November 10th, 2004 | DemocracyNow!
Earlier this week on Democracy Now!, we reported on a story in Ohio’s Franklin County. In one precinct, 638 people cast ballots. Yet, George W Bush got 4,258 votes to John Kerry’s 260. In reality, Bush only received 365 votes. That means Bush got nearly 3,900 extra votes. And that was just in one small precinct. This in a state that Bush officially won by only 136,000 votes. Elections officials blamed electronic voting for the extra Bush votes.
Now, questions are being raised across the state of Ohio. In Cuyahoga County, Ohio, the County’s website shows its 29 precincts had more votes than voters. In fact, it wasn’t just a handful. It registered a whopping 93,000 more votes than voters. In Fairview Park, twelve miles west of downtown Cleveland, only 13,342 people were registered voters there, but they cast 18,472 votes.
Meanwhile, in Warren County, Ohio election officials took a rather unprecedented action on November 2. They locked down the building where the votes were being tallied, blocking anyone from observing the vote counting process. County officials said they took the action in response to a terror threat warning from the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI. County Commissioner Pat South said they were told by an FBI agent that the county was facing a level 10 security threat on a scale of 1 to 10. George Bush won 72% of the county’s more than 92,000 votes.
* Erica Solvig, staff reporter for the Cincinnati Enquirer. She covers Warren County for the paper. Read her article: “Warren Co. defends lockdown decision”.
