Break out the brooms - if not the guillotine. (Ohio Board of Elections)

[MelissaB]

No deja Vu
November's balloting must go off without a hitch, and that requires new leadership at the Board of Elections

Sunday, July 23, 2006

After studying the report of the blue-rib bon investigators who examined what went wrong at the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections before, during and after the May 2 primary, our immediate reaction is: Break out the brooms - if not the guillotine.

The carefully detailed work of Cleveland Municipal Judge Ronald Adrine and his two colleagues makes it painfully obvious that the elections agency is so infected with incompetence, hubris and mistrust that it needs a total house cleaning. Everyone there, from the director to the lowliest clerk, should be in line for a ruthlessly unsentimental - and apolitical - job review.

And, frankly, given the broken culture within the building and the shattered trust between the elections machinery and the public it serves, it is impossible to see how any of the top leaders could survive such scrutiny. As understandable as the motion Friday by the Board of Elections' two Democrats to fire Director Michael Vu and Deputy Director Gwen Dillingham may have been, it probably didn't go far enough.

Vu, Dillingham and the rest of their leadership team bungled almost every aspect of the county's conversion to electronic voting and preparations for this spring's primary. They ordered equipment and supplies too late; alienated the county commissioners, who control their purse strings; failed to adequately recruit or train poll workers; devised inadequate safeguards for ballot security; and ignored warnings from outside consultants and their own subordinates that a fiasco was brewing.

All of those mistakes were compounded on Election Day, when Vu and his senior staff realized that the scanning machines to count absentee ballots did not work. Faced with yet another problem they somehow had not anticipated, they panicked. People who were, at best, marginally qualified were hired to tally votes by hand and given few clear guidelines for their work.


More: http://www.cleveland.com/politics/plaindealer/index.ssf?/base/opinion/1153557459242390.xml&coll=2

[Botany]

1. But tell me why Bob Bennett head of the Ohio GOP can control the

Cuyahoga County BOE? The most democratic county in the state.

Vu had to have been in on the 2004 theft.

[ChiciB1]

2. SO How Is Blackwell Faring These Days??

I simply CAN'T understand how he has stayed SO "high" in the polls given the obvious fact that he is seemingly part of this whole fiasco!!

Why are Ohioans still supporting him, and will he actually win???

[L. Coyote]

4. 20% behind, and losing ground.

But that is in the polls. In Ohio, polls and elections have not been the same.

Didn't Blackwell have the deciding vote that kept Vu in the job?

What is Vu's background?

Where did he come from?

What qualified him for such a pivotal position, in charge of 10% of the ohio vote?

[OzarkDem]

3. Coaxum and Soggs have awakened

The two Dems on the board seem to have finally awoken to the idea that the elections are being rigged, but I doubt they are going to push hard to change it or are knowledgeable enough to act pre-emptively. Both are political appointments who got their positions to return favors, not because of their skills.

On the positive side, the county commissioners have met with RFK, Jr. and fully understand the situation. They're bringing a lot of pressure to bear.

The big question right now seems to be whether they should make Vu resign. Dems don't have the votes to make it happen.