Three Cuyahoga County, Ohio, election workers have been indicted on charges that they improperly conducted the recount of ballots after the 2004 election.

The special prosecutor in the case, Kevin Baxter, said that there was no evidence of vote fraud, but that the workers were trying to avoid having to conduct a public hand recount of the county’s ballots.

The Ohio recount process involves recounting three percent of the ballots by hand and by machine, and if the counts match, then recounting the remainder of the ballots by machine. But if the counts don’t match exactly after two attempts, then every ballot in the county must be recounted by hand.

The investigation began after a Toledo attorney wrote the Cuyahoga County prosecutor with allegations that the election officials had not selected precincts at random and had pre-counted the ballots, choosing only precincts where the hand counts matched the machine counts, and then pretending to choose those precincts at random when the recount was done. The prosecutor recused himself, and Baxter, a prosecutor from Erie County, was appointed special prosecutor.

Kathleen Dreamer was manager of the board’s ballot department. Rosie Grier was assistant manager. Jacqueline Maiden was Elections Division director and its third-highest-ranking employee. All have been charged with misdemeanor and felony counts of failing to follow the state elections law.

A May 8 trial date is set for Dreamer and Grier, but Baxter wants to combine all three cases, including Maiden’s, who was indicted later. . . .

“They screwed with the process and increased the probability, if not the certainty, that there would not be a full countywide hand count,” Baxter said. — Cleveland Plain Dealer

Michael Vu, executive director of the Cuyahoga County elections board, said that the employees had been following established procedures, had done nothing wrong, and were actually prepared to hand count the entire county’s ballots.

“Why do all that work to prepare for the election, conduct it, audit it, canvass and then not meet this last obligation?” he said. “Our plan was to regroup after Christmas and just work through it.”

The recount of Ohio had been requested by the Libertarian and Green Party presidential candidates, Michael Badnarik and David Cobb.