Ohio Papers Getting Nowhere on Vote Fraud Allegations
NEW YORK Those who believe that something's rotten in the state of Ohio, that it mishandled the Nov. 2 election, shouldn't hold their breath waiting for a revelation from the state's major papers that might call into question President Bush (news - web sites)'s victory.
While most of the top dailies there say they are following, if not probing, each accusation, many coming from liberal blogs, none of the editors who spoke to E&P this week find the allegations highly convincing or plan to devote major resources to them.
"We have been chasing them down as they come up, and a lot of them are so groundless," said Doug Clifton, editor of The Plain Dealer in Cleveland. "We are finding that there were some legitimate counting errors and glitches in the computer system. But they were found and we have found no evidence of conspiracies or anything showing that the outcome would have been any different."
Still, Clifton's paper is planning a major report next week that will specifically address each allegation that has arisen and detail what the paper found, along with a chart to explain them.
"We have written a lot about it, but we have found very little evidence that anything has happened in the election that didn't happen in every other [Ohio] election," said Ben Marrison, editor of The Columbus Dispatch. "Every rock we have turned over, we've found nothing."
He cited the state's biggest election problem being too few voting machines. "But our analysis shows they had waits everywhere," he adds, "in Democratic and Republican precincts."
Almost immediately after George W. Bush won re-election on Election Day, after gaining Ohio's 20 electoral votes, theories about voting irregularities ranging from ballots being tossed out to voter suppression at the polls began circulating on the Internet and via Keith Olbermann's MSNBC news show and blog.
Widespread concerns about why some voters waited up to 11 hours to vote and others were reportedly given wrong information by poll workers about where to cast ballots drew attention from the press but few papers gave some of the fraud theories much credibility.
County election boards in Ohio, which are each comprised of two Democratic Party officials and two Republican Party officials, are responsible for counting all votes in their counties and forwarding their tallies to the Ohio Secretary of State's Office, which they did on Wednesday. The Secretary of State has until Dec. 7 to certify the election.
When the election is certified, Bush is expected to maintain his roughly 136,000-vote margin. Then a recount, sought by Ralph Nader (news - web sites) and the Libertarian and Green party candidates, will take place. Many editors, however, said any problems that have been investigated have either turned out to be untrue or not severe enough to have caused a major change in Bush's victory margin.
At The Cincinnati Post, Editor Mike Philips is still keeping an eye on the allegations, but admits nothing has prompted him to run any alarming stories. "It looks like there is an awful lot of smoke, but not much fire," he told E&P, adding that he has no staffers assigned fulltime to such stories. "What you see on the Internet gets the true believers all stirred up, but when you actually start looking at it, there seems to be less than meets the eye."
The Associated Press highlighted the recent accusations in a Nov. 30 story, but "we are not finding evidence that there was any fraud. Anything that has merit, we are checking," said Eve Parziale, AP's Ohio bureau chief. "There were not enough voting booths, but people were allowed to vote."
Ron Royhab, editor of The Blade in Toledo, said his two-person statehouse staff is keeping an eye on accusations, but not taking time to investigate them. "The election is over and we cover the news that is happening," he told E&P. "We have not found any irregularities."
--Joe Strupp