systems.

This will be an interesting section to look through to see what they base this on. If they are expecting perfection with any voting machine they can forget it. It just won't happen.

I find it interesting that the DNC doesn't appear to analyze the political affiliations of the Election officials. I've not found it to this point, but I would really like to know what the make up is based on the areas that they studied.

The last point in the Executive Summary is:

The statistical study of precinct-level data does not suggest the occurrence of widespread fraud that systematically misallocated votes from Kerry to Bush.

It is interesting that they have only studied Ohio, a state where Bush won. Why is there no mention of identical studies in Pennsylvania? Answer is simple, the results in Ohio were wrong and the results in Pennsylvania were right.

I'll bet there is some real data in the report. But it will take some time to ferret it out of the politics.