Fraud in Ohio?!?

The recount in Ohio is proving to be worth it even if it does not overturn the election. Check out Raw Story for the scoop.

1/26/2005
Ohio recount volunteers allege electoral tampering, legal violations and possible fraud
‘Why were there stickers on ballots in Clermont County, Ohio?’

Some of the affidavits cited and linked in this story are still in processing. Watch the main Raw Story page for active links as they become available.

By Larisa Alexandrovna
RAW STORY Staff

Serious new election tampering allegations have emerged from an Ohio county, where witnesses allege that stickers were placed on presidential election ballots, RAW STORY has learned.

Several volunteer workers in the Ohio recount in Clermont County, Ohio have prepared affidavits alleging serious tampering, violations of state and federal law, and possible fraud. They name the Republican chief of Clermont’s Board of Elections and the head of the Clermont Democratic Party Priscilla O’Donnell as complicit in these acts.

These volunteers, observing the recount on behalf of the Greens, Libertarians and Democrats, assert that during the Dec. 14, 2004 hand recount they noticed stickers covering the Kerry/Edwards oval, whereas the Bush/Cheney oval seemed to be “colored in.”

Some witnesses state that beneath the stickers, the Kerry/Edwards oval was selected. The opti-scan ballots were then fed into the machines after the hand recount.

Allegations of ballot tampering in Ohio – which decided the outcome of the presidential election by some 100,000 votes – find particular resonance in Clermont, one of three Ohio counties which saw the biggest increases in votes for Bush from 2000 to 2004. The other counties were Butler and Warren; Warren County had a lockdown after an alleged terror threat that the FBI later denied.

These counties “increased their support of Bush by only a few percentage points each,” the Cincinnati Enquirer reported Monday. “But in the raw numbers of votes, they made the difference.”

In a sworn affidavit, Clinton County Democrat Stephen Spraley, a retired plumber from Springboro, Ohio, saw the stickers on at least ten opti-scan ballots. Spraley brought this issue to the attention of Deputy Director for the Clermont Board of Elections, Kathy Jones, who is a Democrat. He says he was rebuffed by the Republican Director of the Board of Elections Daniel Bare.

“I had asked Kathy Jones – where did these stickers come from and who put them on the ballots?” Spraley said. “She was interrupted by Dan Bare, and he told me that the board would have another meeting and that is where questions about ballots would be determined.”

Spraley had one of the stickered ballot pulled as an example for the board meeting. Board members, including Bare, O’Donnell and Jones, as well as volunteer workers and county employees, discussed this particular ballot, he says.

“A Republican board member said the stickers were put on election night,” Spraley added. He says Clermont’s Democratic Party chief O’Donnell “said she knew nothing about the stickers.”

Another observer, University of Cincinnati math professor Bob Drake, corroborated Spraley’s allegations. “One person offered that [the stickers] must have been placed on the ballots by someone at the precinct on Election Day, and that no one could be responsible for that… Everyone, including the Executive Director Danny Bare, denied having ever seen them before or having any knowledge of them,” Drake said.

Eric L. Gifford, a Green Party volunteer who was also present at both the recount and the board meeting said that “Mrs. O’Donnell proceeded to nominate this ballot for a vote, and none of the other members would second the vote. The ballot was then counted for Bush.”

Jeanine Tater, a California resident who had volunteered to observe in Ohio on behalf of the Democratic Party, stated in her affidavit “a Kerry witness named Steve [Spraley], discovered white oval shaped stickers on some of the ballots during the 3 percent hand count. I personally observed these stickers during the machine recount.”

This will certainly be interesting. Every legal vote should count.