Reply #69: Let's see -

[qwghlmian]

http://www.votecobb.org/recount/ohio_reports/counties/lucas.php

was rejected by the optical scanner several times. We were told that the reason for this was that it was counted as an over-vote. The election officials determined that the intent of the voter was to vote for Bush. A white sticker was placed over the pencil mark next to Kerry's name. With this modification, the optical scanner did not reject the ballot.

http://www.votecobb.org/recount/ohio_reports/counties/washington.php

The first 3 ballots we saw in Aurelius precinct had the oval for write in candidate filled and without a candidate name written AND the oval for Bush filled in. The write in oval on each one had a white oval sticker covering the mark so that they were counted for Bush rather than as overvotes. The 4th ballot had an "x" on the Bush oval which had been marked over to make it show up.

I objected to the altering of ballots and we were told that this was the policy of the board to correct the ballots so that they would count correctly in the machine.

There was one I particularly objected to in Belpre 4A. The voter both marked the oval and put an X through it for Peroutka and marked the oval for Bush. They put a band-aid over the Peroutka vote and put their own X on the Bush vote. I said the ballot should definitely be an overvote. (Side note — the Republican observer actually leaned over from her social conversation, looked at the ballot and said "I agree" to me). All members of the BOE agreed the vote should count for Bush.

The last counted were absentee ballots and they were kicking out and being re-marked faster than I could even count. I DID watch every re-mark.

At one point Bill and I viewed the official Remarked ballots which seemed to only be done if there was no way to make it go through the machine after working on it with a marker or band-aid OR if they were torn. There were not many. Of note, Bill requested to see the remade ballot for the top one which was in Wesley precinct. The BOE was unable to find it.

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On edit: I am pretty sure as I was reading recount reports I have seen more mentions of such stickers, just don't feel like looking for more, since that site does not have a search feature.