Ohio had voting problems? No way! (Nevada, too!)

Stories from the Ohio vote begin to creep out.

Double Votes, Miscounted Ballots Found in Ohio.

Or this, from the Dayton Daily News(subscription):

Two Montgomery County precincts had extraordinarily high numbers of ballots cast Nov. 2 with no presidential vote counted, and the county's overall rates of such undercounts were highest where Democratic hopeful John Kerry did best.

Undercounts are ballots that do not register a vote for a particular race, in this case for president. Two precincts — one in Kettering and another in Washington Twp. —had undercounts of more than 25 percent, according to a Dayton Daily News analysis of the county's unofficial results.

Overall in Montgomery County, 5,693 or 2 percent of the ballots cast registered no valid vote for president.

That does not mean that fraud occurred in those areas, rather voting conditions in precincts that favored John Kerry probably were not as good as those that favor the President. The good news is that the Green party has demanded a recount and paid the bills in Ohio, so we will find out what happened with those votes and some of them could still count after all.

And finally, the Ohio Democratic Party is getting involved:

Seeming to brush aside John Kerry's concession speech, the Ohio Democratic Party has launched a federal court fight over nearly 155,000 provisional ballots by contending a proper accounting of those votes might decide who really won.

In Ohio, Bush now holds a lead of about 136,000 votes over Kerry.

County officials across the state began tabulating provisional ballots Friday.

"Given the closeness of the presidential and other elections," Ohio's provisional ballots "may prove determinative of the outcome," Democrats argue in a legal filing made public Wednesday by the U.S. District Court.

The lawsuit asked U.S. District Judge Michael H. Watson to order Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell to impose uniform standards for counting provisional votes on all 88 counties. Democrats want the judge to take action quickly - before the results of the election are certified.

Watson, who was appointed by Bush, has not set a hearing.

So will all this change the outcome of the election? Who knows. But the more problems that develop, the more questions that have to be asked.

Meanwhile, in Nevada, a Republican has filed a challenge to the election results, based on the shady registration tactics of Sproul and Associates:

The challenge filed Tuesday in Washoe County District Court alleges there were "massive irregularities and malfunctions in the registration process."

(snip)

The alleged irregularities resulted from the activities by an organization financed by the Republican National Committee, according to Davis.

Some former workers for Voter Outreach of America, operated by Sproul and Associates of Phoenix, who registered voters in Nevada and other battleground states have alleged they were told to register only Republicans and to ignore pro-Kerry people. Some said that completed Democratic registration forms were thrown out or ripped up.

Again, it is highly unlikely at this point that any of this will change the outcome of the election. It may only add false fuel to the fire of hope. But it is nice to see there are people ultimately concerned with our Democracy as a whole, and want to see fail and legal outcomes rather than shady dealings and possible vote suppression in favor of their candidate.

More can be found (I'm sure) at Blackboxvoting.org.