We have found numerous, serious election irregularities in the Ohio presidential election. Cumulatively, these irregularities, which affected hundreds of thousand of votes and voters in Ohio, raise grave doubts regarding whether it can be said the Ohio electors selected on December 13, 2004, were chosen in a manner that conforms to Ohio law, let alone federal requirements and constitutional standards. In many cases these irregularities were caused by intentional misconduct and illegal behavior, much of it involving Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell, the co-chair of the Bush-Cheney campaign in Ohio. First...the following actions by Mr. Blackwell, the Republican Party and election officials disenfranchised hundreds of thousands of Ohio citizens. The misallocation of voting machines led to unprecedented long lines. Mr. Blackwell's widely reviled decision to reject voter registration applications based on paper weight may have resulted in thousands of new voters not being registered in time for the 2004 election. Mr. Blackwell's decision to prevent voters who requested absentee ballots but did not receive them on a timely basis from being able to receive provisional ballots likely disenfranchised thousands, if not tens of thousands. A federal court found Mr. Blackwell's order to be illegal. Second, on election day, there were numerous unexplained anomalies and irregularities involving hundreds of thousands of votes that have yet to be accounted for. There were 93,000 spoiled ballots where no vote was cast for president, the vast majority of which have yet to be inspected.
Latest
Latest News
Each news summary is created according to strict standards. Here's how we do it.
Each summary is created using a consistent editorial procedure. The target length is approximately 16 lines of 11-point Arial text in a 650-pixel-wide column. Up to 25% of a summary may be set in bold to emphasize the most important ideas. Summaries are composed of verbatim excerpts presented in the same sequence as they appear in the original news source, with very minor editorial additions. Where material has been omitted between excerpts, the omission is indicated with ellipses (...). Any words added by an editor for clarity or context appear in [brackets]. Our original news editor was Fred Burks. Tod Fletcher edited most summaries from 2007 through 2014, and Mark Bailey has served as news editor since 2014.