Update on purging of > 100 K voters from Cuyahoga Co. voter roles

[Time for change]

In early August I posted a thread noting huge discrepancies between newspaper reports of massive increases in new voter registration in Ohio Democratic precincts prior to the 2004 election, compared to official Ohio secretary of State figures, and I showed how, if this discrepancy was due to illegal purging of voters, this could have cost Kerry tens of thousands of votes in Cuyahoga County alone.

Recently I found a couple of sources to confirm that over a hundred thousand voters were indeed purged from the voter registration roles in Cuyahoga County prior to the 2004 election, probably illegally.

Here is the thread in GD-P where I discuss this:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x2237782

[CanOfWhoopAss]

1. That's exactly why you vote in every dog catcher, prom queen election...

it's harder to scrub you if you vote on every ballot initiative and off year election and primary. If you vote every 4 years the odds of being scrubbed rise exponentially.

[Time for change]

2. But my understanding is that it's illegal to scrub you for that reason

Isn't that right?

[CanOfWhoopAss]

3. very hard to prove.

depends on the method of scrubbing. Unless they admit it outright... they can always lie and say you didn't respond to a mailing to your address. I think if you don't vote in a certain # of elections in some states they can scrub you. I think you have to miss 4 or 8 years here in ga. They can also say it was an accidental deletion. To many loop holes to prove it was intentional.

[Time for change]

4. Accidental deletion?

Sure, I can understand that for a few voters scattered here and there?

But 165 thousand voters from one county, over a short period of time? Can they realistically get away with that?

[Chi]

7. This should answer it...

"A) A system of file maintenance that makes a
reasonable effort to remove registrants who are
ineligible to vote from the official list of eligible
voters. Under such system, consistent with the National
Voter Registration Act of 1993 (42 U.S.C. 1973gg et
seq.), registrants who have not responded to a notice
and who have not voted in 2 consecutive general
elections for Federal office shall be removed from the
official list of eligible voters, except that no
registrant may be removed solely by reason of a failure
to vote."
http://www.fec.gov/hava/law_ext.txt

[Time for change]

8. Thank you chi - that would certainly appear to answer it IMO

It's also something like what Vicki Lovegren said in her about the subject on her web site. It sounds like she's hot on their trail.

[philb]

5. There was clearly lots of fraud and manipulation: but why haven't people

documented it and done something about it?
Is it that there aren't enough who care enough about such?

Florida has massive (illegal) purging of voters in 2000 and 2004; and it was well known and well documented- but nothing was done about it.

Similar for Ohio in 2004; and its known and documented; but again nothing has been done; those responsible control the elections in both states and also federal election officials.
And no organized effort by citizens to do anything about it;

It was well documented that there was massive minority voter suppression; widespread systematic dirty tricks in minority precincts in many states, widespread manipulation of registrations, absentee ballots, provisional ballots, and widespread touch screen switching, process count manipulation in many states, disinformation causing many thousands of lost votes by people attempting to vote straight ticket; widespread fraud and counting process manipulation,etc.

Yet its known, and little action.
http://www.flcv.com/ussumall.html

[Time for change]

6. Very good points

I've asked myself the same questions, and I wish I had an answer.

I can only hope that if the evidence mounts to a great enough level, and if public support mounts enough, our government will be forced to do something about this.

[eomer]

9. In Florida I don't think it is the case that nothing was done about it.

From what I remember, in 2004 they had to withdraw the felons list because the "problems" with it were exposed. They fought to not reveal the contents of the list in the first place. They lost that fight and, when the contents were analyzed, the disparity between black voters and hispanic voters was discovered and exposed. Then they officially withdrew the list. The counties were then left to do the best they could without a list provided by the state.

I don't really know what was finally done at each county. It would have varied depending on local decisions.

Somebody correct me if my memory is wrong on any of that.

But at any rate, there was quite a fight over this issue in 2004 and the state effectively lost.

Edit to add: Now that I think about it, wasn't there an attempt after all the above to change the system to move ownership and control of the registration lists away from the counties and to the state? Maybe someone else knows. I'll do some looking and see what I can find.

[Time for change]

10. I believe you are right that Jeb lost his bid to steal another

40,000 votes or so through illegal purging of black voters, as he did in 2000.

However, I don't find great comfort in that victory. It seems to me that in a real democracy there would have been some consequences for what they did in 2000 -- like prosecutions and long jail terms, including for the Governor, not to mention enough national news coverage so that most educated people in this country would be acutely aware of just how fraudulent that election was. I mean, this was a scandal of monumental proportions -- the stealing of a Presidential election. Yet there was almost no news coverage of it.

So, the lesson is that if you try to steal a Presidential election and you succeed, if you're found out, then that is all very well and good. If you don't succeed -- if they catch you trying to do the same thing again for the next Presidential election, you'll get your hand slapped and they'll tell you that you can't do the same thing again -- you'll have to find a different way to steal the next election.

[eomer]

11. Exactly.

I can't find anything about the current status of the felon purge list. Hopefully we will hear more about it as we approach the 2006 election. I'm sure that some of the parties to the fight like the ACLU and PFAW will stay engaged even if some others like CNN and Miami Herald may (or may not) lose their mojo.

I'm going to continue to look into it to see what the "plan" for next year is.

On edit: Doh! A bit slow this morning, now I see that philb's original point was probably that nothing is done about it in the sense that no one is punished. I agree. Why not keep trying if the worst that can happen is that one of your dirty tricks just gets fended off. You've still got a whole basket of other dirty tricks going and together they are plenty to get the job done.

Of all the dirty tricks, I think the Ohio recount is the most flagrant because it was done in front of dozens of eye witnesses. It remains to be seen whether there will be any consequences but I'm not holding my breath. There seems to be some resurgence of the rule of law in Ohio but we don't know yet whether it will apply to elections. Does anyone know what's going on in Cobb v. Blackwell?

[philb]

15. Florida had massive manipultion, dirty tricks, misfeasance in 2004

affecting hundreds of thousands of votes; plus large numbers of votes affected by touch screen switching;
More affected by manipulation, dirty tricks, suppression, and touch screen switching in 2004 in Florida than in any other state
The real election was as close in Florida as in Ohio in 2004; there was just a more swing due to manipulation and fraud

http://www.flcv.com/EIRSFla2.html
http://www.flcv.com/Fla04EAS.html
http:/www.flcv.com/fraudpat.html

[Stevepol]

14. In FL something was done at least. The NAACP sued Harris et al.

and settled out of court as I understand, Harris & her group agreeing not to do it again. The NAACP had Greg Palast's evidence, the copies of the felon list he got when doing the research for the BBC and when Harris and her gang found out they claimed ignorance and agreed not to do it again.

I don't think they had to do it in 04 becuase of the electronic voting machines. In 2000 I don't think the machines were used that extensively.

[Time for change]

17. They agreed not to do it again!

Wow, it's great to see our criminal justice system coming up with such harsh penalties against these white collar criminals. That should serve as a real deterrent.

[eomer]

20. They agreed not to do it again, then tried to do it again...

were caught again and again agreed not to do it again.

I see a pattern.

[Time for change]

21. Yes, it looks like a definite pattern to me to

We should do a statistical analysis to see if this kind of lenient "punishment" for a serious crime is correlated with the fact that the main perpetrator is the Governor of the state where the crime occurred and his brother is the president of the country.

[kiwi_expat]

12. Were those voters notified that they would be purged?

If the purged voters were notified, they could have re-registered.

How many Kerry votes were actually lost by the Cuyahoga purges, would you estimate? (On the "Election fraud analysis evaluation" thread, we are trying to estimate how many Kerry votes were lost by voter-suppression.)


Purging, even where done legally, appears to have been done far more rigorously in the urban precincts than in the suburbs, throughout Ohio.

I have one piece of anecdotal evidence re. the lack of purging in Ohio suburbs: I have a friend who lives in NZ and has not voted in US elections for 18 years. She happened to be in Ohio during the election and was allowed to vote in her old precinct - in a fairly affluent suburb of Columbus.

[Time for change]

13. I think that there are several issues here

We know that many thousands of voters were not notified.

It's hard to believe that selective purging, even if otherwise legal, could really be legal.

Many parts of Cuyahoga County, probably the parts most targeted by the purges, went for Kerry by 10 to 1 or greater. I believe that Cleveland, which went for Kerry 83% to 16% was very heavily targeted.

I don't doubt that Kerry lost tens of thousands of votes due to this problem. Here's a thread that I posted not too long ago that has some estimates that some would call optimistic, but let me know what you think:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=132&topic_id=2196589&mesg_id=2196589

[kiwi_expat]

16. Kerry loss of tens of thousands of votes due to purges sounds reasonable

Add to the "many thousands of voters" who were not notified, the probable number of voters who were notified but did not re-register, and wanted to vote on the day.

* * *

However, I am having second thoughts about the possibility that the Cuyahoga tabulators deleted votes (which you suggested in your GD-politics post). My guess is that Democrats and/or voting-rights-advocates have already verified the total vote counts in the Cuyahoga poll books. It is a simple thing to do, and I bet it has, indeed, been done. It might even have been done during the Greens' recount.

A note to the Cuyahoga Dems might help verify that. Also, liam_laddie has a trustworthy Dem contact at the Cuyahoga BoE, who might know the answer.

Sorry.

[Time for change]

18. Well, you may be right, that large amounts of votes weren't electronically

deleted.

But I won't accept that until I hear some verification from a good source.

I'll contact liam_laddie.

Thanks.

[Time for change]

19. Here's a report from Vicki Lovegren

on problems with DIMS voter registration system for use in voter registration in Cuyahoga County, which I came across after posting this:

http://ohiovigilance.org/Counties/Cuyahoga/Analysis/CuyProblemDIMS.htm

[kiwi_expat]

22. Was this gross incompetence - or was it fraud?

The canned DIMS system was installed in Cuyahoga county "two months before the largest election in modern times. Installation of any 'canned system' requires a significant amount of 1) customization to fit the particular environment, 2) data conversion between the old and the new systems, 3) system testing, preferably in parallel with the old system, and 4) training of system users. Given the time frame in which DIMS was implemented, it is not at all surprising to learn of the above cited system problems." -Vicki Lovegren


Do we know who was responsible for the decision to install the DIMS system in Cuyahoga just TWO MONTHS before the election?

Was it the Cuyahoga BoE? Was it Blackwell? Was it Diebold?

[Time for change]

23. I believe it was Blackwell

That's all I can say about it right now.