Was the 2004 Election Stolen?

At liberal Kenyon College, where students had registered in record numbers, local election officials provided only two voting machines to handle the anticipated surge of up to 1,300 voters. Meanwhile, fundamentalist students at nearby Mount Vernon Nazarene University had one machine for 100 voters and faced no lines at all¹³⁹. Citing the lines at Kenyon, the Conyers report concluded that the "misallocation of machines went beyond urban/suburban discrepancies to specifically target Democratic areas¹⁴⁰."

In Columbus, which had registered 125,000 new voters¹⁴¹ — more than half of them black¹⁴² — the board of elections estimated that it would need 5,000 machines to handle the huge surge¹⁴³. "On Election Day, the county experienced an unprecedented turnout that could only be compared to a 500-year flood," says Matt Damschroder¹⁴⁴, chairman of the Franklin County Board of Elections and the former head of the Republican Party in Columbus¹⁴⁵. But instead of buying more equipment, the Conyers investigation found, Damschroder decided to "make do" with 2,741 machines¹⁴⁶. And to make matters worse, he favored his own party in distributing the equipment. According to The Columbus Dispatch, precincts that had gone seventy percent or more for Al Gore in 2000 were allocated seventeen fewer machines in 2004, while strong GOP precincts received eight additional machines¹⁴⁷. An analysis by voter advocates found that all but three of the thirty wards with the best voter-to-machine ratios were in Bush strongholds; all but one of the seven with the worst ratios were in Kerry country¹⁴⁸.

The result was utterly predictable. According to an investigation by the Columbus Free Press, white Republican suburbanites, blessed with a surplus of machines, averaged waits of only twenty-two minutes; black urban Democrats averaged three hours and fifteen minutes¹⁴⁹. "The allocation of voting machines in Franklin County was clearly biased against voters in precincts with high proportions of African-Americans," concluded Walter Mebane Jr., a government professor at Cornell University who conducted a statistical analysis of the vote in and around Columbus¹⁵⁰.

By midmorning, when it became clear that voters were dropping out of line rather than braving the wait, precincts appealed for the right to distribute paper ballots to speed the process. Blackwell denied the request, saying it was an invitation to fraud¹⁵¹. A lawsuit ensued, and the handwritten affidavits submitted by voters and election officials offer a heart-rending snapshot of an electoral catastrophe in the offing¹⁵²:

From Columbus Precinct 44D:

"There are three voting machines at this precinct. I have been informed that in prior elections there were normally four voting machines. At 1:45 P.M. there are approximately eighty-five voters in line. At this time, the line to vote is approximately three hours long. This precinct is largely African-American. I have personally witnessed voters leaving the polling place without voting due to the length of the line."

From Precinct 40:

"I am serving as a presiding judge, a position I have held for some 15+ years in precinct 40. In all my years of service, the lines are by far the longest I have seen, with some waiting as long as four to five hours. I expect the situation to only worsen as the early evening heavy turnout approaches. I have requested additional machines since 6:40 A.M. and no assistance has been offered."

Precinct 65H:

"I observed a broken voting machine that was not in use for approximately two hours. The precinct judge was very diligent but could not get through to the BOE."

Precinct 18A:

"At 4 P.M. the average wait time is about 4.5 hours and continuing to increase.... Voters are continuing to leave without voting."

As day stretched into evening, U.S. District Judge Algernon Marbley issued a temporary restraining order requiring that voters be offered paper ballots¹⁵³. But it was too late: According to bipartisan estimates published in The Washington Post, as many as 15,000 voters in Columbus had already given up and gone home¹⁵⁴. When closing time came at the polls, according to the Conyers report, some precinct workers illegally dismissed citizens who had waited for hours in the rain — in direct violation of Ohio law, which stipulates that those in line at closing time are allowed to remain and vote¹⁵⁵.

The voters disenfranchised by long lines were overwhelmingly Democrats. Because of the unequal distribution of voting equipment, the median turnout in Franklin County precincts won by Kerry was fifty-one percent, compared to sixty-one percent in those won by Bush. Assuming sixty percent turnout under more equitable conditions, Kerry would have gained an additional 17,000 votes in the county¹⁵⁶.

In another move certain to add to the traffic jam at the polls, the GOP deployed 3,600 operatives on Election Day to challenge voters in thirty-one counties — most of them in predominantly black and urban areas¹⁵⁷. Although it was billed as a means to "ensure that voters are not disenfranchised by fraud¹⁵⁸," Republicans knew that the challengers would inevitably create delays for eligible voters. Even Mark Weaver, the GOP's attorney in Ohio, predicted in late October that the move would "create chaos, longer lines and frustration¹⁵⁹."

The day before the election, Judge Dlott attempted to halt the challengers, ruling that "there exists an enormous risk of chaos, delay, intimidation and pandemonium inside the polls and in the lines out the doors." Dlott was also troubled by the placement of Republican challengers: In Hamilton County, fourteen percent of new voters in white areas would be confronted at the polls, compared to ninety-seven percent of new voters in black areas¹⁶⁰. But when the case was appealed to the Supreme Court on Election Day, Justice John Paul Stevens allowed the challenges to go forward. "I have faith," he ruled, "that the elected officials and numerous election volunteers on the ground will carry out their responsibilities in a way that will enable qualified voters to cast their ballots¹⁶¹."

In fact, Blackwell gave Republican challengers unprecedented access to polling stations, where they intimidated voters, worsening delays in Democratic precincts. By the end of the day, thanks to a whirlwind of legal wrangling, the GOP had even gotten permission to use the discredited list of 35,000 names from its illegal caging effort to challenge would-be voters¹⁶². According to the survey by the DNC, nearly 5,000 voters across the state were turned away at the polls because of registration challenges — even though federal law required that they be provided with provisional ballots¹⁶³.

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