Prosecutor to probe Cuyahoga County recount

Prosecutor to probe Cuyahoga County recount

2 written complaints allege problems in ’04 presidential election

By Stephen Dyer

Beacon Journal staff writer

CLEVELAND - Erie County Prosecutor Kevin J. Baxter is investigating whether
the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections broke the law in its recount of ballots
from the November presidential election.

Cuyahoga County Prosecutor William Mason appointed Baxter as a special
prosecutor in the case because the board of elections is Mason’s client, which
could pose a conflict of interest, said Mason spokeswoman Jamie Dalton.

Baxter said he didn’t know yet whether the allegations have any validity. He
said his investigators will begin interviewing people in the next several
weeks.

If it goes nowhere, it goes nowhere,'' Baxter said.We’ll just start from
the beginning... This is rather preliminary.’’

The probe stems from two requests written to Mason: one from minor-party
presidential candidates David Cobb and Michael Badnarik, and another from
entrepreneurial consultant Edward Michael Caner.

Dalton said Mason turned over the papers March 2.

The complaints allege that the board violated state law because the precincts
it recounted were neither randomly selected nor was the opening of ballots
properly witnessed.

In addition, Cobb and Badnarik allege that there were problems with the
board’s ballot-transfer cases, which can reveal whether the precinct used the
ballots assigned to it or whether ballots from other precincts were used.

Finally, they contend that the county’s vote-tabulation machines were used
improperly and that discrepancies exist between the certified recount and the
certified original vote.

All this was done to cover up problems in the November vote and ensure that no
hand-recount would have to be done around the county, the letter from Cobb and
Badnarik alleges.

Board’s response

Michael Vu, director of the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections, declined to
comment on specifics of the case but said we will cooperate fully with the Erie County prosecutor.'' Vu said the elections procedureneeds to be a transparent process.’’

The board’s elections coordinator, Jacqui Maiden, told the board in its Feb. 8
meeting that the recount was handled based on a recount of a Garfield Heights
Municipal Court judge election from 1981 and that the procedures used in
November are the same that has been used in the past.'' The procedure Maiden cited included picking 3 percent of the precincts for a hand count, but the meeting minutes didn't indicate whether the board picked the 3 percent at random. According to the complaint filed by both the candidates and their lawyer, Richard Kerger of Toledo, the board did not randomly select 3 percent of the county's precincts to recount, as required by state law. Instead, the county selected recount precincts only from among those with 550 voters or more, which eliminated 90 percent of the county's precincts, according to the letter. As Caner put it in his shorter e-mail:This is similar to randomly drawing a
card out of a deck, but before doing so, eliminating all suits but hearts.’’

In addition, the candidates’ letter contends that the way the precincts were
chosen seems to be of a special sort: those in which (U.S. Sen. John) Kerry received either his largest or second largest number of votes in the ward. This meant that precincts in which (President) Bush received an unusually high number of votes could not be examined, nor could the precincts in which the third-party candidates received unusually high vote totals.'' The letter said there is no way this phenomenon happened at random. More allegations The letter alleges that Maiden admitted in a Dec. 22 meeting thatballots in
selected precincts had been opened without the presence of witnesses and had
been sorted and hand counted in advance of the original recount’’ — setting
up a test-run to assure that the recount would comport closely with the
original count so that a full hand count wouldn’t have to be conducted.

As for the transfer-case problem, the letter alleges that on Dec. 17, a number
of precincts were found to have had problems — namely some ballots assigned
to one precinct were used in another, or too many or too few ballots were
used.

The letter suggested that the (election) staff had been assigned to clean-up the tell-tale evidence of election irregularities within the cases.'' Kerger said Thursday that Cuyahoga County was the only county to receive a letter like the one he referred to Mason's office. He said generally he understands that county boards of elections, mostly made up of volunteers, aren't going to run perfect elections.If we hold the Super Bowl every four
years, we wouldn’t expect the referees to be perfect,’’ he said.

However, what he found in Cuyahoga County was different. There ``it seemed to
be more than just a mistake,’’ he said.

Stephen Dyer can be reached at 330-996-3523 or sdyer@thebeaconjournal.com

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