Federal judge orders 2004 Ohio ballots preserved
http://frontier.cincinnati.com/blogs/gov/
Jon Craig
U.S. District Court Judge Algenon L. Marbley today
issued an order directing all 88 county Boards of Elections in Ohio to
keep all ballots and miscellaneous other election material from the
2004 election.
In response to a lawsuit filed Thursday by King Lincoln Bronzeville Neighborhood Association et. al. v. J. Kenneth Blackwell, and a subsequent petition by citizens and neighborhood groups, Marbley ordered the "preservation of certain evidence."
In
his attached one-page decision, Marbley ordered all Boards of Election
"to preserve all ballots from the Presidential election, on paper or in
any other format, including electronic data, unless and until such time
otherwise instructed by the court."
Preservation Order (pdf)
Under
federal law, county boards can destroy voting records 22 months after
the presidential election, or this past weekend. On Friday, Secretary
of State Blackwell directed boards to voluntarily save the records,
although officials in Hamilton and Clermont counties conceded they
already discarded unused ballots from Nov. 2, 2004.
Columbus attorney Clifford Arnebeck
and other complainants said an ongoing investigation has found a
pattern of tampering, that punch-card ballots in at least six urban
counties including Hamilton show a systematic pattern of multiple
punches or so-called overvotes that disproportionately favored President Bush over Democratic Sen. John Kerry.