When losing is winning - or did he lose?
The closely watched race in Ohio between Republican Jean Schmidt and Marine reservist, Democrat Paul Hackett was decided yesterday in an extremely close race. In a district that reportedly usually wins with around 70% of the vote, Schmidt barely eked a win with a plurality of just over 3,500 votes or about 4%. (What other race does that remind you of?) Considering Ohio's ongoing problems with voting fraud, one has to wonder if greater scrunity of the voting system there would have tipped the scales to Hackett's side.
Nonetheless, such a narrow margin is a win for the reality-based voters. It proves our strength and if we can bring some attention to the nationwide problem of, shall we say quirky discrepancies, in the performance of voting machines and inaccurate tallies, perhaps we can take this country back from the neocons in 06 after all.
Update: Curiouser and curiouser. Maybe I'm clairvoyant but it doesn't take a seer to figure there could have been some hanky panky in Ohio, especially in light of the 04 elections.
Avedon Carol points us to Billmon who has some telling details on the count. It seems that at 9:00 PM ET with 88% of the vote counted, Schmidt was in pratically a dead heat with Hackett, and was only 900 votes ahead. Then a funny thing happened. The Clermont election bureau experienced a "technical malfunction" with its optical scan readers. They blamed the problem on humidity and said several thousand ballots had not been counted. By the time they were finished, Schmidt had picked up over 3,000 excess votes.
As Billmon notes, it's not the first time such odd anomalies have struck that county. I join with him in wishing "the party stalwarts who run the county's elections were describing the inner workings of the system to a grand jury -- under oath."
We're not the only ones with questions. It's about time Clermont came up with some answers.
Nonetheless, such a narrow margin is a win for the reality-based voters. It proves our strength and if we can bring some attention to the nationwide problem of, shall we say quirky discrepancies, in the performance of voting machines and inaccurate tallies, perhaps we can take this country back from the neocons in 06 after all.
Update: Curiouser and curiouser. Maybe I'm clairvoyant but it doesn't take a seer to figure there could have been some hanky panky in Ohio, especially in light of the 04 elections.
Avedon Carol points us to Billmon who has some telling details on the count. It seems that at 9:00 PM ET with 88% of the vote counted, Schmidt was in pratically a dead heat with Hackett, and was only 900 votes ahead. Then a funny thing happened. The Clermont election bureau experienced a "technical malfunction" with its optical scan readers. They blamed the problem on humidity and said several thousand ballots had not been counted. By the time they were finished, Schmidt had picked up over 3,000 excess votes.
As Billmon notes, it's not the first time such odd anomalies have struck that county. I join with him in wishing "the party stalwarts who run the county's elections were describing the inner workings of the system to a grand jury -- under oath."
We're not the only ones with questions. It's about time Clermont came up with some answers.
posted by Libby Spencer at 4:41 PM
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