Two convicted of rigging '04 Ohio recount

Whenever anyone even brings up the idea of election fraud in 2004, the common response is that Bush won Ohio handedly in the statewide recount.  More than two years have passed since the election and the recount that followed.  Now, for the first time, two poll workers have been convicted of rigging the 2004 Ohio recount:

Two election workers wereconvicted Wednesday of rigging a recount of the 2004 presidentialelection to avoid a more thorough review in Ohio’s most populous county.

Jacqueline Maiden,elections coordinator of the Cuyahoga County Elections Board, andballot manager Kathleen Dreamer each were convicted of a felony countof negligent misconduct of an elections employee. They also wereconvicted of one misdemeanor count each of failure of electionsemployees to perform their duty.

Prosecutors accused Maiden and Dreamer of secretly reviewingpreselected ballots before a public recount on Dec. 16, 2004. Theyworked behind closed doors for three days to pick ballots they knewwould not cause discrepancies when checked by hand, prosecutors said.

Just two days ago, Senator John Kerry (D-MA) nearly broke down in tears on the Senate floor while announcing that he would not run for president in 2008.  He started choking up after acknowledging how close he came to the presidency in '04.

Last year, Robert Kennedy Jr. wrote a column in Rolling Stone Magazine that detailed most of the election day flaws in Ohio.  Had the recount been conducted properly, maybe it would have led to an even larger investigation that could have overturned the results.  Or, maybe Bush still would have won Ohio.  Nonetheless, the 2004 vote marked the second straight presidential election where there were voting irregularities in the most decisive state.

 

Comments

[JQ Jacobs]

OHIO 2004: 6.15% Kerry-Bush vote-switch found in probability study.

Defining the vote outcome probabilities of wrong-precinct voting has revealed, in a sample of 166,953 votes (1/34th of the Ohio vote), the Kerry-Bush margin changes 6.15% when the population is sorted by probable outcomes of wrong-precinct voting.

The Kerry to Bush 6.15% vote-switch differential is seen when the large sample is sorted by probability a Kerry wrong-precinct vote counts for Bush. When the same large voter sample is sorted by the probability Kerry votes count for third-party candidates, Kerry votes are instead equal in both subsets.

Read the revised article with graphs of new findings:

The 2004 Ohio Presidential Election: Cuyahoga County Analysis
How Kerry Votes Were Switched to Bush Votes

http://jqjacobs.net/politics/ohio.html