I just got this email from a friend in Ohio. [View All]

[missouri dem 2]

I went to recount training today. Can you believe, the Glibs are
having
trouble finding enough volunteers?! Each county Bd of Elections will
be
using bipartisan teams of their own paid staff and each team needs to
have a recount volunteer to 'observe.' Some counties are resisting
revealing which day and time they intend to start and how many teams
they'll have (hence we don't know how many volunteers to assign...etc.
One of the far out rural counties near us is starting at 7:30am on
Monday (ouch). Warren County is up to some new tricks (I think they
should get an investigative reporter on that, but it's not up to me).
CLEARLY Warren County has something serious to hide or why would they
continue to be so obstructionist. (Warren is the county famous for
it's
lock-down due to a phony terrorist threat on election night, so no one
was allowed to witness the count).

The ones of us who made it to the 2-hour training this morning are
bogged down in trying to understand the various details of what we're
expected to do--in unfamiliar settings with unfamiliar equipment that
we're supposed to 'see but not touch.' There are a LOT of holes in
this recount thing and it doesn't give me great confidence.

For starters, the BOE's select the precincts to count to make up 3% of
that county's votes. Those 3% are hand-counted and then run thru the
counting machine. If the numbers match, then the rest of the precincts
aren't recounted!!!! What's to stop the counties from picking the
precincts that they know are 'clean?' But there also are issues with
how to tally in the 'funny' ballots--provisionals, absentees, spoiled,
etc, so it's not as easy as it may sound to get at the accurate
numbers.

Even just in our little corner of the state (SW Ohio), several of the 5
or so counties that our coordinator is in charge of are woefully short
of volunteer observers. The recount must begin by Thursday at latest
but most counties are starting on Monday or Tuesday--so, how to find
the
volunteers and get them trained in time....? Ohio has 88 counties.

The Greens in charge are doing their level best but the time pressures
are really taking their toll on 'organization.' The Greens are the
ones
really doing the work on this. The Libertarians have been well-wishers
but haven't actually done much of anything, I'm told.

I have no way of knowing how things are going in the rest of the
state...but my guess is that it must be fairly chaotic too--given the
time frame we have to work within.