2004 Ballot Recount: Observer Report

• December 13, 2004:
  Report by Green Party Observer

December 13, 2004:
Report by Green Party Observer

Scheduled start time was 3:00 PM at the Fayette County Board of Elections, 133 S. Main Street, room 404, Washington Court House, Ohio.

I arrived at 2:50 and was politely requested to wait behind the counter because two of the four Board Members had not yet arrived. The Director, Deputy Director, and another employee (all female) were wearing white cotton long-sleeved T shirts and cardigans with Fayette County Board of Elections embroidered on them. They and others were moving around the office and into the back room. There were two uniformed sheriff's deputies in attendance.

We (another Green Party volunteer, and a Democratic Party volunteer, and I) were told that 2 out of the 38 precincts had been chosen: one urban (Washington 2A) and one rural (Wayne East). They totaled just over 3% of votes cast. We did not challenge the precinct selection.

We were admitted to the back room at 3:10 PM. There were about 16 people in the room.

One team of two women was assigned to count the Washington 2A ballots. The punch card ballots, kept in gray metal lockboxes in a cabinet in the main room, were clean and flat (except for one precinct, see below), and cleanly punched. I did not observe any chads. The Democratic volunteer was peering over the shoulder of one of the women, and he did not, either.

The Presidential candidates were assigned even-numbered punch holes. One woman (inspector) picked up each ballot and turned it over to inspect the back and read aloud what number (usually 6 or 8) was punched. The other woman (the recorder) kept a tally on a separate sheet of paper (tally attached). The inspector then placed each ballot in a pile, which another staff member had marked with post-it note: 2, 4, 6, 8, undervote, overvote.

The undervotes (no presidential candidate chosen) were almost all punched in an odd-numbered punch hole. The overvotes punched more than one even-numbered punch hole.

At one point, after the Democratic volunteer asked to review a ballot, the recorder was unsure as to whether she had recorded the last ballot. The inspector counted the ballots in each pile to compare to the tally. They matched, and the hand count proceeded.

The inspector then slowly and deliberately counted the piles out loud.

The recount matched exactly, including 3 undervotes, and 1 overvote.

The recount included 15 absentee ballots, 7 provisional ballots. All had been put into the metal box for the precinct.

The process was repeated for the Wayne East precinct with a different inspector and different recorder.

The recount matched exactly, including 2 undervotes and 4 overvotes.

It included 9 absentee ballots and 3 provisionals.

The Director and Deputy Director then ran all the ballots through the Vote-A-Matic counting machine. The computer, reserved (since the Help America Vote Act) only for election vote counting purposes, read on the top:

ETS ET00 \ELECDATA\REC2004
BRC ETP-IV 11.10C

While the ballots were loaded into the machine, we volunteers then asked for a copy of the certified vote count, which we received, after some clarification.

The machine recount took about an hour.

Each precinct's metal box had an unofficial "Ballot Accounting Chart" taped inside the lid. One staff member removed and photocopied each of these sheets and gave us copies of each one before replacing them in the precinct boxes.

The last precinct to be recounted in the machine was Washington 3A. Those ballots were slightly bowed, due, they said, to the rain on Election Day. The first time they were run through the machine the count was 1 vote off. The second time the count agreed with the official certified vote count.

The Democratic volunteer and I looked at the rejected provisional ballots. They were bound by rubber band and each was in an envelope with a reason for rejection handwritten on it. We were given a typed list (attached), alphabetized by last name, of rejected provisional ballots. There were 46 names on the list.

38 voted in the wrong precinct (WP)
8 were not registered (NR)

We left about 5:30 PM.