RantWorld

Ohio Recount Progress

The Green Party and the Libertarian Party formally filed for recount in Ohio on November 19th [LINK] [LINK] having raised $150,000 to fund it in only four days of online funraising. Of course it looks like Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell will try to stall the initial vote certification process, so that no time remains for a full recount before the December 13th deadline.

You might remember that in 2000 the Supreme Court actually did rule that a Florida recount should be done. However they said the deadline should stand, which gave the state of Florida only two hours to perform the recount. That was of course was impossible, so Bush was elected by default. Blackwell apprears to be reading from the same book as the Supreme Court justices.

Cobb and Badnarik are wise to this tactic though, and they have now filed suit to force Blackwell to expedite the initial count statewide. [LINK]

Look for many more attempts by the Republicans to delay or stop the recount in the coming weeks.

Ohio Voter Suppression Upate

Though few in the major media take notice, a handful of civic-minded crusaders are uncovering more evidence of possible voter fraud and blatant voter suppression tactics in the November 2004 elections.

Bob Fitrakis has published two new articles at freepress.org describing "How the Ohio election was rigged for Bush." [LINK] [LINK] [LINK]

Fitrakis and others have held four hearings and documented hundreds of incidents of Ohio voters being turned away or discouraged from voting. These disenfranchied voters gave testimony under oath, and their evidence will be used in a court case that will challenge and could possibly overturn the results of the Ohio election. Fitrakis also documents a clear pattern of selective disenfranchisement done by withholding voting machines from pro-Kerry precincts (as discussed an earlier post [LINK]).

Here's one of the new facts Fitrakis presents:

In precinct 1-B where there were 1,620 registered voters, a 27% increase in voter registration, the precinct had five voting machines in 2000 and only three in 2004. Where did they go? Out to Republican enclaves like Canal Winchester, where two machines were added since 2000, for a total of five to service 1,255 registered voters? Or were they re-routed to Dublin 2-G where 1,656 registered voters apparently needed six machines, twice the number of Columbus' 1-B?

It's increasingly clear that voting machines were withheld from certain precincts in order to decrease the pro-Democrat vote. The question becomes: will the Republican elections officials who did this be held accountable for their actions?

Here are a few more recent  links about voting shenanigans:

Warren County Ohio planned in advance to lockdown the counting areas to prevent witnesses [LINK]

Keith Olbermann on possible scenarios if the Ohio recount takes too long [LINK]

Anomalies in North Carolina votes, compared to absentee results [LINK]

Wishful Polling

When 22% of respondents say they voted a certain way because of a nebulous concept like "moral values" the press extrapolates wildly about massive conservative turnout and the new ascendancy of the religious right.

But when the exit polls in every swing state predict a Kerry victory, and then Bush wins the election, the press rushes to claim that the exit polls were all wrong.

It seems many reporters engage in "wishful polling." They develop a story angle first and then go find the statistics they need to reinforce it. This is nothing new. However this is the first time I've seen the media almost unanimous in questioning the entire polling discipline.

A new analysis by Dr. Steven F. Freeman of the University of Pennsylvania makes a strong case for the continued accuracy of exit polls. [LINK]  Freeman concludes that the natural odds of the actual vote counts varying so dramatically from the exit poll results this year are about 250 million to one. Freeman's full report is available online. [LINK]

Right now the exit polls are one of the few relatively independent checks against widespread vote manipulation. The Republicans are now trying to pressure the news agencies to stop exit polling altogether. [LINK] Let's hope the agencies don't cave in to Republican pressure on this one!

A Brief History of U.S. Vote Fraud

There's a lot more coverage of election problems in the press today, but most of the stories focus on the wacky "conspiracy theories" being put forward by "web loggers" wearing "tin foil hats" in that "parallel dimension" called the internet.  Here are a few samples:

• Latest Conspiracy Theory -- Kerry Won -- Hits the Ether - Washington Post [LINK]

• If it's too bad to be true, it may not be voter fraud; Most statistical enigmas in recent election have logical explanations, despite Web rants - SF Chronicle [LINK]

• The swift rise and fall of 'Votergate'; Web logs' fast and furious rumors of election foul play quickly dismissed - NY Times [LINK]

The NYT article even quotes Matthew Damschroder (the Republican Election Director who is presiding over all those irregularities in Franklin County, Ohio [LINK] ) who calls the reports of voting irregularities a "snowball of hearsay."

Most of the mainstream media, with the notable exceptions of Keith Olbermann at MSNBC and Randi Rhodes and the other hosts at Air America Radio, seems more interested in marginalizing the idea of vote fraud than they are in finding out whether any might actually have occurred.

Take this biting analysis from Glenn Reynolds at MSNBC, "Complaints about voter fraud have been the perennial domain of losers." [LINK]

Of course, winners don't usually contest election results, do they? So we should all wait around for George W. Bush to ask for a recount in Ohio?

Reynolds also goes out of his way to take a swipe at his MSNBC colleague Olbermann for daring to air any concerns about voting irregularities. This is one of the first signs that Olbermann could soon suffer the wolf-pack-like savaging by his colleagues that Dan Rather recently received.

Why is the mainstream media so afraid of reporting vote fraud? There is a long history of vote fraud in the U.S, much of recent, and sadly it is almost always ignored or marginalized by the press.

In their 1996 book "Dirty Little Secrets: The Persistence of Corruption in American Politics", Larry Sabato and Glenn Simpson offer a detailed history of vote fraud in the U.S. Their conclusion is that vote fraud has been with us ever since we've had elections, and that it was experiencing a resurgence in the 1990's, when the book was written. Sabato is a well-respected political science professor fom the University of Virgina who has consulted for both Democrats and Republicans.

On the subject of voting fraud, Sabato and Simpson say:

For much of the last century and a good part of this century, elections in many states and localities became contests of the voting fraud capacities of various factions and parties. The chief question on Election Day sometimes was: who could manufacture the requisite number of votes most easily and shrewdly, giving the other side insufficient time to make adjustments to its tallies and insufficient evidence to cry foul consistently.

They give quite a few examples of vote fraud in the U.S.:

• In the 1844 election, New York City's 41,000 voters managed to cast 55,000 votes, a 135% turnout.

• In 1876, Democratic Presidential candidate Samuel B. Tilden had 184 electoral votes (185 were needed then to win) with four states and 20 electoral votes still in question. Tilden had a substantial lead in Florida, but a Republican-controlled election board there began disualifying hundreds of Democratic votes for dubious reasons, giving the state instead to Rutherford B. Hayes, his Republican opponent. Congress then set up a Republican-led commission to decide the election, and they gave all the remaining electoral votes to Hayes, denying Tilden the one vote he needed to win.

• Vote selling first became popular in the late 1800's. It became so prevalent in some places that in 1910 a judge in Adams County, Ohio convicted 1,679 people, more than 25% of the voters there, of selling their votes. Inquiries showed that 85% of the couny's voters had bought or sold votes at some time in their lives.

• In 1941 a young Congressman named Lyndon Johnson was elected in a tight election that came down to the vote count forVoting Box 13 in Alice, Texas. A few days after the election the official in chage of Box 13 "found" 203 additional votes, 202 of them for Johnson. Stangely all 203 of these citizens voted in alphabetical order and used the same pen. Johnson won the election by 87 votes statewide.

Vote fraud isn't just a quaint old phenomenon in the U.S. Here are a few incidents from the 1990's:

• In a special election in Philadelphia's Senatorial District 2 in 1993, Republican Bruce Marks received 564 more in-person votes than his opponent William Stinson. However a vast majority of the absentee ballots went for Stinson, giving him a victory by 351 votes. A subsequent inquiry found that Stinson campaign staffers and local election board officials conspired to systematically collect, distribute and in some cases help voters fill out absentee ballots that favored Stinson. A judge overturned the election, Stinson was indicted (but not convicted), and some of his staffers went to jail.

• In California in 1996 it was estimated that up to 24% of all voter registrations were phony or obsolete. One cause is the practice of paying third-party firms per registration to sign up new voters. Many times these firms sign up already registered voters with new addresses, duplicating these voters in the rolls. Paid solicitors added over 4,000 fraudulent voter registrations in L. A. County in 1992 alone. California also does not have a good procedure for removing dead voters or voters who leave the state from their lists. It's unclear how many people try to commit fraud by capitalizing on these registration problems. In one case in 1994 a woman entered a polling place in Kern county and asked for a ballot under the name of a woman who happened to be in a voting booth at that moment. When the legitimate voter stepped out and objected the impersonator fled.

• In 1992 in Harris County, Texas 6,707 ineligible voters cast ballots, exploiting a law there that allows voters to sign a sworn statement of eligibility if they are not on the rolls. It took seven months for elections officials to completely evaluate these ineligible ballots, long after the election results had been certified.

• Texas allows early voting using mail-in ballots. There is a space for a signatue on the ballot and on the envelope that the ballot is mailed in. Texas law allows you to mark anything in this signature space, even an "X". Even so in a 1994 election in Galveston county a watchdog group found over 200 instances where the full signature on the envelope was very different from the full signature on the ballot inside. In that election a number of races had been decided by less than 200 votes.

So vote fraud was still alive and well in the 1990's and even experiencing a "resurgence", accoring to Sabato and Simpson. (They also state that nowhere in the U.S. is vote fraud more bold, traditional, and institutionalized than in George W. Bush's own home state of Texas.)

About vote fraud, Sabato and Simpson conclude:

Contrary to the belief of some that voter fraud is a thing of the past existing today only in isolated pockets, if at all, the evidence...strongly suggests a persistent pattern of criminal fraud that is well organizedand a continuing part of the political culture in some areas. The fact that fraud is generally not recognized as a serious problem by press, public, and law enforcement creates the perfect environment for it to flourish.

They draw special attention to "the absence of the press" and attribute this to a few causes:

• a general belief that vote fraud is no longer a serious problem in the U.S.;

• the tendency of the press to treat vote fraud incidents as isolated problems not worthy of broader interest;

• "...Another indication of a disease some reporters have contracted from extended contact with political professionals: a blase attitude about some unsavory aspects of the electoral sausage-making process."

Are we to believe that all vote fraud magically ceased in 2000 and 2004, just because many counties switched to electronic voting machines with no paper trail? Common sense says that fraud is more likely now than it used to be.

Take this statement by an Alabama attorney who was working on vote fraud investigations in 1994:

"Basically what happens is that you're not going to second-guess elections in the absence of any proof. And then what you do is make sure the people who control the proof are in the inner circle of your party. And therefore as the process unwinds in the wee hours of the [election] night, based on the information that's available from the media outlets, the inner circle comes up with what [votes] they need. Who's going to rat on them?"

Electronic voting machines without auditable results make this kind of vote count adjustment much easier than it used to be. Fraud is much more likely to happen when vote counts can be changed with no paper trail. The easier it is to change these results without fear of discovery, the more likely it is that the results will be changed.

Vote fraud almost certainly did occur in the 2004 election. The only question is, on what scale? Were there just a few small, isolated incidents as the press currently tells us? Or was there fraud on a larger state or national scale?

It seems clear to me that no mainstream reporter is going to do any hard-core investigating of this year's vote counting problems. Only if third-party candidates, bloggers, or private citizens find enough irregularites or evidence of fraud with the press take notice. Bloggers are doing a public service by keeping skepticism alive and forcing the mainstream media to take notice.

What's Wrong With De Baca, NM?

I just took a look at some of the vote tallies in New Mexico, another hotly contested state. Guess what I found? Dixiecrats! Or maybe you'd call them New Mexicrats out there.

There is a pro-Republican vote swing in small counties in New Mexico that's very similar to those so-called Dixiecrat small counties in Florida. According to voter registrations these counties are heavily Democratic, but in 2004 and 2000 they voted overwhelmingly for Bush. Even so, their margin for Bush increased dramatically this year.

Here are some examples that compare the proportion of voters registered Democrat vs. Republican to the percentages won by Kerry and Bush this year. (For simplicity, I eliminated "No Party" and Green Party registrations when calculating relative percentages for DEM and REP registered voters)

	Registrations				Votes				Kerry Perf.
County	DEM		REP		Kerry (DEM)		Bush (REP)		vs. Expected	Tech
De Baca	987	72%	381	28%	280	28%	705	71%	-44%	Optical Scan
Union	1,393	59%	972	41%	411	22%	1,454	77%	-37%	Optical Scan
Quay	3,817	67%	1,838	33%	1,422	35%	2,661	65%	-33%	Optical Scan
Hidalgo	2,132	76%	665	24%	861	44%	1,081	55%	-32%	Optical Scan

De Baca county, for example, shows a complete reversal. 72% of major party registrants there are Democrats, but only 28% of the voters in De Baca went for Kerry. Kerry's performance in DeBaca is 44% less than expected. Of course De Baca county went for Bush in 2000 as well, but only by 62% to 36%.

Why are there so many Democrats voting Republican in these counties? The southern Dixiecrat explanation doesn't work in the wide open Southwest.

Just like in those small Florida counties, all the New Mexico counties above use ES&S Optical Scan voting machines.

Just like in Florida, Kerry did not exceed the expected percentage in any county in New Mexico. Not one.

I also compared all Optical Scan counties against the E-Voting counties. The Optical Scan counties only account for about 10% of voters, so I'm not sure how valid these trends are. But here goes:

• In Op Scan counties, Kerry performed 21% worse than expectations on average. In E-Voting counties he only did 10% worse.
• Turnout in Op Scan counties was 8% higher than the rest of the state, on average. (71% vs 63%) This could be another indicator of vote inflation in the small counties.

There are some other anomalies with the New Mexico counts too. Many of these might be explained by the fact that vote counting in New Mexico is still underway, and new data is posted to the website each day.

• The sum of the vote totals in each county don't add up to the total number of ballots counted statewide. Perhaps the absentee ballots are not yet allocated to the counties or something?
• None of the county counts sum up to the "Number of Voters" posted for the county. I assume this generally means that provisional or absentee ballots haven't been fully counted yet. However in a couple cases the counts are higher than the "Number of Voters". In Valencia County, for example, the ballots total 25,795 but the Number of Voters posted is 25,435.
• Turnout was strangely low (56% or less) in three counties. The statewide turnout was 64%. All three counties with strangely low turnout were heavily Democratic.

County	Turnout	% DEM vs REP
McKinley	49%	79%
Cibola	55%	76%
San Miguel	56%	84%

I've posted a county-by-county summary of these spreadsheet results here.

I think we're less likely to see pro-Bush fraud in New Mexico because the Governaor and the Secretary of State there are both Democrats. But still, anomalies like these cry out for good explanations. Anybody want to propose some?

I've gotten some emails asking why we should bother analyzing the data like this when Kerry has already conceded. As Kevin Drum has pointed out, we need to keep the pressure on so those pollsters or government officials who have the power to explain results like these will take some time to do it. Also, we need to gather data points, discover trends, and help folks like Ralph Nader, David Cobb, Bev Harris figure out which battles to fight.

New Hampshire and Ohio Recounts

It now looks like Ralph Nader will get his recount in New Hampshire, and  Green Party candidate David Cobb is considering applying for a recount in Ohio. They both need our support to make this happen.

On Monday it appeared that the Secretary of State might reject Nader's request for a recount on a technicality, but today the Washington Post reported that New Hampshire's Secretary of State William M. Gardner might let the recount proceed: [LINK]

Under state law, if a candidate requesting a recount finished more than three percentage points behind, he must pay for the process. Gardner said that if the Nader campaign sends a check for $2,000 and promises to pay any additional charges, he will round up the ballots and initiate a hand count.

Spokesman Kevin Zeese said Nader was planning to send the check yesterday. "Either it will allay people's fears about the results, or it will open the door to looking at other states," Zeese said.

MSNBC's Keith Olbermann, one of the few reporters offering consistently strong coverage of post-election voting issues, also mentions that David Cobb of  the Green Party might call for a recount in Ohio. [LINK] The question is whether Cobb and the Greens can afford to:

The central issue in both potential recounts appears to be money. Cobb, whose presence on the ballot in all 50 states is probably coming to your attention only as you read this, said in an interview with the Pacifica station in Los Angeles, KPFK, that a recount would cost the Greens around $110,000, on a basis of approximately $10 per precinct. As you’d probably guess, Mr. Cobb’s doesn’t have the money lying around - but as a presidential candidate, he does have the right. Whether or not he can raise the cash is the operative question.

The cost for Nader in New Hampshire is estimated to be about $50,000.

In any case, I can't think of a better cause for Ralph Nader to tackle. Think what you will about his Presidential campaign, but he excels as a crusader for citizens' rights. Only John Kerry has more power to force a recount than Nader or Cobb.

The Kerry campaign capitulated much too quickly in my opinion. When Kerry's team walked away from challenging the results in Ohio, most of the press lost interest. Yet the reports of vote count irregularities and possible fraud are numerous. If a recount in either New Hampshire or Ohio uncovers evidence fraud or voting machine inaccuracies, it could open the doors to recounts in all the other swing states.

We need to help Ralph Nader and David Cobb carry the torch and illuminate the problems with electronic voting and election tampering.

If you are concerned about the future of our elections process, I urge you to donate now and encourage Nader and Cobb to proceed with recounts in both New Hampshire and Ohio.

Please make donations for Ralph Nader's efforts at votenader.org and to the Green Party at gp.org. Bev Harris at blackboxvoting.org is helping Nader with his recount application, and her organization can use your support as well.

Let's help shine the light on voting problems in the U.S. and ensure fair elections in the future.

How to Explain Bush's Broward Gain?

Where did Bush's extra votes in Broward County come from? A little "What If?" analysis shows some real improbabilities. Kerry's margin might have been reduced by as much as 54,000 votes in Broward county alone, with no obvious reasons why.

Here's a small spreadsheet that projects Presidential votes for Broward County in 2004 based on the results in 2000 and new voter registrations since then.

Here is the method used in the Projections section of the spreadsheet:

1. Start with a base of voters who voted for Bush, Gore, or others in 2000
2. Assume that about 75% of newly registered voters actually voted, and that they voted for the party they registered for
3. Assume that Independent and minor party voters voted for Bush or Kerry according to exit poll percentages (57% of Independents went for Kerry)

The resulting projections gave Kerry 68% of the vote and Bush 31% which is very close to the results from 2000 (Gore 67%, Bush 31%). The actual results in 2004 were Kerry 64%, Bush 35%.

Overall it appears that the actual 2004 results show a Kerry margin that's about 54,000 votes too small.

I tried to explain the Bush increase by tweaking some of the inputs and assumptions.

If you alter the propensity of independent voters to go for Bush to 92% vs. 8% for Kerry it gets Bush 243,000 votes in Broward. This is way out of whack compared to the exit polls showing only 41% of Florida Independents voted for Bush.

You could also suggest that about 27,000 Democrats -- about 6% of Gore's 2000 total -- switched sides to vote for Bush, but again the exit polls don't bear this out. Exit polls show that an extra 1% of Democrats voted for Bush in 2004 compared to 2000. That might get Bush an extra 4,500 votes in Broward, nowhere near 27,000. In addition Republicans were indeed more loyal to Bush this year according to the exit polls, voting for him 93% instead or 91% in 2000. Let's give him the extra 2%, giving him about 3,500 more votes. We're still nowhere near explaining the 27,000 "party switcher" votes.

This is a simplified analysis of course. But it offers one more data point supporting the theory of vote  manipulation in Florida counties that use electronic voting machines.

A total swing of 54,000 votes in a single county is a big variation. Multiply this by a few more counties and you could even overcome Bush's 375,000 margin of victory in Florida. I have no doubt that the other electronic voting counties in Florida will show similar, inexplicable vote increases for Bush. I'll let you know what I find out.

New Democrats Don't Vote for Bush

The "Dixiecrat" theory does not explain the big Republican vote gains in Florida counties where Democrats had very successful voter registration drives.

In my post What's Wrong With Liberty, Florida? I showed some of the incredible variations in Bush vote counts compared to the number of registered Republicans in certain Florida counties.

For example, Liberty county with 320 Republicans gave Bush 1,927 votes. That is 6 times more votes for Bush than there are registered Republicans (602% to be exact).

One possible explanation for the variations is that these counties are flush with "Dixiecrat" Southern Democrats who haven't changed their official party affiliation in years, and who now vote solidly Republican. In fact many of these counties voted for Bush in 2000 too, though not in the same quantities. I don't think the Dixiecrat theory fully explains Bush's incredible Florida turnout, but clearly there are many registered Democrats voting Republican in rural Florida.

The Dixiecrat theory does not apply to newly-registered voters though. You would expect that someone who registered as a Democrat in the last four years has a high propensity to vote for Kerry in 2004.

When we look at the votes in counties with lots of newly-registered Democrats we see more indications of Bush vote inflation that the Dixiecrat theory can't fully explain.

Take Democratic-leaning Broward County, for example, which Gore won in 2000 by 67% to 31%. Democratic GOTV efforts were very successful in Broward. 77,187 new voters registered as Democrats since 2000, compared to only 16,907 new Republicans. Here are the details:

2000 Registered REP=266,829  DEM=456,789
2004 Registered REP=283,736  DEM=533,976

Reg Increase REP=16,907  DEM=77,187

But the vote tallies in 2004 tell a different story:

2000 Votes Bush=177,902   Gore=387,703
2004 Votes Bush=243,118  Kerry=451,521

Vote Increase REP=65,216  DEM=63,818

Republicans added 16,907 new voters and got 65,216 additional votes for Bush in 2004.

Democrats added 77,187 new voters and got only 63,818 new votes for Kerry.

Democrats lost ground even though their GOTV efforts for new registrations were nearly 4 times as successful than the Republicans. This seems highly implausible. Broward of course uses new touchscreen voting machines that don't provide a paper trail for verification.

Other counties show similar anomalies. Here's an example from Pinellas county:

2000 Registered REP=231,652  DEM=223,544
2004 Registered REP=231,652  DEM=223,544

Reg Increase REP=-10,425 DEM=9,383

2000 Votes Bush=184,825   Gore=200,630
2004 Votes Bush=225,627  Kerry=225,367

Vote Increase REP=40,802 DEM=24,737

So Pinellas county lost 10,000 Republicans since 2000 and gained over 9,000 Democrats, for a net gain of 19,808 Democrats.

Yet Republicans gained over 40,000 votes in Pinellas in 2004 even though the Democrats were far more successful registering new voters there. Did I mention that Pinellas switched to no-paper-trail electronic voting machines this year too?

When you look at these numbers in light of exit polls showing a preference for Kerry, other polls showing that most citizens do not favor Bush's stances on key issues, Bush's great victory in Florida seems increasingly improbable.

Statistical anomalies like these do not prove that vote fraud was committed in Florida. But if enough anomalies and improbabilities are discovered and publicized, it should become easier to convice Democrats and election authorities that the Florida results need to be officially reviewed in detail.

More to come...

We Are Safe From Terror and Crime!

Attorney General John Ashcroft resigned today, which is pretty good news (depending on whom they tap to replace him of course).

But the announcement came with better news still:

"The objective of securing the safety of Americans from crime and terror has been achieved," Ashcroft wrote in a five-page, handwritten letter to Bush.

Why didn't anyone else tell us about this? We are SAFE!

The terror thing? Over!

Crime? Don't even lock your doors.

I wonder why Bush didn't use this in his campaign this year? It really would have boosted his numbers. Who wouldn't vote for the guy who helped vanquish terror and crime?

Maybe Ashcroft just achieved this goal yesterday, too late for the campaign. In any case he really set the bar high for the next Attorney General. One criminal or terrorist act and the next guy's a loser.

And to think they called the Bush Administration out of touch with reality. Ha! Take that, Osama!

What's Wrong with Franklin, Ohio?

Many voters in Franklin County, Ohio, home to the city of of Columbus, experienced waits of five hours or more on election day. Lawsuits against the Ohio Secretary of state were filed that day on behalf of some of these voters. There were many reports of voters leaving before they could vote, in some cases because they were too old or infirm to be able to wait in line for hours.

Voting machines in Franklin county had to handle 170 voters each, on average, much more than the 86 voters per machine in Summit County (Akron) and 68 per machine in Cuyahoga County (Cleveland). [LINK]

The conventional wisdom is that "record turnout" swamped the precincts and caused the lines. This seems to be false. There was high turnout throughout the rest of Ohio on November 2nd, but not in Franklin County.

In fact Franklin's 60.95% turnout rate was LESS than in 2000, when the rate was 61.30%. However voter registration in Franklin county had increased by 24% since 2000. You would expect nearly all of the new voters to go to the polls, so turnout should have been much greater. That seems to indicate that many thousands of voters didn't get a chance to vote in Franklin, perhaps because of intentional vote suppression tactics by the Republicans.

Statewide voter turnout was about 70% in Ohio this year, up from about 64% in 2000. In Hamilton County, home of Cincinnati, where vote suppression tactics don't seem to have been as intense, turnout was 73%.

If Franklin county had 73% turnout this year, an additional 76,115 votes would have been recorded. Let's say these voters would go for Kerry 75% to 25% -- a reasonable assumption given that Democratic-leaning precincts seem to have been targeted. That means a net gain of 38,057 votes for Kerry.

38,057 votes isn't enough to overcome the highly-publicized gap of 136,000 votes that Kerry needs to win the state back from Bush. But combined with the provisional vote count yet to be completed, losses from vote suppression tactics in other counties like Cuyahoga, and future adjustments due to fraud or machine malfunctions [LINK], it could have been significant.

It appears that a lack of voting machines in certain precincts was the cause of some long lines. According to the Columbus Dispatch, "many polling places in inner-city neighborhoods had fewer voting machines than during the last presidential election." [LINK]