22) Machine Shortages

Mother Jones

www.motherjones.com/arts/books/2005/11/recounting_ohio-3.html

...Who Moved My Voting Machine?

….As the (Washington) Post reported, voting-machine shortages were the exception in strongly pro-Bush areas but the rule in strongly pro-Kerry districts. The Conyers report calls that an apparent violation of the Voting Rights Act and the Constitution's equal protection safeguards.

Matt Damschroder, Franklin County's Republican elections director, admits he didn't have enough machines in the field; he says he told his staff to deploy more, "and I believed it had been done, but I heard [on election] night that it hadn't." The Free Press' Fitrakis doesn't buy that honest-mistake argument, and he points out that the law doesn't care either. "It doesn't matter if those machines were held back by design or not, the effect is the same," he says.

Also indisputable is the fact that Damschroder accepted a $10,000 check for the Ohio Republican Party from Diebold, one of the nation's largest voting-machine manufacturers

Answers.com U.S. Voting Machine Controversies, Ohio

www.answers.com/topic/2004-united-states-election-voting-controversies-ohio

There were numerous reports of machine shortages and malfunctions, the plurality of which came from Cuyahoga County. Precincts in some counties reported receiving less than half of the voting machines requested.

141 long line incidents were reported in Cuyahoga County, Ohio. This amounts to an average of 0.098 per precinct, over eight times the average outside of Cuyahoga.

(see also Voting While Black, above)