News 11-18-04 Study: Insufficient Voting Machines Disenfranchised Voters in Ohio (Wikipedia.org) "Prior to the election, there was much ado about each precinct getting enough ballots, but an equally serious matter that seems to have been overlooked by people trying to protect people's right to vote is whether the precints had a sufficient number of voting machines, such that the votes could be proccessed at a sufficient rate. Machine quantity as well as ballot quantity determines the saturation point of votes. Number of machines * Max. votes per hour per machine * hours poll is open = max. number of votes precinct is able to process. Every voter over this limit is effectively disenfranchised, just as if the precint had run out of ballots; the precinct runs out of voter-time-slots." "Although low population precincts had relatively plenty of voting machines and were well within the limits of processing capacity, high-population centers often did not, and sometimes had less than half the machines requested and were well outside the limits of processing capacity, effectively disenfranchisng an undetermined number of voters." "This may explain the discrepancy between expected voter turnout in high-population areas and counted voter turnout in these areas. Since high-population areas are predominantely Democratic, this would primarily effect the Democratic constituency, and appear on the surface to reflect inefficacy in the Democratic GOTV effort. It is entirely possible, and arguably - from the empirical evidence - probable, that the vote did get out, but the polling places, due to lack of machines and/or staff, were not able to processs the full vote-load." "140 such incidents (over 1/7 of the national total) are from Cuyahoga County, Ohio [14]." 11-04 11-29-04 Fitrakis and Wasserman: Low-Income, Student, and Minority Polling Places Deficient (FreePress.org) "Damschroder's official records also show that while desperate poll workers called his office throughout the day, at least 125 machines were held back at the opening of the polls and an additional 68 were never deployed. Thus while thousands of inner city voters stood in the rain, were told their cars would be towed, and were then forced to vote in five minutes or less, Damschroder sat on machines that could have significantly sped the process." 11-04 Papers 12-15-04 Voter Suppression Details (Akron Beacon Journal) "Because blue-collar and lower-income workers tend to vote Democratic, the long lines in Akron and other urban areas fueled suspicion of a deliberate tactic to hold down the turnout -- especially in largely African-American precincts -- for presidential challenger John Kerry." "Alex Arshinkoff, leader of the Summit County Republican Party and a member of the board of elections, scoffed at that notion. 'There was no grand conspiracy to lessen the vote in the inner city,' Arshinkoff said." "But that's not the way Gail McWilliams, presiding Democratic judge for Precinct 4-B at Buchtel High School, sees it. 'It was about depressing the Democratic base,' she said." "McWilliams estimated the wait at her precinct was 2 ½ hours for those arriving between the 6:30 a.m. opening and 1:30 p.m." " 'At 5:45 a.m., people were already in line,' McWilliams said. 'Challengers were there, too.' " "The challengers, combined with the long lines, hasty poll-worker training and many first-time voters, created a 'cornucopia of chaos' that McWilliams said aggravated the delays." "She saw it as 'no accident' that Republican challengers were deployed in Wards 3, 4, and 5 and in one precinct each in Wards 1, 7 and 9. 'Each one of those precincts and wards were largely populated by persons of color,' she said." 12-04 How Voters Were Disenfranchised in Ohio (The AllianceforDemocracy.org - Fitrakis) "Following four community public hearings in Ohio about election irregularities and voter suppression -- two in the capitol, Columbus, and one each in Cincinnati and Cleveland -- a clear pattern and practice of voter disenfranchisement is emerging." 12-04 Witness to the Ohio Elections (Spectrumz.com) "I worked for 3 days, including Election Day, on the statewide voter protection hotline run by the Ohio Democratic Party in Columbus, Ohio. I am writing this because the media is inexplicably whitewashing what happened in Ohio, and Kerry's concession was likewise inexplicable. Hundreds of thousands of people were disenfranchised in Ohio." 12-04

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