(no subject)

It seems that many of Ohio's 2004 presidential election ballots are destroyed or missing, against state and federal law:

Two-thirds of Ohio counties have destroyed or lost their 2004 presidential ballots and related election records, according to letters from county election officials to the Ohio Secretary of State, Jennifer Brunner.

The lost records violate Ohio law, which states federal election records must be kept for 22 months after Election Day, and a U.S. District Court order issued last September that the 2004 ballots be preserved while the court hears a civil rights lawsuit alleging voter suppression of African-American voters in Columbus.

The destruction of the election records also frustrates efforts by the media and historians to determine the accuracy of Ohio's 2004 vote count, because in county after county the key evidence needed to understand vote count anomalies apparently no longer exists.

"The extent of the destruction of records is consistent with the covering up of the fraud that we believe occurred in the presidential election," said Cliff Arnebeck, a Columbus attorney representing the King Lincoln Bronzeville Neighborhood Association, which filed voter suppression suit. "We're in the process of addressing where to go from here with the Ohio Attorney General's office."

"On the one hand, people will now say you can't prove the fraud," he said, "but the rule of law says that when evidence is destroyed it creates a presumption that the people who destroyed evidence did so because it would have proved the contention of the other side."

And, in California:

Secretary of State Debra Bowen released the first part of her review of California's voting systems Friday, seven days before she must decide whether to decertify any of the systems for the presidential primary.

It found that computer experts were able to breach all the systems they studied and change the machines' results.

The astonishing part is that she's still considering certifying the machines. After all, the tests were done under artificial conditions, and everyone knows that voting machines are under constant eagle-eyed vigilance for the entirety of Election Day. And security is always perfect while transporting the machines or tabulating the results.

It's a good time to contact your Congresspeople and remind them that it's time to come up with fair, enforceable standards for voting equipment, such that votes can be accurately counted and recounted in 2008.