Hijinx in Ohio?

[gapower]

Seems like something weird's going on in Cleveland. If you look at the presidential election results for Cuyahoga County, you see that "for municipalities with wards," you are to "find the ballots cast total for each ward and total them." But the total among the wards in each such municipality is a good bit fewer than the total listed for the entire municipality itself.

For example, from the City of Cleveland, there were 214,902 ballots cast for president. But from the separate wards (#1 thru #21) of Cleveland, the total is 165,578. So there are 49,324 "missing" ballots. In Cuyahoga County overall there are 199,288 ballots "missing" by this principal. And they are indeed missing because they are not counted in Ohio's total vote count.

So, OK, some things don't add up, and 200,000 votes are missing from the most Democratic municipalities in the most Democratic county in the most critical state that Kerry lost by 137,000 votes. No biggie. Though mind you, this pattern does not show up in any other county in Ohio.

But here's where it gets weird. Here is the number of "missing" votes for each such municipality in Cuyahoga County:

49324 CLEVELAND
9948 NORTH OLMSTED
9948 WESTLAKE
9948 ROCKY RIVER
9948 BAY VILLAGE
9948 FAIRVIEW PARK
8553 WARRENSVILLE HEIGHTS
8553 BEDFORD
8553 BEDFORD HEIGHTS
7284 PARMA
7284 MIDDLEBURG HEIGHTS
6170 GARFIELD HEIGHTS
6007 CLEVELAND HEIGHTS
6007 EAST CLEVELAND
5724 EUCLID
5724 SOUTH EUCLID
5460 OAKWOOD VIL
5295 BROOK PARK
4744 MAPLE HEIGHTS
4314 LAKEWOOD
4009 NORTH ROYALTON
3146 BEREA
3146 OLMSTED FALLS
2540 BROADVIEW HEIGHTS
2147 SEVEN HILLS
1385 HIGHLAND HEIGHTS
1385 MAYFIELD VIL

In 18 of the 27 affected municipalities, the number of missing votes is exactly the same as the number of missing votes in another municipality.

This just doesn't look right. If I received data like this at my office, I would know that something was wrong. There may be some explanation besides fraud. If so, I hope that explanation is found and made clear to the public during the Ohio recount.

It's just something that needs to be clarified, considering that Walden O'Dell, chief executive of Diebold Inc. and active in the re-election effort of President Bush, wrote to Republicans in a fund-raising letter August 14, 2003 that he is "committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president."