By Peter Peckarsky, Ron Baiman, and Robert Fitrakis -- FreePress.org
Nov. 1, 2006 -- An electronic vote counting system included votes never cast in the total vote count reported for the 2004 Presidential election according to an official directly in charge of conducting the election, the Republican Director of the Miami County (Ohio) Board of Elections. The audit log for the system is missing all information for the 2004 Presidential election. The statement of this official is supported by the records of the election obtained pursuant to law from the Miami County (Ohio) Board of Elections and from the office of the Ohio Secretary of State, Kenneth J. Blackwell, Chair of the Bush-Cheney 2004 campaign in Ohio.
The votes involved were reported as having been cast on optically scanned ballots. Under state law, the records (including the audit log) were to be available to the public at 8 a.m. Eastern Standard Time the morning after the election. This exclusive article is the first published report disclosing the manner in which, according to the directly responsible election official, an electronic vote counting system whose audit log is missing relevant information caused votes never cast to be included in the officially certified result of the 2004 Presidential election.
When asked during a scheduled in-person interview in the Board’s offices about the matter of the votes never cast which were apparently added to the reported total by the electronic vote counting system, the Democratic Chair of the Miami County Board of Elections, attorney Robert Luring, for his complete on the record response, said: “We thank you very much for the information and the Board of Elections will consider it.”
An audit log provides an internal but not tamper-proof check on the operation of an electronic vote counting system. The portion of the audit log which should have been generated by the electronic voting system for the November, 2004, election is missing. The audit log contains no information from July 24, 2004, through and including April 13, 2005. This means the information was either deleted or was never generated. Director of the Miami County (Ohio) Board of Elections Republican Steve Quillen stated the audit log information for the Nov. 2, 2004 election should have been generated by the system.
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