[EL] Question about reporting on 2012 election voting

[Mark Griffin]

And here is an easy refutation regarding Wood County, Ohio which describes
the claim as "pants on fire false":

http://www.politifact.com/ohio/statements/2012/nov/19/online-petition/online-petition-claims-obama-got-more-votes-one-co/


Online petition claims Obama got more votes in one Ohio county than there
are registered voters
[image: Pants on Fire!]
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"We the People: Your Voice of Government <https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/>"
is a feature on the White House website, whitehouse.gov, that has the goal
of "giving all Americans a way to engage their government on the issues
that matter to them."

Users of the site can find or start petitions about these issues. "If a
petition meets the signature threshold," the site says, "it will be
reviewed by the Administration and we will issue a response."

One of the fastest-drawing and most-signed petitions, of 137 posted on Nov.
14, is a call to "recount the election."

Created on Nov. 10, the
petition<https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/recount-election/ZQmy0Mlv>
says:
"It has become blatantly obvious the voter fraud that was committed during
the 2012 Presidential elections. In one county alone in Ohio, which was a
battleground state, President Obama received 106,258 votes. But there were
only 98,213 eligible voters. It's not humanly possible to get 108 percent
of the vote!"

That drew the interest of PolitiFact Ohio.

We had heard a radio host in Youngstown make the same unattributed
statement, that Obama "received 108 percent of the vote" in one Ohio
county. We wondered about the basis and source of the claim.

Election returns posted on the website of Ohio Secretary of State Jon
Husted showed no county in which Obama received 106,258 votes, or similar
number. Less surprisingly, it showed that the vote for Obama nowhere
exceeded the number of voters.

PolitiFact Ohio did a search on Google hoping to find the origin of the
claim and discovered it was a twist on numerous blog postings, many of them
worded identically, making the odd assertion that Obama "won the majority
of Wood County's 108 percent of registered voters."

A number of those postings cited as their source a Nov. 9 posting on the
right-leaning blog frontpagemag.com.

Its headline reads: "Voter Fraud: Obama Won %108 [sic] of Registered Voters
in Ohio County."

The text says: "Mr. Obama won Wood County in Ohio this year. That’s right,
Mr. Obama won the majority of Wood County’s 108 percent of registered
voters. That’s not a typo.

"In 2012, 106,258 people in Wood County are registered to vote out of an
eligible 98,213. ... Mr. Obama did indeed win Wood County, along with its
108 percent of voters."

The stated conclusion is "voter fraud."

But the posting, once you untangle the meaning of its numbers, actually
touches on a situation well known to election officials and observers:
outdated registration rolls that include inactive and ineligible voters.

*Purging the rolls*

"Inactive" voters generally are those who have gone more than four years
without voting, have moved to another jurisdiction or have died.

Under federal law, voters can't be removed from the rolls until it is
confirmed they have moved, until there is confirmation of a death or if
they have gone without voting for more than four years, or two federal
election cycles.

Problems with inaccurate or invalid records plague voter registration rolls
nationwide, according to a report issued last February by the non-partisan
Pew Center on the States. No evidence of voter fraud was found -- just
record-keeping that is badly managed and in disarray.

In Ohio, flaws in maintaining the voter database were cited as a prime
reason the state has one of the highest rates of provisional voting in the
country. Provisional ballots are used when there is a question about a
voter's eligibility, which happens most often because of a change of
address. Ohio law requires voters to provide proof of identity and current
address at polling places.

An analysis by The Columbus Dispatch in September found that more than one
out of every five registered Ohio voters is probably ineligible to vote.

*A look at the numbers*

The blog posting's count of people eligible to vote in Wood County --
98,213 -- is the 2010 census count of the population age 18 and over.

The posting's count of registered voters, 106,258, matches a Plain Dealer
tally of Sept. 17. The latest number of registered voters in Wood County is
108,014, Board of Elections director Terry Burton told PolitiFact Ohio.

Of those, only 80,433 are active voters, he said -- "and the difference
between those numbers is the inactive voters."

Why such a large gap?

The presence of Bowling Green State University in "is one of the big things
that does play into it," Burton said, and the majority of inactive voters
are in the Bowling Green area. The big reason is students who register to
vote there and then move without notifying the elections board.

"Most students typically don't contact us and let us know when they're
leaving," Burton said. "We do carry a significant portion of students. And
there is the transient nature of the administration and faculty as well."

The university also can skew the voting-age population, he said, since
out-of-county students who register to vote there are not necessarily
included in the county's census count.

Meanwhile, Burton said, the "community-minded" rural areas that make up
much of Wood County have high levels of active voter registration.

"The actual voting numbers are what you would expect," he said.

Wood County's total on Nov. 6 was 62,338 votes, he said, for a turnout of
about 57 percent of registered voters.

Not only is that far below 108 percent -- it's well below the statewide
turnout of about 68 percent reported by the secretary of state.

Obama's total in Wood County -- 31,596 votes, or about 51 percent of those
cast -- was lower than his 2008 tally, according election night totals from
the secretary of state. Mitt Romney received 28,997 votes, or about 47
percent -- less than John McCain's 2008 total.

"Now that we've gotten by Nov. 6, we can go back and recheck the database
for voters who missed two consecutive federal elections," Burton said.
"This issue is something the secretary of state's office has been working
on with us. It isn't a hidden issue."

Voter registration nationally averages about 70 percent of the eligible
population. The Dispatch analysis found that Wood County is one of two in
Ohio where the number of registered voters actually exceeds the voting-age
population. The other is Lawrence County, where Romney won about 57 percent
of the vote to Obama's 41 percent.

Both counties topped what The Columbus Dispatch called the "dirty dozen
voter rolls" -- a list of a dozen counties where voter registration equals
at least 95 percent of the voting-age population.

Romney won all of them except Wood County.

*What's our tally?*

The much-cited blog post referring to "108 percent of registered voters" is
muddled and misleading. It makes a claim of fraud using a registration
figure that is known to include inactive and ineligible voters -- who would
be identified at the polls -- while ignoring the actual vote.

But the "We the People" petition, which gathered more than 53,000
signatures in four days, is even worse. Posted to a public forum on the
White House’s web site, it more forcefully takes up the cause, making a
claim that voter fraud is "blatantly obvious" and that Obama received
106,258 votes in Wood County.

That quoted figure isn’t even a figure for votes. It’s a total for
registered voters in that county. The actual votes cast for both Obama and
Romney combined amount to about 57 percent of that number, a figure easily
checked.

The petition's claim that Obama somehow managed to collect that many votes
is not only demonstrably false, it's ridiculous.

The Truth-O-Meter has a rating for that: Pants on Fire!

On Sun, Jan 6, 2013 at 11:18 PM, Richard Winger <richardwinger at yahoo.com>wrote:

> One of the assertions below is that Obama was credited with 100% of the
> vote in some precincts in Wood County, Ohio.  After reading this e-mail, I
> went to the Wood County, Ohio Board of Elections, and found the results by
> precinct.  The county web page says the county has 97 precincts.  Obama's
> best precinct showed him getting 75% of the vote, and his worst had him at
> 28%.  It seemed like a fairly standard distribution, over the 97
> precincts.  The vote in the county as a whole was close between Obama and
> Romney.
>
> If all the assertions in the list below are so easily debunked, the list
> itself is highly suspect.
>
> The list makes reference to "Ohio County" but doesn't say what state.
> West Virginia has a county named Ohio County so I assume the reference is
> to Ohio County, West Virginia.  But just the fact that the list makes
> reference to "Ohio County" and doesn't even name the state shows how
> careless it is.
>
> Richard Winger
> 415-922-9779
> PO Box 470296, San Francisco Ca 94147
>
> --- On *Sun, 1/6/13, Trevor Potter <tpotter at capdale.com>* wrote:
>
>
> From: Trevor Potter <tpotter at capdale.com>
> Subject: [EL] Question about reporting on 2012 election voting
> To:
> Cc: law-election at department-lists.uci.edu
> Date: Sunday, January 6, 2013, 8:04 PM
>
>
> I received the email below from a (usually rational)  friend, who wrote
> asking if I thought it was true. Does anyone know if such allegations are
> widespread, who is disseminating them, and whether they have recived press
> coverage or been subject to analysis/rebuttal?
>
> Thanks
>
> Trevor Potter
>
> The Numbers Are Now Talking
>
>
>
> Very Interesting !!
>
>
> Sometimes you just cannot argue with the numbers. The USA has bigger
> problems on their hands other than who was elected President.
>
> >From Bill O'Reilly's message board:
>
> Most everyone suspected fraud, but these numbers prove it and our
> government and media refuse to do anything about it.
>
> As each state reported their final election details, the evidence of voter
> fraud is astounding. Massive voter fraud has been reported in areas of OH
> and FL, with PA, WI and VA, all are deploying personnel to investigate
> election results.
>
> Here are just a few examples of what has surfaced with much more to come.
>
> * In 59 voting districts in the Philadelphia region, Obama received 100%
> of the votes with not even a single vote recorded for
> Romney. (A mathematical and statistical impossibility).
>
> * In 21 districts in Wood County Ohio, Obama received 100% of the votes
> where GOP inspectors were illegally removed from their
> polling locations - and not one single vote was recorded for Romney.
> (Another statistical impossibility).
>
> * In Wood County Ohio, 106,258 voted in a county with only 98,213 eligible
> voters.
>
> * In St. Lucie County, FL, there were 175,574 registered eligible voters
> but 247,713 votes were cast.
>
> * The National SEAL Museum, a polling location in St. Lucie County, FL had
> a 158% voter turnout.
>
> * Palm Beach County, FL had a 141% voter turnout.
>
> * In Ohio County, Obama won by 108% of the total number of eligible voters.
>
> NOTE: Obama won in every state that did not require a Photo ID and lost in
> every state that did require a Photo ID in order to vote.
>
> Imagine that!
>
>
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-- 



Mark Griffin

Tel: 216.621.3500 | Fax: 216.621.3422

mgriffin at thllaw.com

www.thllaw.com



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