precincts. A witness objected to with selection process, but to no avail.

·

The Cuyahoga County Board of Elections decided to choose demo

precincts with 550 votes or more and from a cross-section of areas -- one

East side, one West side, one affluent, one non-affluent. This criterion left

only eight version of precincts available to be selected. In addition,

witnesses observed that the ballots were not in a random order, and that

they had been previously sorted. As the ballots were fed into the counting

machines, there were long runs of votes for only one candidate and then

long runs for another, which seemed statistically improbable.

·

The total number of votes cast in Morrow County was 16,694. Three

percent of this would be 501. The Morrow County Board of Elections

selected the Harmony Township precinct for the initial hand count because

it had 517 ballots cast. When observers complained this was not random,

the Board responded that it had the right to select the precinct. During this

discussion, an election official with the Board called the Secretary of

State's office and reported that the Secretary of State's office stated that

the Board was correct.

·

The Hocking County Board of Elections met and Rod Hedges, a

Republican Board member, stated that he believed the Board should select

a precinct that was not heavily in favor of George W. Bush or John F.

Kerry. The Board decided to consider only the precincts where the vote

totals for Bush and Kerry were similar. An observer objected that this was

not a random selection, but to no avail.

·

Election officials in Medina County were aware of several "problem"

districts, but instead chose to perform the manual 3% test recount on two

precincts that had been part of a school levy recount the previous Monday.

That meant that those ballots had been taken out of the standard "double

lock" situation and had been handled several times since that Monday.

·

The Board of Elections in Vinton County selected a precinct 3% manual

recount test simply because its vote total was closest to 3% of the total

votes cast in the county.

·

The Summit County Board of Elections selected precincts randomly with

the Director and Deputy Director of the Board of Elections and two other

Board employees present, both of whom were IT specialists for the Board

so that they could compute the three percent. The Board shuffled 475

precinct cards and then chose randomly from the pile. The Summit

County Board of Elections conducted this selection without any recount

witnesses present.

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