Recounting procedural concerns before Election Day
By CRAGG HINES
Copyright 2004 Houston Chronicle

CANTON, Ohio — Linda Fogle hurries from the Stark County Board of Elections to her car in a space reserved for absentee voters. On Election Day, the retired medical assistant already will be in Arizona for the winter. She drove downtown to vote early because she found the mail-in ballot confusing. She didn't like the punch-card version at the elections office much better.
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Was she confident that her votes — all for Democrats, she said — would be tallied, and correctly? Fogle shrugged.

"I hope it will be counted," she said before driving away.

Just beneath the surface of the hot presidential campaign in this battleground state lurks an equally intense dispute about how fair and complete the election will be.

It mirrors concerns around the country after the recount debacle in Florida four years ago that ended with the U.S. Supreme Court basically deciding the presidential election on a 5-4 vote.

The focus of Democratic anger in Ohio is J. Kenneth Blackwell, who not only as secretary of state is the elections chief but also as a top Republican is an honorary co-chairman of the Bush-Cheney state campaign.

"He has done everything to thwart transparent voting," complained Rep. Marcy Kaptur of Toledo, senior Democrat in the state's U.S. House delegation. She pointed to Blackwell's sudden enforcement of an obscure Ohio requirement that voting registration applications be on 80-pound paper (card stock, more or less).

Democrats said it was a Blackwell ploy to thwart easy registration, including the use of forms printed in a newspaper. Even some Republican elections personnel were mystified by Blackwell's move, and he backed down as registration closed last week.

There are also questions about how provisional ballots, customary in Ohio and now required nationally by the federal Help America Vote Act, will be handled under Blackwell.

Democratic lawsuits, Blackwell contended, are "a dress rehearsal for Election Day chaos." The Columbus Dispatch, in an editorial headlined "Get It Right," urged Blackwell to worry about his own act.

The Rev. Jesse Jackson, leading another get-out-the-vote effort for Democrats, said Blackwell already has "a credibility gap" and "could shift Florida's embarrassment to Ohio."

Carlo LoParo, Blackwell's spokesman, called the complaints "partisan antics."

"Mr. Jackson is importing it," Paro said of festering electoral distrust. "He's responsible."

Were voting in Ohio to be subjected to the same postelection scrutiny as in Florida, because of state law it could even be more drawn out.

"If we certify (the vote) before Thanksgiving, I'll be thrilled," said Jeffrey A. Matthews, a Republican who is director of the Stark County Board of Elections.

Overall, Matthews believes fears of another electoral train wreck, including questions about touch-screen machines without a voter-verified paper trail (which are not yet used in Ohio) are "conspiracy driven."

"The theory requires that election officials are either corrupt or incompetent, and that's not the case," Matthews contended.

Just in case, under Ohio's partisanly suspicious electoral procedures, Matthews' deputy is a Democrat. The board itself, like that in each of the state's counties, has two Democratic and two Republican members. Any ties are broken by, ahem, Blackwell.

In Matthews' office and at several spots near the Stark County absentee ballot voting stations are small posters with the now-famous picture of a Florida election judge peering at a ballot.

"Got chad?" the poster asks, as it reminds voters to "examine the back of your ballot card ... " for any hanging debris.

Ohio is important because no Republican has ever been elected president without carrying the state. Stark County (home of President William McKinley, a Republican) is of interest because it is one of those bellwether locales that almost always goes with the winner.

Perhaps "a little bit of an accident," said William Cunion, a political scientist at Mount Union College. But a consistent accident.

Bush beat Al Gore in Stark County four years ago by less than 3,000 of the more than 150,000 votes cast — fewer than the number received by spoiler Ralph Nader. Sound familiar?

Atop the clock tower of Stark County's court house, four gilded angels look across the rolling landscape south of Cleveland. Come Nov. 2, whether they'll be blaring forth in procedural triumph or civic alarm remains to be seen.