What IS "An Election"?

Some may wonder why in June, I'm still posting issues about March when most people are already on to the presidential election in November.

It's because the CCBOE March election has not really been properly completed yet, or thoroughly assessed for security and real improvement; and because the "officials", the security/process/and personnel management are the same as will be handling November's election.

It's important for more citizens to know, (and to protect against/attempt to get improved before November.)

I was a "certified" Observer for the March election, per ORC 3505.21; and helped recruit and train other volunteer Observers. (You can become one too.)

It's from an Observer's perspective - albeit often an unwelcome person just attempting to see anything, during the months of counting, verifying, reconciling and "auditing," (despite SoS Directive 2008-29 saying that Observers must be able to "closely watch and inspect") - that I will begin to offer just a few of the March-May topics and film - so you can see for yourself.

Warning: this perspective may not match what you may have read about in the papers, or heard about in speeches - about the "successful" March election.

And though my gut, reasonable "guesstimates," and general trust in just a few people (who though, still must follow orders from those way above them) tell me that that election wasn't "stolen"; the problem here is that no trust in our election results should need to depend on gut, guesstimates, and possible trust of one or two people. Every election deserves equal access of all valid voters attempting to participate, and transparent, provably accurate results. (For example, Cuyahoga's, and all counties' actual number's get totaled into state numbers, here, to make Ohio's "win." Just a bit of skew in a few BOE's, could make a huge difference nationwide.)

Though I, and the other stalwart Observer, were even there, for hours, sitting in the roped off "observer area" in the tabulation zone the night before the March certified results were made final (film of 4/3/08 yet to be posted,) I still can not attest to the certified numbers being an accurate tabulation of all and only valid voters' choices.
(In fact, since it had been determined that asking questions, like "What is the problem?" or "How did you resolve it? or "What are you doing?" was "impeding an election" - the oft-ascribed, always-hovering Observer "offense" that could get one thrown out - that night for those 3 hours, I wasn't even sure what the workers were doing at the scanners and our tabulator!

To me, that one fact makes almost all others, virtually moot.

And it makes me want to ask again - Just what do our boards think "an election" is?

What do you think "an election" is?