Nearly 12,000 Cuyahoga voters cast ballots without signing in
Associated Press
Tuesday, December 5, 2006

CLEVELAND (AP) — Thousands of people cast ballots in Cuyahoga County on Election Day without signing in at their polling places, the latest voting mishap for a county where problems in the May primary delayed results six days.

Nearly 12,000 people voted illegally Nov. 7 in the state's most populous county. More people voted than signed in at 533 of 570 precincts, according to board of elections records.

“We need to bring in the booth officials and find out what happened,” elections board Chairman Bob Bennett said at a meeting Monday. “We paid a lot of money for training.”

Elections officials believe people got in voting lines without realizing they first had to show identification, as required by state law, and sign the elections book. Workers assigned to give voters computer cards to operate voting machines then failed to check whether the voters had signed in and showed ID.

Ballots are anonymous, so officials cannot determine which were cast illegally.

“We had too many reports from the polling places that people got in line without going through the precinct tables,” said Candice Hoke, director of the Cleveland State University's Center for Election Integrity, which monitored the election. “That should not be allowed to continue. There should be some quality control.”

Poll workers were trained to give voters their cards at the table where they signed in, said Gwen Dillingham, deputy director of the elections board.

Errors can occur as poll workers adapt to electronic voting, elections officials said.

Because of concerns about a repeat of problems from the primary, the county spent millions more than budgeted in November to cover poll worker training, extra voting machines and other measures.

The general election ran more smoothly, although a judge ordered 16 polling locations to stay open an extra 90 minutes because early voting machine problems caused delays.