Odd vote results point to mix-ups at some precincts
Friday, December 10, 2004
Diane Solov and Diane Suchetka
Cleveland Plain Dealer Reporters

The election results tabulated from the two precincts at Benedictine High School seemed off-kilter from the start.

Had more than a third of the 1,000-plus voters at the East Side school really embraced the ideals of Michael Peroutka, the candidate of the Constitution Party, and Libertarian Party candidate Michael Badnarik? 
 Could 215 people have voted for Peroutka in a precinct that delivered 299 votes for John Kerry?

Did Badnarik win 164 votes to Kerry's 334 in the precinct that was in the same room?

At more than a dozen Cuyahoga County precincts - primarily on Cleveland's East Side - spikes in votes for the little-known third-party contenders shot up a flare that something went awry on Election Day.

Together, Peroutka and Badnarik captured about 0.5 percent of the presidential vote across Cuyahoga County.

But a close look at the results highlights mistakes, not malice. Interviews and an examination of voting devices suggest the anomalies likely stem from errors by voters and poll workers that were amplified by confusion at polling places. Because most of the problems occurred in heavily Democratic Cleveland precincts, the errors seem to have cost votes for Kerry.

But the numbers appear small and the incidents relatively few.

Of 1,458 precincts in Cuyahoga County, 17 show what appear to be aberrations, with one of the low-profile candidates garnering at least 4 percent of the votes. In all, 942 votes were cast for Peroutka and Badnarik in those precincts.

The stage for the mix-ups was set by a state law that requires candidates' names be rotated on ballots so that each candidate gets a turn at the top position. The rotation is done in the name of fair play, a nod to conventional wisdom that undecided voters tend to choose the name at the top.

In Cuyahoga County, where punch-card voting machines are used, the names are rotated on the pages in voting books that guide voters to the proper position on the punch cards. There were five versions of the page for the presidential candidates.

The first version lists the candidates' names alphabetically, with "Disqualified Candidate" taking the position of "N," because Ralph Nader was expected to be in that spot. In each subsequent version, the candidate at the top of the list moves to the bottom, bumping the rest up one notch.

Voters from multiple precincts typically share a polling place. Candidates' names in voting books are rotated by precinct, so there are different versions at the same polling place.

Voters are supposed to use polling booths, and the voting books in them, that are specific to their precinct, not just any booth in the polling place.

The problem comes when a punch-card ballot for one precinct is ed in the voting device for another precinct. Because of the name rotation, a voter unknowingly punches a hole for the wrong candidate.

The punch cards that voters slide into the device are the same, but their backs are stamped with the precinct so they will be counted properly.

Voting book problems in the 17 precincts in question were easy to detect because the results for the third-party candidates were so atypical. Any mixed-book problems that may have scored extra votes for Kerry or President Bush are more difficult to detect because deviations from likely voter behavior are less obvious.

Michael Vu, Cuyahoga County's election director, said the errors don't reveal a systemic problem that plagued the election.

But he said the circumstances surrounding the erroneous votes will be investigated, and that they drive home the need for more poll worker training and more fail-safe measures to account for the human factor.

"We'll have to make the necessary changes so they won't occur again," Vu said. "There are lessons learned in the largest election that Cuyahoga County has ever conducted, and those issues will be addressed for future elections."

It's difficult to tell exactly what went wrong in the anomaly precincts. Vu said poll workers are trained not to share books of voting pages, and the devices that hold them, with other precincts.

But there are clear signs that, in some cases, poll workers erred in setting up the polling stations or misdirected voters. And voters, who often stood in long lines in cramped quarters, may have grabbed any open booth they could find, unaware there was a difference. In some cases, a combination of both factors conspired to produce bad votes.

The biggest problems occurred at Benedictine, where Election Day got off to a rough start on that rainy morning five weeks ago.

Poll workers were locked out of the building until just before the polls opened at 6:30 a.m., forcing them to rush to set up the voting devices in the school cafeteria and complete other preparations.

"The fact that we couldn't get in at 6 to get ourselves properly set up, anything could have happened," said poll worker Marjorie Baxter.

Baxter recalled how hectic the day was and said she was so busy signing in voters that she didn't look up from her seat much. But she remembers poll workers trying their best to direct voters to the right place.

But Katie Daley, an observer for the Democratic Party who also spent the day at Benedictine, said voters waiting to cast their ballots formed a single line between the 4F and 4N precinct tables.

They approached the booths, which were arranged in a semi-circle, as they became available, she said.

"There was no distinction between precincts," Daley said. "Voters were being told to go to any machine that was open."

Daley herself told voters the same thing since she didn't know about the name rotation.

Other polling places reported similar problems.

Election Day melee is how Walter Gant described the scene at Cory United Methodist Church in Cleveland, where residents of precincts 8G, 8H and 8I voted on Nov. 2.

Gant was a Democratic observer who saw poll workers respond to long lines, crowded space and a broken machine by sending voters from one precinct to machines for another.

"For about five hours we had a free fall over there where the guy who was over the polls allowed them to do that," Gant said. "A couple of us started to complain. We kept telling this guy you couldn't do this."

The poll worker told Gant he was helping people vote faster. The worker stopped the practice after calling the Board of Elections about 4 p.m., Gant said.

Long lines also plagued Mount Haven Baptist Church, where third-party candidates scored unusually high vote totals.

Councilman Zack Reed said a group of about five or six unused voting booths eventually were put in service. Sara Woods, a Democratic observer, said that while some poll workers were trying to direct voters, they "didn't know which precinct and didn't know which machine to use."