Ohio counties w Registration exceeding 100% of the voting age

[truehawk]

I am reposting this where it is more visable


mikelewis (1 posts) Fri Nov-19-04 02:46 AM
Response to Reply #65

98. Making the margin in Ohio - the absentee votes


The problem isn't where to find votes for Kerry, the solution is where to challenge votes for Bush.

I have been documenting over the past few days, several counties with Registration levels exceeding 100% of the voting age population. I have also been looking into absentee ballots as a possibility as to how the votes swung to Bush.

In Cuyahoga County, a county that went overwhelmingly for Kerry we find some very alarming irregularities. I chose to research Cuyahoga for a specific reason. Because it was so heavily for Kerry that any manipulation of the system would be very appearant. Such as, excessively high voter registration in 37 of the 67 precincts in this county. In these 37 precincts, voter registration exceeds the voting age population. In the case of Cuyahoga Heights, (where I went to school btw) the registration level was 131% of the persons of voting age.

The way I determined the number of eligible Persons of Voting Age (PAV) was to go to the U.S. census bureau and pull the estimates for the individual cities and then compared them to the number of registered voters on the Cuyahoga County Board of Election's website. In at least 8 cases, these registration levels exceeded 120% of the PAV's.

Now the exit poll data suggests that Kerry won the state 52.1% to Bush 47.9% but the results give the state to Bush by 51%. So what could have tipped the scales in a primarily punch ballot state? What condition that was not guaged in the Ohio exit poll data could have had an impact on this election? The absentee vote could have had such an effect. So I again went to Cuyahoga County and found that there was a 7% gain in Bush votes in absentee voters as compared to the way the people who went to the polls voted. This is an unusually high shift.

The total number of votes cast at the polls was 574,475 votes where:
Kerry Received 66.7% of the vote or 383,446 votes
Bush Received 32.7% of the vote or 187,854 votes

The total number of absentee votes cast was 80,624 where:
Kerry Received 61.8% of the absentee vote or 49,816 votes
Bush Received 34.4% of the absentee vote or 27,770 votes

So I surmise that the possibility exists that the absentee voters swung this election. Now whether or not this is by fraud remains to be seen but it gives us a much smaller pool of voters to challenge and we can do so based upon the impossibly high number of registered voters. This pool of voters broke more for Bush in Cuyahoga County so the odds that the absentee ballots aided Bush across the state are very high.

Furthermore, in several counties I have found that the entire county is has registered voters in excess of 100% PAV. This would again give us opportunity for legal challenge of the registration data. Fortunately, the majority of these counties voted republican. In fact only 2 of them, Mahoning (101.4%) and Franklin(103.7%) voted for Kerry and I believe we will find more votes for Kerry in these counties than less. The number that voted for Bush so far is 7. I have only checked 14 counties so far. As I dig deeper, I assume the number will be about half since the registered total for the state based on PAV is 93.5%. Roughly 44 counties with unusually high registration and high absentee votes and no informtion should alarm many people.

The final piece that has convinced me that I am correct is the testimony from Pickaway County of the poll books. What could explain the unsigned poll books is absentee voters. See, if a person votes absentee, they are recorded in the book as voting so that if the person should show up at the polls, they will not vote twice. They would not have signed the books. The fact that she notes so many in such a short amount of time that she would become alarmed indicates that a large amount of absentee ballots were cast. The State is making a point as to not release the data on the absentee ballots. To date, we have only one county, Cuyahoga, that has released the results of the absentee vote in its canvass report and in that report the 7% shift is noted.

While everyone is concerned with finding fraud in the electronic voting machines, we must remember that we use very few of them and they have been very heavily scrutinized. While the possibility for fraud exists with these machines they could not have swung this election on thier own. Voter suppression could also have had an impact but not have guaranteed the election which I am sure they would want to do. The only explanation that maintains the validity of the exit polls and would provide a "ligitimate" ballot count would be the absentee vote. We have not given sufficient attention to absentee ballots which have not been guaged as to thier effectiveness in securing this election and do not have adequate safeguards to protect against fraud.

I beleive that we must put out a demand to have this data released and it allowed to be studied by people much more qualified than I who can verify anomolies in these 600,000 or so votes. If we can see a 7% shift towards Bush in Cuyahoga then what is the shift in other counties that voted heavily towards Bush at the polls. A recount of the votes would only confirm the election for Bush, a challenge must be made against these absentee votes and we can legally question them based on the high registration levels. In many of the smaller counties, there are only 8 to 10 thousand absentee votes to challenge. Should we find people who voted who are not eligible to vote in these counties or state, we can use this to challenge these votes statewide.

I am quite sure, we will find a number of these ballots cast by voters who were either not eligible to vote in this election or voted without knowing they voted. How many of these absentee ballots were forced to vote provisionally? How many were thrown out as spoiled ballots? This data must be known and publically reviewed by trusted experts. I believe this is how Kerry will be inaugurated on Jan. 20th.

Sincerely,
Michael Lewis