Reply #7: That's one possible explanation, ChiTown...

[nashuaadvocate]

...on the other hand, it's not the explanation Coshocton officials have given for what happened. In fact, they've given no explanation at all, as far as I can tell.

In fact, they seemed to hope that the Green Party recount observers wouldn't notice the disparity, which is why they tried to fool them by presenting as "election day" results a set of results which actually contained 1,089 votes not reported on election day *or* certified by Secretary Blackwell. Sounds like a disaster to me; don't you think so?

Yes, Coshocton had a high spoilage rate, but so did other, more Democratic-leaning counties. For example, a similar spoilage rate in Cuyahoga County would lead to the "discovery," in a manual recount, of 53,044 "uncounted" ballots. And if Cuyahoga were to have a 60% validity rate -- as Coshocton has had -- 31,826 of those ballots would have a valid vote for President on them.

In one county, 31,826 new votes to be counted. Imagine it!

The Advocate's consistent position has been that disparities such as these *cannot* simply be deduced from the "unofficial" election day vote totals or the "official" certified vote totals. Only when counties are forced to manually inspect all their ballots -- as almost every county would have been forced to do under the recent recount, had nearly every single county not, apparently, cheated -- do these "errors" (or, as I'd term thousands of votes disappearing in an administrative fog, "disasters") come to light.

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