Reply #6: Yes, I think it's to explain away discrepancies, & not just electronic

[Nothing Without Hope]

Only thing I can think of is to cover up the fact they weren't going to get enough actual votes to win, and were using it to cover the big Dem advantage in new Registrations so official vote wouldn't look too strange when they switched a lot of votes by touchscreen fraud- which has been documented in about 15 states.

This sounds about right to me, except that it isn't just touchscreen fraud and voter intimidation/poll squeezing (my term for long lines, other conditions to keep voters from voting). There were lots of other tactics.

Did you see this story about the stickers on the Ohio ballots - a expose by Raw Story, discussed while it was breaking on this DU thread:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=203x305634
The Raw Story article was posted online midway through the thread. It's here:
http://rawstory.com/news/2005/index.php?p=7
This is an amazing, must-read story.

Yes, there were lots of dirty tricks to steal votes, so they had to do what they could to pad the registration numbers to make it look less suspicious and confuse the voters, interrupt the flow of their information.