Ballot spoilage in Cuyahoga County -- map

[MKM1960]

Question: Can't a voter spoil more than one ballot? Are there different types of spoilage?(i.e. ballots spoiled before being cast and voters given a new ballot and spoilage that comes to light during the ballot count) If there are differences in spoilage are only the ballots counted that were found after they were cast? If not I foresee a whole lot of room for fudging the results.

[jscd3]

I live in this county. All punch cards. Realistically, the ownly way that an "undervote" occurs with punch cards is when:

1. no punch is made for a candidate running for office
2. more than one candidate is punched among those running for a single office

On the west side of the Cuyahoga in Cleveland (mostly pink), it's all Democrat(many of whom would never vote Republican), but I'm guessing that there are more than a few here that just could not vote for Kerry. Hence, no vote.

East of the Cuyagoga (black area on the map)tends to be poor, lots of public housing, and overly represented by rent-a-voters. Easy to see a relatively high proportion of "voters" in this area making a mistake or just showing up and doing the bare minimum to pick up the $50 or whatever else was promised for voting...

[Timedrifter]

It was posted here yesterday that only a very small percentage of the undervotes/overvotes wind up being counted. On a punch card ballot I dont see how any overvotes wind up being counted if they cleanly punched two holes.

[montrose]

The precincts come up with a "voter count" which is a count of all voters who were given an authority-to-vote slip in the precinct. The "spoilage" [sic?] in this case is the difference between the voter count and the sum of all votes for president.

[Bikers4Bush]

Here's the beauty of this. The democrats basically control the whole damn county so if their are that many spoiled ballots it's nobody's fault but theirs.

[freedumb2003]

Do we know what the margin is after the provisional votes? This whole sideshow had almost slipped my mind.

Just look at DU -- they say there are +260,000 (130*2) in Ohio alone! LOL

[Larry Lucido]

Hmm, we may have to plan our next fall spoliage tour in Cuyahoga county. The colors look quite dazzling.

[null and void]

tee hee hee

[conservativecorner]

If you can't properly vote including filling out the proper paperwork on time, knowing where your polling place is located and being informed enough to understand how to use the machine to vote, do we really want to count the votes of these folks? I mean damn we aren't building the space shuttle with this endeavor. Each person that gets to the voting machine is asked if they understand how to use the machine to vote. If you need assistance, they go over the proper way to vote so that you can confidently cast a vote for the candidate of your choice. Forget sex education in school, and provide a civics class that would teach these dumb asses how to vote without having to have someone do it for them in future elections.

[jscd3]

I don't like it when the language is corrupted.

I agree

If we are talking "spoilage" then we are just talking errors made that resulted in the voter getting a new ballot. These ballots do not ever count. The higher rate is interesting only in that it confirms that Kerry voters are more error prone then Bush voters - like that's news.

If we are talking "under votes", there are legitimate reasons for this. These "under votes" will practically never count. See my post above.

This is starting to get tiresome...

[dawn53]

Let them count...there are only 93,000 spoiled ballots and Bush holds a 120,000 lead.

They'll look at chads, but I've heard that Ohio has a very strict standard for deciding what qualifies as an undervote (something about so many corners have to be dislodged).

Anyway, Gore counted chads for weeks and couldn't find 500 even in heavily democratic counties.

The votes aren't there.

The shame is it will cost the taxpayers $1.5 mil...but that should make the independents even more likely to vote for a Republican next election.

[Nosterrex]

It is not uncommon to find more ballot spoilage among the illiterate. That is an indisputable fact that is found throughout all fifty states. I don't know the demographics of this county, but from the comments I've read on this thread, I gather that it is composed of a significant number of blacks and other minorities. The illiteracy rate among such groups is significantly high.

[MKM1960]

Thanks, I was concerned about the election officials dropping more "spoiled" Kerry ballots into the mix.

[montrose]

This map goes along with the other one: But those results might be skewed--since it's a self-reporting system. Kind of like a non-scientific poll?

[kidd]

In small print at the top of the map, spoilage is defined as a ballot deemed not to have a valid vote for President.

This is going to be another "what was the intent of the voter" hunt again. Fortunately, Ohio has clearer laws that Florida did in 2000.

This one is going nowhere folks.

Its really more like therapy for the PESTs.

[Robert A Cook PE]

It would be even more important to know WHO the poll officials and poll observers were in those same precincts.

I agree with what several observers noticed: the writer is prejudiced and incorrect: "Spoiled" ballots are NOT ones that are bad - they are ones that have no VALID "vote" for president:

Two punches.

No punch.

Bad punch.

Two punches, but only "black" precincts: Most likely cause: The "professional" democratic poll officials were double-punching ballots (possible) to "spoil" votes FOR Bush and to CREATE votes for Kerry, plus some rate of simple error.

No punch in black areas: The dominantly black democratic voters were NOT voting for president (likely).

Bad punch in black areas: Many more incompetent voters, but only in democratic regions?

Therefore: Either the democratic voters in heavily black regions hate BOTH Bush AND Kerry, or they are more incompetent at punching ballots (but not lottery tickets!) than white voters, or black (democratic) poll officials are criminals, inept, or both.

[TNCMAXQ]

So what exactly does this mean? Are these the 93,000 ballots we have heard about? So even if 100% of them were to go for Kerry it would mean nothing, though that is impossible anyway. Will this delay the certification in any way? I hope not, though again if we are talking about only 93K ballots it is a moot point.

[jscd3]

Just look at DU -- they say there are +260,000 (130*2) in Ohio alone! LOL

Well, that's DU. according to this site:

http://election.sos.state.oh.us/ProvBallots.htm

there were a total of 135,149 provisional ballots cast. We know that only 78%(?) of them have counted with 85 of 88 counties certified. We know that kerry picked up about 17,000 net votes - a little shy of the 136,000 margin Bush started with.

This is so over...

[Travis McGee]

Are you familiar with "ballot spiking" where a stiff wire is rammed down the Kerrry (or Gore in 2000) hole in a stack of punched ballot cards?

This was rampant in Palm Beach in 2000, and resulted in the ensuing misunderstood "chad" situation.

Spiking a stack of ballots down your candidates hole does not change any ballots for your candidate, but spoils (double punches) any of your adversaries ballots.

This is done usually in "bad neighborhoods" where the Republican poll watchers are actually democrat stooges, who sign up for the duty in order to participate in this scam after the polls close, but before the ballots are counted.

[MKM1960]

Sorry that thanks was supposed to be for you not Bikers4Bush. B4B thank you for your information though, it is comforting to know that any irregularities can be laid at the feet of the Democrat party in Cuyahoga County.