DeFranco and Eisner face off Stand-off at the Board of Elections.

Most would have you believe now is a time for celebration. Democrats have taken back Ohio and the U.S. Congress. According to mainstream media reports, those electronic voting machines in use around Northeast Ohio performed wonderfully November 7; not since that girl from Small Wonder have robots been so loved. Lines were shorter. Absentee ballots were counted on time. It was, indeed, a Midterm Midtacular. Oh, and did you hear? Michael Vu, director for Cuyahoga County's Board of Election, is about to become a father! Mazel Tov! Yay, us!

Ahem.

Not so fast. Set that bottle of Great Lakes Christmas Ale down before you toast to our success. (Slowly. That stuff's potent.)

Everything isn't fine. It's a far, far way from fine. If we're Earth, then fine is like beyond Pluto or something. We're that far from fine.

Part One: Cuyahoga County/Diebold

or, "The Veteran's Day Affair"

Adele Eisner is a masso-therapist/learning disabilities teacher/activist from Cleveland Heights who has recently become a thorn in the side of the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections. You may have seen her in that documentary Hacking Democracy, currently airing on HBO. She stirs things up. She believes our votes are not safe.

Don't blame Eisner for being paranoid, either. She has video of a BOE official teaching workers how to copy data from Diebold memory cards onto computers for storage. Here's the crazy part: The workers are using personal laptops — with who knows how many viruses imbedded in the hard drives from late-night dalliances with soft-core porn sites or Trekkie message boards. Those viruses can easily hitch a ride onto the memory card. From there, it's on to the central tabulator and back out to every memory card in the county. Compromising the entire system is not an "if," it's a "when," and that "when" is already in the past.

"The Board of Elections is in the process of verifying provisional ballots," Eisner said last week. (Provisional ballots are what you have to fill out when you show up at the wrong precinct on Election Day or cannot produce the proper form of ID.) "They're not letting me in to observe the process because it's Veteran's Day. I have a right to be watching what they're doing in there."

And so the Free Times followed Eisner to the Board of Elections building on Euclid. The parking lot was nearly full. Obviously something was happening inside on a day when no other government building in Cleveland was open. As Eisner approached the back door, a security guard and a Sheriff's deputy stepped out, blocking her.

"Hi Adele," said the guard. "I'm sorry, but they said you can't come in today."

She asked to speak to a BOE manager and a few minutes later Voter Services Manager Mike DeFranco appeared. He's a paunchy fellow with a thick mustache and wisp of hair pushed back against his scalp. At the time, he appeared displeased with the interruption of whatever he was overseeing inside.

Eisner asked to observe the verification process. (She's certified by the Statewide Candidate Observer Project to do so. She has a badge and everything.) In Defranco's defense, Eisner was aiming a camera at him during the following conversation. In Eisner's defense, DeFranco was a total dick.

"Jacqui gave me instructions not to allow the public in the building today," said DeFranco. He pointed to a sign taped to the glass door that read: November 10, Veteran's Day. Closed to the public. He smirked while he did so. "Lambert told Jacqui and Jacqui told me that citizens are not allowed in the building to view the verification of provisional ballots."

Jacqui is Jacqui Maiden, the election administration director. Lambert is Assistant County Prosecutor David Lambert, the BOE's legal counsel.

Eisner asked to speak with Jacqui directly. DeFranco then made a show of dialing a number on his cell phone. He said some muffled words into the receiver, then clicked it shut. "Yeah, Jacqui says not to let you in." He disappeared inside again, leaving Eisner shut out.

"Call the cops," a reporter suggested.

"The police are already here," said the Sheriff's deputy. "What are you gonna do about it?"

Back at her car, Eisner desperately tried to contact some public official, any public official, someone who might care that observers were being denied the right to oversee which provisional ballots were being rejected and why. But it was Veteran's Day, and no one was at work. Except at the BOE. And Eisner was SOL.

When Lambert was contacted at his office on Monday, he disagreed with DeFranco's excuse, saying, "I didn't speak to Jacqui at all on that issue."

In fact, on Lambert's recommendation, the Board of Elections reversed its policy on provisional ballots Monday morning. Eisner, and any other certified observer, could view the verification.

"Nobody did anything wrong here," says Lambert. He recalls Director Vu asking if observers had free reign to walk around the building. At that time, Lambert said "no," but that observers could observe the counting of ballots. Perhaps he or Vu misunderstood a portion of the conversation.

That theory calls for a certain amount of suspension of disbelief, but it's not entirely impossible.

In any event, Vu's apparent interpretation of this conversation was that observers could only view counting and were not allowed to view the actual verification of ballots. That's what he said on Veteran's Day, anyway. After speaking with Lambert on Monday, Vu said that interpretation had changed. From now on, observers can view the verification process as well.

In the future, Lambert says, the BOE will work with Case professor Norman Robbins, a voter rights' guru, to come up with a system that lends more transparency to the process of determining how citizens' votes get counted and why. "The law clearly says that observers have the right to view the verification of provisional ballots," Lambert says firmly.

Great. But how do we know what really happened inside the BOE on Veteran's Day? By Monday, 678 out of 5,000 provisional ballots had been rejected. How do we know they were rejected correctly?

"We have to keep all records for 22 months," says Vu. So, Eisner is free to review their results.

Like we were free to review the results of the 2004 presidential recount. You know, the one after which Vu and two of his staffers were accused of hand-picking a recount which they knew could be verified instead of randomly selecting precincts and running the risk of a county-wide recount. (That trial starts next month, by the way.)

Perhaps nothing weird happened on Veteran's Day, but just like the presidential recount of '04, they're sure acting like they're hiding something.

"This is dangerous stuff," says Eisner. "And in Cuyahoga County, we have dangerous people doing dangerous stuff. These are selections, not elections."

Part Two: Summit County/ES&S

She watches the watchmen - Adele Eisner asserts her rights, on tape.

or, "How A Stupid Machine

Counted Me Twice"

At first glance, the M-100 Election Systems & Software Optical Scan Machine looks sort of like a 'droid from the first Star Wars movie — the one called Gonk, that is just a walking box that says, "Gonk, Gonk, Gonk."

I don't care much for 'droids. And, apparently, they don't care much for me.

"Okay, scan your ballot," said the elderly woman standing next to the M-100.

The ballots in Summit County — where I vote in precinct 1-O — were actually two pieces of paper, containing various candidates and issues. I placed the first paper in backwards and upside down because the lady said I could and because I wanted to see if I could trick the 'droid. The display screen said: Number of voters: 800. After the paper was eaten by the M-100, it said: Number of voters: 801.

I slid the second page into the robot. The number of voters changed to 802.

"That machine counted me as two voters," I said to the poll worker.

"No, no it didn't," she said.

I pointed to the display screen. "Look. It said 800. Then I put one page in, and it said 801. Then I put the last page in and it said 802. It's counting pages as voters."

"We divide by two at the end of the night."

"Who does?"

"Someone," she said. "You won't be counted as two voters." I watched as she leaned over the M-100 and pushed a button.

"What did you do?" I asked. "What was that button?"

"It was the "accept' button," she said.

"I thought I was supposed to push that button."

"No," she said. "It's faster this way."

The next day, I called the Summit County Board of Elections to get a little peace of mind. What if I had inadvertently committed voter fraud? What if my vote was counted twice?

A woman named Bonnie answered the phone. I quickly briefed her on the problem with the 'droid.

"Don't worry, your vote was counted correctly," said Bonnie. "It counts pages, not people."

"Yeah, but it said "voters,' not pages," I explained. "How do I know it was counted correctly?"

"Because we're telling you that's the way it is," said Bonnie. "That's how you know."

So I checked the Canvass Report, which is tabulated by the machines the night of the election. I was not surprised to find my precinct had a voter turnout of 148.7 percent. And get this: the number of "ballots cast" was an odd number. If everyone was counted twice, how is the final number of ballots odd?

Summit County BOE Director Brian Williams seemed unconcerned when I explained the problems on Monday. "That number really means nothing," says Williams. "It's number of pages scanned. But not everyone scans both pages."

Who isn't scanning both pages? How do we know it's not an error manufactured by the robot?

"We match the number of voters against the names in the poll book and the number of signatures in the poll book," says Williams. "They should all match." Obviously, they won't. So what then? The certification of votes must be finalized by November 28.

And why did that woman push the button?

"The voter should be pushing the "accept' button," says Williams. "You may have had a pushy poll worker."

He says all of this as if it's no big deal. As if I'm still not counted as two voters on their official report.

"The election went well," he assures me. "Our optical scans are tried and tested. It's the touch-screen machines that are having problems."

No, dude. They're all 'droids. And none should be trusted.

jrenner@freetimes.com