From Holden:

A down-ballot Ohio Democrat received 257,000 more votes than John Kerry:

The Smilin’ Ohioan reports a Democratic candidate “farther down on the ticket” is found to have 257,000 more votes than Sen. Kerry. A developement that dwarves the preliminary gap of 136,000.

[snip]

In analyzing the still-unofficial results, the totals reveal that C. Ellen Connally, an African-American Democratic candidate from Cleveland for Ohio Chief Justice, received more than 257,000 votes than Kerry.

“This looks like a computer glitch or a computer fix,” said Bob Fitrakis, a lawyer, political scientist and Editor of the Columbus Free Press (http://freepress.org) who has written about election irregularities since Bush was declared the winner. Fitrakis is among the team of lawyers who announced they would soon file an election challenge in the state’s Supreme Court.

“Statistically, Kerry, as the Democratic presidential candidate, should have more votes than Connally. In a presidential election, most voters have the priority of casting a vote for president and the votes for president are almost always much higher than those of candidates farther down the ticket. When voters vote for Democratic candidates farther down the ticket, it is usually being driven by a sample ballot from the Party, starting at the top with president. Many voters simply don’t vote for Supreme Court justices. It is highly improbable that Connally’s vote totals would be so much higher than Kerry’s,” Fitrakis said.

The fact that Warren County has such odd vote counts is no surprise to Fitrakis. “The Republican-dominated county threw out all the media and independent vote watchers when votes were being counted at the end of Election Day, claiming ‘homeland security’ issues. This would have easily allowed for the wholesale shifting of a large amount of votes from Kerry to Bush. If you’re behind closed doors, it is easy enough to do. The November issues of Popular Science and Popular Mechanics magazines show how easy it is to hack the vote and steal an election. The articles are called ‘E-vote emergency: And you thought dimpled chads were bad’ and ‘Could hackers tilt the election?’ I think they did,” explained Fitrakis.