Context of 'November 2, 2004: Democratic State Supreme Court Candidate Receives Thousands More Votes than Kerry in Many Ohio Counties'

In several Ohio counties, Democratic candidate for State Supreme Court C. Ellen Connally receives more votes than Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry (Auglaize County, Connally - 7,312, Kerry - 5,729; Brown County, Connally - 7,407, Kerry - 7,058; Clermont County, Connally - 29,464, Kerry - 25,318; Dark County, Connally - 8,817, Kerry - 6,683; Highland County, Connally - 6,119, Kerry - 6,012; Mercer County, Connally - 6,607, Kerry - 4,924; Butler County, Connally - 59,532, Kerry - 54,185; Miami County, Connally - 17,206, Kerry - 17,039). As the US House Judiciary Democrats note in a December 2 letter to Ohio Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell, these results “run counter to the established principle that downballot party candidates receive far less votes than the presidential candidate of the same party.” The totals also deviate significantly from the statewide trend in Ohio, where Kerry receives 48.5 percent of the vote and Connally receives 46.6 percent. Even more striking about the figures is that fact that Connally’s campaign was not very well funded. The same letter, referring to the results of Butler County, comments: “[I]t appears to be wildly implausible that 5,000 voters waited in line to case a vote for an underfunded Democratic Supreme Court candidate and then declined to cast a vote for the most well-funded Democratic Presidential campaign in history.” In addition to the bizarre voter numbers of the Connally and Kerry campaigns in Butler County, the results of the Republican side of those races are also hard to explain. The winning Republican candidate for the State Supreme Court receives 40,000 less votes than presidential candidate George Bush. [Conyers et al., 12/2/2004 ]

Timeline Tags: 2004 Presidential Election

In Ohio’s Cuyahoga County, some Cleveland precincts with large African-American populations, report an extraordinarily high number of votes for third party candidates even though few voters in these precincts have voted for these candidates in the past. For instance, in precinct 4F in the 4th Ward, where voting took place at Benedictine High School, there are 290 votes for Kerry, 21 for Bush, and 215 for Constitution Party candidate Michael Peroutka. And in precinct 4N, where voting occurred at the same location, the tally was 318 for Kerry, 21 for Bush, and 163 for Libertarian Party candidate Michael Badnarik. Yet in the previous presidential election, a total of only 8 votes were cast by those two precincts for all independent candidates combined. City Councilman Kenneth Johnson, who has represented the 4th Ward since 1980, tells Juan Gonzales of the New York Daily News: “That’s terrible, I can’t believe it. It’s obviously a malfunction with the machines.” Similar results appear in other Cleveland precincts, including the 8th Ward’s G and I precinct at Cory United Methodist Church. In G, there were 51 votes for Badnarik and in I, there were 27 votes cast for Peroutka. However in 2000, third party candidates received only 9 votes from these precincts. [New York Daily News, 11/30/2004; Conyers et al., 12/2/2004 ] It is later suggested that the problems were caused by voters in one precinct using machines intended for another. According to Katie Daley, an observer for the Democratic Party, voters waited in a single line between adjacent precincts and entered the voting booths as they became available, without regard to precinct assignment. [Associated Press, 12/10/2004] Reporter Juan Gonzales suggests that the votes cast for the third party candidates may have been meant for John Kerry: “In virtually all those precincts, Kerry’s vote was lower than Al Gore’s in 2000, even though there was a record turnout in the black community this time, and even though blacks voted overwhelmingly for Kerry.” [New York Daily News, 11/30/2004]

Entity Tags: Juan Gonzales

Timeline Tags: 2004 Presidential Election