Letter from House Dems to Blackwell
Democratic members of the House Judiciary Committee have written this letter to Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell, expressing concern regarding "irregularities" in the November 2, 2004 election. The allegations in the letter include:

- a lockdown of the election administration building in Warren County on election night,

- discrepancies between the number of voters who signed in and the number of votes cast in certain Perry County precincts, and peculiarities in that county's registration lists,

- an apparently anomolous result in Butler County, in which the Democratic Supreme Court candidates received more votes than the Kerry-Edwards ticket,

- an unusually high number of votes for third-party presidential candidates in certain precincts in Cuyahoga County, which uses punch card ballots,

- a high percentage of ballots in which no valid presidential vote was cast (as high as 25%) within certain Montgomery County precincts, another county that uses the punch card ballot,

- the mistaken addition of 3893 votes to Bush's total in one Franklin County precinct where electronic voting machines are used, which was quickly detected and corrected,

- the addition of some 19,000 votes in Miami County after all precincts had supposedly reported,
- allegations that some voters using Mahoning County's touchscreen machines tried to vote for Kerry and had the votes come up for Bush instead,

- machine shortages in Franklin County,

- provisional ballots that weren't counted, and

- Blackwell's directive, eventually rescinded, that registration forms on less than 80-lb. paper weight wouldn't be accepted.

The House members' letter states that the Democratic House Judiciary Committee's staff will be investigating all these allegations.
- posted by Dan Tokaji @ 3:54 PM