Dems ask Blackwell about voting problems

Middletown Journal  December 03, 2004

 

DAYTON ? Democrats on the U.S. House Judiciary Committee have asked Ohio Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell to answer for a host of voting irregularities they say occurred in Ohio Nov. 2.

On Wednesday, the committee is holding a hearing, Preserving Democracy: What Went Wrong in Ohio.

A spokesman for Blackwell said Friday many of the issues have already been resolved.

In a letter dated Thursday, the Democrats asked Blackwell for explanations regarding 12 irregularities that have been reported in the news media or which committee staff members have identified. Among them are claims that Miami County had 19,000 more votes appear after Nov. 3, when the county had already reported what it said were 100 percent totals.

Also, they has asked for Blackwell to explain why, in Butler County and elsewhere, C. Ellen Connally, an ?underfunded? Democratic candidate for chief justice of the Ohio Supreme Court, received more votes than the much higher profile Democratic presidential candidate, Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts.

The Democrats also included concerns about there being too few voting machines in Democratic-leaning Franklin County neighborhoods and allegations of voting problems in Perry, Cuyahoga, Mahoning counties, and asked why Warren County officials locked down the county building where the votes were being tallied.

?Collectively, we are concerned that these complaints constitute a troubled portrait of a one-two punch that may well have altered and suppressed votes, particularly minority and Democratic votes,? states the letter to Blackwell.

The letter was signed by Rep. John Conyers Jr., D-Mich., the ranking minority member of the House Judiciary Committee, as well as 12 other Democrats on the committee.

Blackwell spokesman Carlo LoParo said the secretary?s office is already working closely with a General Accounting Office review of many of the same issues and believes most have already been explained in news reports.

?We?d be more than happy to fill in the gaps, but a cursory review of Ohio?s newspapers would answer most of the congressmen?s questions,? LoParo said.

Blackwell has been invited to attend Wednesday?s hearing, but he will not attend, LoParo said.

?The only thing that went wrong in Ohio is the representative?s (Conyers) candidate didn?t win,? LoParo said.

The congressional letter says that at one point the Miami County final vote totals were reported on the Secretary of State?s Web site as 20,807 for President Bush and 10,724 for Kerry. They were later changed to 33,039 for Bush 17,039. Kerry received the exact same percentage of both vote totals, the letter states, a statistically unlikely outcome.

Miami County officials say the 19,000 new votes came because Blackwell?s Web site used incomplete results when it posted what it said were final figures. The correct numbers were sent as soon as the error was found.

In Butler County, LoParo said there is a simple explanation why Connally would get more votes than Kerry: Butler County is overwhelmingly Republican. As a judicial candidate, Connally?s political party was not listed on the ballot, and voters were more-likely to cast a ballot for her than Kerry, who was identified as a Democrat.

The letter also asks Blackwell to inquire into why Warren County elections officials locked reporters out of the county administration building where votes were being counted. County officials have since said they were responding to the possibility of a terrorist attack. Jeff Rupert, a registered Democratic observer of the vote count in Warren County, watched the count and has said he saw nothing suspicious.