News of the 2006 General Election in Ohio
Successes
- Observer program went well for first time. We had more than 70 people sign up and were active in about 20 counties.
- Franklin county will be doing a random recount for Drixtict 15.
Problems
- Cuyahoga
- We can't measure the number of people who don't vote because of new ID rule.
- Observers need more training and knowledge about what they see
and do. (Pollworkers also don't know the role of the observer and see
him/her as an outsideer).
Actions
We need to make a list of things we need from the BOEs and then request it. Here is a start:
- # registered voters
- # regular ballots
- # absentee ballots at BOE
- # absentee ballots mailed in (and number requested?)
- # absentee ballots from outside US
- # absentee ballots in each category that was rejected and reason
- # provisional ballots
- # provisional ballots rejected with the full list of reasons.
Requests of SOS Brunner
- we need an election process that is as accurate as possible.
- we cant be perfect, so we must carefully double check our results
- request random manual hand counts of 3% as Franklin county does. (right?)
- we need to make voting easy
- address ID problems.
- there is no ID that every Ohio citizan has
- there is an "unequal" problem in requiring different groups to show different IDs
- don't want a required state or national ID
- attach voter fraud aggressively so there is no concern for use of signature for ID
- and election fraud difficult
- address transparency
- define the observer roll. Independant, working for a party, but
still part of the election team and entitled to see certain details
- seals
- signatgures
- machine failures
- request BOEs publish data in some format other than
pdf. (pdf is fine for many purposes but terrible as the only
format for data)
- ask BOEs to make data available in a standard format. Example is Cuyahoga where ballots cast is confusing.
- collect the following from BOEs and make available via internet in uniform format using Excel
- # registered voters
- # regular ballots
- # absentee ballots at BOE
- # absentee ballots mailed in (and number requested?)
- # absentee ballots from outside US
- # absentee ballots in each category that was rejected and reason
- # provisional ballots
- # provisional ballots rejected with the full list of reasons.