Ohio Election Officials: The Dog ate my Ballots

Michael Collins, Scoop (via SC):

The Judge then ordered that the ballots be turned over to the new Secretary of State, Democrat Jennifer Brunner on April 7, 2007. Brunner sent a request out for the ballot evidence two days later

When the Ohio Secretary of State sent requests for delivery of the ballots, 56 of Ohio’s 88 counties replied that they no longer had some or all of the ballots requested. Only 41 bothered to provide an explanatory letter as to the missing ballots. Fifteen counties offered no reason at all for noncompliance




Holmes Co. “The shelf on which the 2004 General Election Ballots were sitting on collapsed and the box containing some of those ballots fell and crushed the coffee pot and stand. There was a full pot of coffee and broken glass strewn throughout the ballots. Those ballots were destroyed later in the morning, as they were saturated and covered in glass.”

Ashtabula Co. “Unfortunately, the actual ballot cards were inadvertently discarded and destroyed by the Ashtabula County Board of Elections just prior to the receipt by the Board of Judge Marbley’s Order and subsequent directive to your office.”

Clermont Co. “no one remembers specifically discarding the ballots.”

Brown Co. Some ballots “were not intentionally destroyed.”

Guernsey Co. Unvoted ballots “were destroyed in error due to the county maintenance worker.”

Allen Co. had a “migrating water” problem that flooded their vault holding the ballots. This caused them to be “compromised by water damage and subsequently destroyed.” The dry ballots were also lost when a contractor threw them out

Hamilton Co. “(unvoted precinct ballots) were inadvertently shredded between January 19^th and 26^th of ‘06 in an effort to make room for the new Hart voting system.

Cuyahoga Co. was unable to determine how many unvoted ballots it had in its possession.