# Ohio county with 638 voters gives Bush 4258 votes **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [November 5, 2004, 11:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ohio-county-with-638-voters-gives-bush-4258-votes/273281 "2004-11-05T23:06:24Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Capa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/eb8c5e/32.png) [@Capa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Capa)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2004, 11:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ohio-county-with-638-voters-gives-bush-4258-votes/273281/1 "2004-11-05T23:06:24Z")
[http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/11/05/voting.problems.ap/index.html](http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/11/05/voting.problems.ap/index.html) Well, here are 3700 or so of the votes that Kerry needs to find. are there any documented instances of any vote machine or mechanism making an error against W? ---
**Author:** ![SteveG1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/bb73d2/32.png) [@SteveG1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SteveG1)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2004, 11:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ohio-county-with-638-voters-gives-bush-4258-votes/273281/2 "2004-11-05T23:08:39Z")
> [@Capa](#): > > [http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/11/05/voting.problems.ap/index.html](http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/11/05/voting.problems.ap/index.html) > > Well, here are 3700 or so of the votes that Kerry needs to find. > are there any documented instances of any vote machine or mechanism making an error against W? I haven’t found any yet. Here’s another web report [www.commondreams.org/headlines03/0828.htm](http://www.commondreams.org/headlines03/0828.htm) ---
**Author:** ![Munch](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/munch/32/5281_2.png) [@Munch](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Munch)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2004, 11:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ohio-county-with-638-voters-gives-bush-4258-votes/273281/3 "2004-11-05T23:12:39Z")
> **[Here's a beaut: More votes for Bush than voters](https://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=284995)** > > http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view\_all&address=104x2598159#2598161 (Note that it’s Gahanna, not Gahana. Maybe it should be Gehenna, since that’s where we seem to be living …) C’mon, it’s in the same forum! ---
**Author:** ![World\_Eater](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/f04885/32.png) [@World\_Eater](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/World_Eater)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2004, 11:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ohio-county-with-638-voters-gives-bush-4258-votes/273281/4 "2004-11-05T23:14:50Z")
\ It’s going to be a looooooooooong four years. ---
**Author:** ![silenus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/silenus/32/166_2.png) [@silenus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/silenus)\ **Post date:** [November 6, 2004, 1:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ohio-county-with-638-voters-gives-bush-4258-votes/273281/5 "2004-11-06T01:12:43Z")
Beer is the answer. Lots and lots of beer. And maybe bourbon. C’mon, **WE**. Have a drink with me and we’ll talk about the vagarities of Fate and the Fall of Empires. Or maybe about girls. 😃 ---
**Author:** ![World\_Eater](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/f04885/32.png) [@World\_Eater](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/World_Eater)\ **Post date:** [November 6, 2004, 2:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ohio-county-with-638-voters-gives-bush-4258-votes/273281/6 "2004-11-06T02:01:51Z")
> [@silenus](#): > > Beer is the answer. Lots and lots of beer. > > And maybe bourbon. > > C’mon, **WE**. Have a drink with me and we’ll talk about the vagarities of Fate and the Fall of Empires. Or maybe about girls. 😃 Sounds good. Anything to take my mind off the apocalypse. 😛 ---
**Author:** ![Patty\_O\_Furniture](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/96bed5/32.png) [@Patty\_O\_Furniture](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Patty_O_Furniture)\ **Post date:** [November 6, 2004, 2:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ohio-county-with-638-voters-gives-bush-4258-votes/273281/7 "2004-11-06T02:38:01Z")
I’m _SO_ glad the specter of illegitimacy has been removed from Bush’s first election fiasco. ---
**Author:** ![Typo\_Negative](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/typo_negative/32/484_2.png) [@Typo\_Negative](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Typo_Negative)\ **Post date:** [November 6, 2004, 3:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ohio-county-with-638-voters-gives-bush-4258-votes/273281/8 "2004-11-06T03:13:03Z")
Are these machines made by the company who’s president promised to deliver the state for Bush? Or am I thinking of someone else? ---
**Author:** ![bordelond](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bordelond/32/150_2.png) [@bordelond](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bordelond)\ **Post date:** [November 6, 2004, 5:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ohio-county-with-638-voters-gives-bush-4258-votes/273281/9 "2004-11-06T05:08:54Z")
> [@spooje](#): > > Are these machines made by the company who’s president promised to deliver the state for Bush? Or am I thinking of someone else? I don’t think they were Diebold machines – in any case, another company is taking responsibility for the glitch: > [@](#): > > _from the OP’s link_ > A technician from the Omaha, Neb. company that designed the software, Election Systems & Software Inc., was working to diagnose and fix the problem. In any case, I broke this down in the thread **Munch** linked to above. It’s clear to me that this was an honest-to-goodness glitch (though I initially thought it was a transcription error). It occured at a single polling site in Franklin County – a county that Bush lost by over 40,000 votes – and the number of erroneous Bush votes counted exceeded the total number of voters at that polling site (Gahanna 1-B). Neighboring polling sites in the Gahanna precinct did not have a similar error. (Cites and documentation are in **Munch’s** link.) ---
**Author:** ![Seven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/3d9bf3/32.png) [@Seven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Seven)\ **Post date:** [November 6, 2004, 8:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ohio-county-with-638-voters-gives-bush-4258-votes/273281/10 "2004-11-06T08:56:24Z")
> [@silenus](#): > > Beer is the answer. Lots and lots of beer. Four more beers! Four more beers! ---
**Author:** ![PunditLisa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/4af34b/32.png) [@PunditLisa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PunditLisa)\ **Post date:** [November 6, 2004, 1:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ohio-county-with-638-voters-gives-bush-4258-votes/273281/11 "2004-11-06T13:18:08Z")
And herein lies the problem with online voting. You’re at the mercy of the programmer. At least this error was easily caught, and presumably rectified, because it was so glaring. You have to wonder how many other “glitches” happened that will never be discovered. ---
**Author:** ![SteveG1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/bb73d2/32.png) [@SteveG1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SteveG1)\ **Post date:** [November 7, 2004, 12:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ohio-county-with-638-voters-gives-bush-4258-votes/273281/12 "2004-11-07T00:32:01Z")
> [@spooje](#): > > Are these machines made by the company who’s president promised to deliver the state for Bush? Or am I thinking of someone else? You’re thinking of Diebold. I’m not sure if Diebold’s machines were selected in Ohio or Florida. No machine is going to be perfect, but it would have been nice to have a CD ROM or paper audit trail for checking the counts - apparently that isn’t the case. ---
**Author:** ![toadspittle](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/c0e974/32.png) [@toadspittle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/toadspittle)\ **Post date:** [November 7, 2004, 4:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ohio-county-with-638-voters-gives-bush-4258-votes/273281/13 "2004-11-07T16:44:41Z")
Here’s more fun, kiddies! [http://www.commondreams.org/views04/1106-30.htm](http://www.commondreams.org/views04/1106-30.htm) > [@](#): > > … While the heavily scrutinized touch-screen voting machines seemed to produce results in which the registered Democrat/Republican ratios largely matched the Kerry/Bush vote, in Florida’s counties using results from optically scanned paper ballots - fed into a central tabulator PC and thus vulnerable to hacking – the results seem to contain substantial anomalies. > > In Baker County, for example, with 12,887 registered voters, 69.3% of them Democrats and 24.3% of them Republicans, the vote was only 2,180 for Kerry and 7,738 for Bush, the opposite of what is seen everywhere else in the country where registered Democrats largely voted for Kerry. > > In Dixie County, with 4,988 registered voters, 77.5% of them Democrats and a mere 15% registered as Republicans, only 1,959 people voted for Kerry, but 4,433 voted for Bush. > > The pattern repeats over and over again - but only in the counties where optical scanners were used. Franklin County, 77.3% registered Democrats, went 58.5% for Bush. Holmes County, 72.7% registered Democrats, went 77.25% for Bush. Yeah, what really happened, see, was that issues of “moral values” mattered so much, see, that all of those registered democrats just HAD to vote for Bush, and then they also lied to the exit pollers on the way out. Yeah. ---
**Author:** ![toadspittle](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/c0e974/32.png) [@toadspittle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/toadspittle)\ **Post date:** [November 7, 2004, 4:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ohio-county-with-638-voters-gives-bush-4258-votes/273281/14 "2004-11-07T16:47:51Z")
The one good thing here–there should be a paper trail, since these are optical scan paper ballots. Who wants to place bets on what success we’ll have in getting a look at those votes? I’m guessing we’ll see a rerun of the Supremes stopping the 2000 recount. ---
**Author:** ![elucidator](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/8edcca/32.png) [@elucidator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elucidator)\ **Post date:** [November 7, 2004, 4:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ohio-county-with-638-voters-gives-bush-4258-votes/273281/15 "2004-11-07T16:51:46Z")
Damn, I hate this! I do not, do not, want to get my mind mixed up in ghastly conspiracy theories. I’d rather just dust myself off and get back into the fight. But if these facts are for real, then, I have to give some credence to theories that, yesterday, I would have called tin-foil hat. Because I simply cannot come up with a plausible explanation, save for chicanery, skullduggery, and a treasonous contempt for the rights of the electorate. DAMN! I hate this! ---
**Author:** ![toadspittle](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/c0e974/32.png) [@toadspittle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/toadspittle)\ **Post date:** [November 7, 2004, 6:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ohio-county-with-638-voters-gives-bush-4258-votes/273281/16 "2004-11-07T18:16:02Z")
Yes. It’s a sad state of affairs when a conspiracy of fraud seems to be the simplest explanation Occam’s Razor can slice from this mess. PS–has anyone found any voting “errors” that aided Kerry? 'Cause I have yet to hear of any–and I’m sure FoxNews and Drudge would be shovelling them down our throat if there were any. Funny–you’d think that “random errors” and “spoilage” would affect both candidates equally… ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [November 7, 2004, 6:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ohio-county-with-638-voters-gives-bush-4258-votes/273281/17 "2004-11-07T18:27:46Z")
**toadspittle:** _Funny–you’d think that “random errors” and “spoilage” would affect both candidates equally…_ Not if it’s a socioeconomic thing. If poor and minority neighborhoods, which tend to vote Democratic, also tend to have less money for adequate voting equipment or proper oversight of ballot-counting, then Kerry votes are more likely to be disqualified due to errors. ---
**Author:** ![SteveG1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/bb73d2/32.png) [@SteveG1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SteveG1)\ **Post date:** [November 7, 2004, 6:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ohio-county-with-638-voters-gives-bush-4258-votes/273281/18 "2004-11-07T18:35:17Z")
I don’t buy it. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I doubt the neighborhood itself buys the voting machines, or the oversight. I hope that 1. it was just a glitch 2. was unintentional and 3. did not affect the outcome enough to invalidate the election. Much as I dislike Bush, I prefer to think that he had a clean honest win. The alternative would be ugly and I don’t want to go there without damning proof. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [November 7, 2004, 7:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ohio-county-with-638-voters-gives-bush-4258-votes/273281/19 "2004-11-07T19:05:02Z")
Elections are administered at the state and local levels. Elections departments (usually county-based, I believe) apply for state and federal electoral funding through the state Secretary of State. I think counties also provide some electoral funds on their own. Wealthier counties generally have newer and better technology, as well as better supervision, than poorer ones, although that doesn’t explain all the discrepancies in vote spoilage etc. ---
**Author:** ![elucidator](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/8edcca/32.png) [@elucidator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elucidator)\ **Post date:** [November 7, 2004, 7:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ohio-county-with-638-voters-gives-bush-4258-votes/273281/20 "2004-11-07T19:10:38Z")
> [@SteveG1](#): > > I don’t buy it. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I doubt the neighborhood itself buys the voting machines, or the oversight. I hope that 1. it was just a glitch 2. was unintentional and 3. did not affect the outcome enough to invalidate the election. Much as I dislike Bush, I prefer to think that he had a clean honest win. The alternative would be ugly and I don’t want to go there without damning proof. I hear you. Regretably, it necessarily follows that if such were the case, the miscreants reponsible would almost certainly depend on precisely that reaction. I mean, even if you were robbed at gunpoint by a Pink Unicorn, and had it all on video tape with the sworn testimonies of 100 eye witnesses, you would still be reluctant to bring it forward. Because no matter how much proof you got…“Hey! Look! Its **Steve** , the guy who says he was robbed by a Pink Unicorn!” [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ohio-county-with-638-voters-gives-bush-4258-votes/273281.md?page=2)