John Fund writes in the Wall Street Journal’s Political Diary about the new confusing-ballot controversy. Apparently absentee ballots in Cuhayoga County, Ohio (which includes Cleveland) “have arrows designed to be used with voting machines, where the arrows line up correctly with the candidate’s name. But when used by an absentee, the ballot instructions tell absentee voters to punch the corresponding number but don’t specifically say to disregard the arrows.” Here is the relevant portion of the ballot:
Fund reports that “Either John Kerry or George W. Bush’s arrow could be misaligned, depending on the order in which the names appear on the ballot.”
UPDATE: A couple of readers have e-mailed me to suggest that the story may not be accurate, and that the image cited above may have a “1” removed from before the “2” and the “4.” I don’t have the time to investigate the matter closely, but I just want to flag that there’s some uncertainty about it. Here, though, is the original source, an AP story.
FURTHER UPDATE: Reader Douglas McKinnie writes:
Re: readers suggesting that the image cited may have a “1” removed from before the “2” and the “4.”
I am a Cuyahoga County absentee voter. My ballot looks exactly like the one in your image, except that below section 1-3 for president there is section 2-11 “Official Office Type Ballot” for US Senator and for representative to congress, 10th District, with similar randomization of names/numbers. The numbers appear to be assigned in alphabetical order for each office by surname of candidates.
I punched the card and posted the ballot back a week ago and didn’t think the funny numbers or superfluous arrows to be worthy of any note.
In a follow-up, he writes:
The number for Badnarik-Campagna is 2, the number for Bush-Cheney is 4, that is right. Senator Voinovitch is 21, followed by Democrat challenger Fingerhut
who is 20. Congressman Kucinich is 25, followed by Ferris(i) 23 and Herman (r) 24.
So as best I can tell the picture quoted above is authentic, notwithstanding the objections noted in the first UPDATE.
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