Reply #36: David - Are you and Doug familiar with the 'ballot shifting' in [View All]

[IndyOp]

Warren County, Ohio -- 2004 Presidential election?

I was in touch with Doug Jones by email in Nov/Dec 2004 about Ohio. Doug thought that a highly likely form of fraud would be shifting punchcard ballots between precincts such that ballots in one precinct marked for Kerry would be counted as a vote for Bush in a different precinct (because the order of the candidates changes from precinct to precinct). There is now some evidence that this did happen.

Richard Hayes Phillips has now gotten photographs of the ballots in at least 4 precincts in Warren County and was able to "hand count" the ballot photos -- he got the same totals as the official counts, but also evidence that ballots were shifted between precincts. An examination of ballots revealed that Bush got the votes of 87.2% of voters for Thomas Moyer (R) for Ohio Supreme Court. Problem: Bush also got the votes of 52.7% of the Ellen Connally Voters (D) for Ohio Supreme Court. Bush got 91.1% of the votes of people who also voted to ban gay marriage. Problem: Bush also got 51.6% of the votes of people who voted against banning gay marriage.

Additionally - Hayes Phillips notes that Warren County did not have 'precinct' codes on their ballots. The precinct codes are on the ballots so that the ballots for different precincts will be read differently (correctly). In other Ohio counties that Hayes Phillips examined in which the precinct codes were on the ballots - the counts were accurate and there was no evidence of ballot shifting (no evidence that Bush appears to have gotten a tremendous number of votes from people who voted for Connally or against banning gay marraige.

If you haven't seen it yet - I think it is good work:
<http://www.freepress.org/columns/display/3/2006/1355>