John,

 

How is this explanation logical?  The Cuyahoga County Board of Elections is telling me that there is a discrepancy between the amount of votes cast in each ward and the vote totals due to voter districts overlapping from separate counties.  If this is true, then why would the numbers be off for the precincts that do not overlap?  I am stating that the explanation in how to tally the votes makes no sense.  In each case I listed, each precinct and its entire voting wards were in the same Congressional and Senatorial Districts.   The main question I have is why would the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections choose to include totals that do not match the votes from the wards of that precinct?  This seems to create unnecessary confusion especially when you take into consideration how contentious this election threatened to be.  If there is a logical explanation for totaling the votes in this manner, I have not heard it yet. 

 

Furthermore, the last update for this information was provided to us on Nov 3^rd, 2004 at 2:12:48 am.  The Cuyahoga County Board of Elections is telling the people of my county in 7 hours after the close of the polls, they received a call, fax, or electronic transmission from yet unnamed counties and received these figures to put in their tallies.  This issue can easily be resolved by the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections showing us which counties these extra votes were cast from and the specific totals of those votes.  Am I also now to believe that Cuyahoga County is supposed to show tallies for votes cast in separate counties? 

 

When I discovered the discrepancies in the tallies, I was unaware that anyone else had noted these discrepancies.  I later found a post on blackboxvoting.org that led me to the site of this infamous Texas “chain-mailer”.  I went back to his site later and found that he had received information that proved his allegations false.  I have learned over the years that what looks, smells, and acts like a rose is probably a rose, regardless of the packaging.  I decided to pursue the information in spite of his acquiescence.  I don’t know this man and I don’t know anyone at the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections. I am not going to simply take their word for these discrepancies when the numbers do not make sense.

 

Honestly, my first thought when I seen these numbers was that they should have been assigned to John Kerry.  I realized that was wrong.  It wasn’t until after I read the explanation offered by the Texas website that I began to see that these numbers were not assigned to any candidate.  It became my contention that these votes were not assigned to any candidate but the fact that they existed and the fact that the explanation as to why they exist does not hold water.

 

I will be more than happy to admit publicly that I am wrong about this and go away with a lessoned well learned, but in the past few months, I have begun to have serious doubts about the integrity of some people in my government and the media.  I believe that many other people share my viewpoint or we would not be having this discussion.  I will no longer accept explanations for inconsistencies that do not make sense.  Anyone that has children knows how to uncover a crime.  You attack the inconsistencies until a viable explanation is offered.  One has not been offered to my satisfaction.  I may be obtuse but I would like this explanation spelled out to me as if I were explaining to my child why he should not touch the stove.  I think that if the explanation offered by the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections is in fact valid, they have adopted policies that could potentially cause people harm because of this misunderstanding and their failure to competently explain these figures without resorting to asking a political science expert.  

 

I think that this would be a wonderful article for the New York Times to publish. I am sure that the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections would be more than happy to provide not only the explanation but the data to prove that these numbers are as harmless as they say they are.  In fact, I will buy a 2 year subscription to your paper should this article appear and meet the following criteria.  Keep in mind; I will challenge the numbers as I have been doing for the past 2 days.  If the numbers don’t add up, then I will not believe the article and will not subscribe to your paper.  Deal?

 

This is the information that would make me feel comfortable that no fraud had taken place.

1. Which counties supplied the numbers that were added to the tally of total votes?
2. What was the count of the numbers and from which precincts did these numbers derive?
3. What is the relevance of tabulating the votes in this manner in even-numbered years and not tabulating this way in odd-numbered years?
4. Why is it that the percent of persons who are of voting age seems to exceed 100%, based on current census estimates and the reported number of registered voters in the city of Cleveland?  Is this a result of the ballots being submitted from other counties?
5. Why are some of the votes tabulated from other counties when the districts, both Congressional and Senatorial, are all within Cuyahoga County?
6. What is the method by which these votes were sent to the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections?  (telephone, fax, email, etc…)
7. For which candidates were these votes cast?

 

These answers should be easy to get as they should be documented, to include the names of the people who are making these statements and the positions that they hold.

 

I hope you can get this article published soon because I see that the New York Times has a special going on right now for new subscribers.  I can afford to pay the $3.45 a week, though that is a bit out of my budget.  A deal is a deal however and you have this in writing so you can hold me to it.  In and above gaining a new subscriber, however, you will be doing thousands of people across this country a great service by making this information available and easily understood.

 

I thank you for your reply and thank the pretty smart political scientist as well.  Without these professionals safeguarding our election process with their hard hitting, deep probing questions, I feel our democracy would have been in jeopardy years ago.

 

Sincerely,

Michael Lewis

 

 

 

 

-----Original Message-----
From: John Schwartz [mailto:jswatz@nytimes.com]
Sent: Thursday, November 11, 2004 4:09 PM
To: Mike Lewis
Subject: Re: Voter Irregularities Cuyahoga County - Debunking the Washington Post

 

Hi, Mike — I understand what you’re saying, but at the same time I’ve spoken with some other experts, including a pretty smart political science professor at Ohio State, who say that the Post interpretation (and one picked up by the original publishers of the Cuyahoga allegations, apparently) is correct. I just don’t think that the evidence to the contrary is compelling.

John