My name is Ken Blackwell and I need to guarantee a Bush win in OH

[roseBudd]

But I must do it with the majority of the counties using punch card ballots. I thought I was going to be able to do it with paper trailless BBV. But I can't. What is my Plan B?

OK the obvious is voter suppression and spoilage, but those are not quantifiable. I need to be able to guarantee a win. Are the punch cards themselves something I can tamper with?

[fnottr]

1. are they scanned optically? n/t

[roseBudd]

4. I believe a light passes through the punched holes

But the evidence (the punch cards) would make tampering with the reading equipment risky. Unless one could feign ignorance as to why they malfunctioned.

What if the supplier of the punch cards had two lots of cards. One for white suburban precincts and another for minority and liberal urban precincts? Wht if the cards were perforated differently? What quality controls are there? I have beenn unable to find out who supplies the punch cards.

Another question. Who checks the punch card machines before they are delivered to the precincts? A Republican?

[On the Road]

2. One Trick I've Heard About

is adjusting the optical sensors on the machines that read opscan ballots to make them more likely to pass over ballots that are not not completely black, resulting in an undervote.

And of course, there are all the tricks used with paper ballots -- ballot box stuffing, losing stacks of ballots, and spoiling groups of ballots by double-punching them, as may have happened in Escambia County Florida in 2000.

[MrUnderhill]

3. Yes. Punchcards can be "cooked".

People who wanted to draw attention to the "BBV" computer screens ignore tha fact that just about EVERY voting method can be rigged.

If nothing else, almost all voting systems involve SOME type of equipment to do the counting (this is the weak link some see as a problem in the optical scan counties).

Punch cards can be affected as simply as driving a pin through a stack of cards on the "Bush" hole. Anyone who voted for Bush is unaffected... while those who chose not to vote end up voting for Bush. Everyone else becomes an "over-vote" and they are "spoiled".

[roseBudd]

6. Spontaneous GOP punch card tricks or coordinated?

I need to guarantee a win. I cannot guess how many spoiled ballots and assume tricksters in so many places will be able to pull off their vandalism without being caught.

Has anyone seen any breakdowns for the 93,000 uncounted Ohio ballots. The ones that either register under or overvotes for president? We need to determine if their are any red flags. If there are we may know exactly where the tricks took place.

[MrUnderhill]

8. I don't know that we'll hear any of that until it's too late.

Specific breakdowns of "non votes" aren't usually released untol well after the canvas... right?


The provisionals/absentees would have to tighten things up quite a bit before this would be a possible line of attack. And I don't see that happening.

[Philostopher]

5. Of course, there's the old trick they pulled in Florida.

They didn't clean the old chads out of the machines in poor districts. That way, the stiletto wouldn't go all the way through, and they had all the 'intent to vote for' questions that, as we all know, they never bothered to answer.

Another way might be to print the punch cards poorly, so the offsets on the print don't match the chads on the card. That way, you don't really know and can't tell by looking at your card whether your vote was registered correctly or not, even if it appeared to be correct when you had the card in the machine.

Or simply set up a few of the readers in a few precincts to 'accidentally' read votes for other candidates as votes for Bush. Just a few, here and there, would really add up.

Or lie about the totals, knowing the gap you caused in other ways -- suppression, ineffectual equipment in heavily Democratic precincts -- would guarantee the margin wouldn't be close enough for a recount.

[McCamy Taylor]

7. I would try to forbid exit polls in my state...

...and Ken Blackwell did just that. Why does no one in the national press try to question him about his motives for the bizarre election morning decree? That was the moment I knew the fix was in. Since all the major news people had to rush to court to get a restraining order, Ill bet they noticed it as it was happening too and wondered what was up with that?

[LisaL]

9. Paper-I really like different kinds of paper.

By weight. Heavy paper might not be read as well in the machines.

[bluetrain]

11. also harder to punch a hole through

[Kralizec]

10. I've already gone through

the spoiled ballots and picked a few that did not have a presidential vote, "fix" them for *, and add them to the legit pile. Good thing I already did this before those damn liberals starting investigating.