For the last 19 years I have been allowed to go behind the curtain of what we do in this country and state to pull together elections.  For 14 years I was appointed by my political party as a Board of Elections Observer (or back when we started it was called Challenger) in many types of elections in about 14 Ohio Counties, mostly my own, Lucas for the Ohio Democratic Party and various county parties.  And for the last 5 years I have been one of the four members of the Board of Elections.  

I can tell you have seen the whole process now and gone through every training our board offers it’s employees and all of the ones the Ohio Secretary of State’s office and the bipartisan Ohio Association of Elections officials have to offer.  So I now know more than most humans about how our elections work in Ohio.  

And I can tell you that even by the end of next week, December 1, 2023, we won’t be done with all we do to keep elections accurate and secure for the November 7, 2023 General Election and we are already working on the March 19, 2024 Primary Election.   

Like many, I used to think that the numbers you see on Election Night were the official count.  They are not.  There are literally weeks of checks and cross checks that go into our elections after election night.  Since a certain presidential candidate and his supporters don’t want to believe he didn’t get the most votes in either General Election he was in, they have created this idea of how the election was stolen from him.  Let me tell you that it truly would have been easier in 1969 to 1972 to have faked the moon landings of the Apollo program.  Then again, some of the folks who buy the “Big Steal” also believe that we could create special effects decades before that was possible.  

So, let me tell you about the procedures on Election Night and after to get us to the final answer and prevent any kind of major games being played.  First, understand in Ohio, and in my county, every ballot is a paper ballot.  Whether you are voting by absentee ballot, or a fill in the ovals paper ballot when you vote in person, a provisional ballot, or cast your vote on a touch screen, you are voting on paper.  

Our touchscreen voting machines are ballot marking devices.  Think of them as the world’s most expensive and tested Number Two Pencil’s.  They are given a bar code that tells the machine what ballot to give you.  BTW, there is no one ballot in an election, save the Special Election of August of 2023.  Because of the various lines for different council, state house, state senate, US Congressional, Library, Fire, School, etc district in our county, we have to create dozens to about 1,300 different ballots for those who vote.  You then vote and it records each of those votes in writing.  You then take the ballot to a scanner where it gets scanned and stored.  

Each piece of equipment was checked by a team of at least one Democrat and one Republican and done in a public forum.  Every time we decide if a voter’s registration should be done, or a ballot is issued, it’s done with bipartisan teams. Every time we move a ballot, whether the original electronic copy or the paper original, it’s done with bipartisan teams and tamper resistant evidence seals and at some points also delivered under the watchful eye of a bipartisan team and law enforcement.  And all along the way, they those seals and evidence protocols are checked and rechecked by a bipartisan team.  If we have ballots or counting equipment in a room at our office, you can not get in there without a Democrat and a Republican swiping an electronic key.  And we don’t leave ballots lying around without a bipartisan team watching.  This last Election Night, our Deputy Director, a good guy and yes a Republican, had to go up a floor and walk almost the length of a very large building to get me.  They needed me to come down to the count room, so that at least one Democrat was in with the people doing the counting.  Normally our Democratic IT worker would be in there helping, but his wife went into labor that morning.  And our Director, a Democrat, needed to step out and do something but couldn’t until I relieved her.  I can tell you would trust our GOP employees in that room with my life, but we don’t with a ballot.  

Now, there are tales of copied ballots and foreign powers dropping them off on the shores of our country.  Let me tell you I can not tell you, nor have I ever been briefed, as to all of the safeguards on the our ballots, but they are standard ones.  The paper is unique, so is the ink.  There are specific marks we need to identify the ballot.  And there are usually multiple sets.  One to identify it not only as our ballot from my county, but pretty close to being able to tell it’s your ballot.  There are also ones to feed it through our count machines.  They have to align perfectly, keep reading for what happens.  And a bipartisan team checks them on the way out and in to make sure they’re legit.  

Now, not anyone can print a ballot.  We have specific companies we can work with.  We have our own in house shop certified to do that too, but because of sheer numbers, we sometimes get help with part of the process.  Due to a situation too complicated for this post, on one race, in one village, we had to have a special paper ballot. We hired one of those certified printers to help us get that one created.  They made a tiny printing error, measured somewhere between 1/32nd to 1/64th of inch.  And we had to remake all of those ballots. 

When I say remake, bipartisan teams sit down.  The one has a new copy of the ballot, the other the original.  Both get a serial number that has to match, but has another color so we know which is the original with issues and which is the remake.  And we cross check each other and each ballot. So, when you think about that idea of supposedly printed ballots to stuff in ballot boxes, think of this issue and how they would need to get the printing done perfectly, never mind all of the other safeguards.  

Now what we get you on Election Night is called the unofficial tally.  Over the next several days other ballots will come in that may or may not count.  For instance, any absentee ballot that was post marked the day before the election and gets to us in the timeframe, will so long as all of the security items jibe count. But again on each one, a Democrat and Republican have to agree or send it to us the board.  The Board is 2 of each party, and unless we can get to a 3-1 or 4-0 vote, they’re not getting counted.  

Also, there are some people who have an issue on Election Day.  They requested an absentee ballot, but say they didn’t get it.  They forgot to bring the required ID, etc.  So, what we do is let them vote a provisional ballot.  This is a special paper ballot.  It gets put into a security envelope.  If you fix the issue you had, e.g. you bring in the ID to us afterwards, then a bipartisan team checks to make sure all of the I’s are dotted and the T’s crossed.  There some mistakes we as the board can forgive, e.g. you put down your date of birth as the correct month and day, but made the year the date of the election.  Those we can forgive.  But there are ones we can’t.  But again, we need a bipartisan vote of the board to count those.  And we don’t get to see how you voted before we decide if those will count or not. 

The staff will then open those in bipartisan teams and deal with any issues, e.g. people have some really different ways of marking a ballot.  So sometimes they have to bring them to us, and we have to again vote 3-1 or 4-0 to figure out your intent. And then they remake those ballots too to make them scan properly.  

At that point, we get the final, official results.  That is unless any race is within 0.01% in which case, we do a recount.  Don’t think your vote matters.  We have, in my five years as a board member, not once but twice had to flip a coin.  We had an even tie.  One race was a district that crosses three counties.  But again, they were tied.  And we have to declare a winner before we do a recount.  So, we actually flipped a coin to decide the winner.  And then do the recount.  I am happy to say we managed to get a coin thanks to our Deputy Director, from the year our county was founded, but we really do toss a coin.  So, last time, with the Toledo Blade filming it, I flipped it after one of my Republican colleagues decided which one was heads and which tails.  I can tell you the recount on both of these races was yet again a tie, in which case the coin flip is what decided the elected official.  Now a recount is a manual hand count and recheck of every ballot in select polling places with not one but two bipartisan teams double checking their work.  It’s rare it changes an outcome, but it does sway a few votes here and there.  

But if you think we’re done, then, if not a single race is tight enough for a recount, or we did the recount, you would be wrong.  You see we do this thing called a risk limiting audit.  If you want to see a dorky proceeding, come to our certification meeting of an election, they are public.  We will receive marching orders from our boss, the Ohio Secretary of State as to what we have to do.  Usually we get told one or two statewide races and a number of contested local races, and we pick the later, by drawing names of offices out of a box or hat.  Again, alternating Democrat and Republican.  We then put every polling place in the county, with what precincts are on it, and how many votes.  And we once again randomly draw polling places until we get to 5% or more of the total vote.  We draw one more polling place as a backup.  

And then bipartisan teams do a recount of those races in those polling places.  And we don’t accept an accuracy rate of less than 99.99%.  And we do that every time.  

So, again, when you hear about any claim of an election being stolen, imagine convincing Democrats and Republicans to work together, against the interests of one of their candidates, and get past those kind of safeguards (and those aren’t even close to all of them) and stealing or adding millions of votes around the country.  It would have been easier to fake the Moon Landings and keep that secret for 50 years.  BTW, in case you buy that conspiracy theory, three of the Apollo Moon Landings left laser reflector mirrors on the Moon.  Got a high powered laser and the instruments to measure a small amount of light bouncing back? You too can hit one and have your signal bounced back.  They have done it around the world many times, and even did it on the Big Bang Theory TV Show.  To quote an old joke, we were going to fake them, but we hired Stanley Kurbick to direct the show, and he wanted it to be so accurate, it was cheaper to actually do it.  

So, please, vote, and do not buy the rants of people who lost an election.  The Democracy you save will be your own. 

International Coffee Day is October 1st.  The exact origins of International Coffee Day is unknown according to the Wikipedia.  But an event that was first promoted in Japan in 1983 by the All Japan Coffee Association is one of the first references to it. United States "National Coffee Day" was mentioned publicly as early as 2005.The name "International Coffee Day" was first used by the Southern Food and Beverage Museum in October of 2009.  

And we at the office are huge fans.  Kurt is a huge Biggby Coffee fan, which is a regional chain of coffee shops that has been in business since 1995.  It started in Lancing Michigan, It has spread through Michigan and Northwest Ohio, but even he didn’t realize until we picked this article it was now through out those two states and ten others as far south as Florida, West to Idaho, and East to New Jersey and the Carolinas.  He loves their frozen, Mocha Mocha Lattes. Then again they are essential a frozen espresso and chocolate shake.   

And of course we're all hooked on local roaster Bea's Blend.  They offer quality freshly roasted organic, fair-trade coffee roasted here in Toledo.  We won't repeat the nickname we have used in the past to describe it quickly to others, but we can tell you that's because of how addictively good it is.  And for a substance that does alter your mood and body chemistry, caffeine, it's as healthy as you can get. 

We always have some coffee brewed and waiting at the office for our team and if not, a very kind client bought us a Keurig machine that can brew you an individual cup if you visit.  Has a huge collection of coffee mugs, with Kurt having a few of his favorites from a local comic, the West Wing and an internship with a Member of Congress years ago. And a few years ago, Kurt bought himself, Lisa and a vendor that helps us help clients training and job search help to get back to work, matching travel coffee mugs with  Chaos Coordinator, because butt kicking, multitasking, problem solving miracle worker isn’t a job title, just a description.  

Lisa is a huge McDonald’s coffee fan.  She performs many roles for our firm, from Administrator to head paralegal.  On top of that she does some work for our landlord in helping him run our and other buildings he owns in the area.  She loves to stop and get one loaded up with five creams.  Despite loving her McDonald’s coffee, and not being Catholic, she has adopted the practice of giving up something she loves for Lent as it’s her McDonald’s coffee.    

But this post really isn’t about our favorite coffees, coffee shops or mugs.  As a way to tie into International Coffee Day, and get your attention, we started there. But really we wanted to talk about how the insurance and business lobbies have used panic about certain high profile cases to justify moves to limit what injured people get, to make business more profitable.  

Over the years certain widely publicized cases have been used to scare the public and limit what injured and disabled people can get.  But that’s what they are generally, scare tactics.  And worse still, these limits, called generally tort reform, really haven’t resulted in insurance premiums dropping for doctors, small business owners, home and car owners, etc.  And for instance Kurt calls the compromise that created workers’ compensation in Ohio as one of the first tort reforms out there, when explaining what workers and employers got out of the creation of our system.  

The most famous scare tactic, justification for these limits is the infamous McDonald’s Coffee Case.  Let us tell you some facts of the real story, with a heavy assist from our brothers and sister of the Texas Trial Lawyers Association and an article they published on the subject.  Many people have heard that a woman placed a cup of McDonald’s coffee between her legs to add things to it in the car and she suffered so small burns and wanted a fortune for it.  From that article, here’s some real facts.  

Stella Liebeck, 79 years old, was sitting in the passenger seat of her grandson’s car having purchased a cup of McDonald’s coffee. After the car stopped, she tried to hold the cup securely between her knees while removing the lid. However, the cup tipped over, pouring scalding hot coffee onto her. She received third-degree burns over 16 percent of her body, necessitating hospitalization for eight days, whirlpool treatment for debridement of her wounds, skin grafting, scarring, and disability for more than two years. 

Despite these extensive injuries, she offered to settle with McDonald’s for $20,000. However, McDonald’s refused to settle. And made her the greedy scapegoat of public relations offensive and fought her to the bitter end on her case.  

When all was said at done at the trial, the jury awarded Liebeck $200,000 in compensatory damages -- reduced to $160,000 because the jury found her 20 percent at fault -- and $2.7 million in punitive damages for McDonald’s callous conduct. (To put this in perspective, McDonald's revenue from coffee sales alone is in excess of $1.3 million a day.) The trial judge reduced the punitive damages to $480,000. Subsequently, the parties entered a post-verdict settlement.

Now you may ask yourself, how could that out of control jury and judge award her anything let alone that much.  Well again, read above, they did reduce everything because yes, yes it really isn’t the brightest move ever to put hot coffee between your legs in car that could be moving any second.  

But here are some facts, from Stella’s lawyer, S. Reed Morgan, that the jury heard in the evidence presented at trial: 

By corporate specifications, McDonald's sells its coffee at 180 to 190 degrees Fahrenheit;
Coffee at that temperature, if spilled, causes third-degree burns (the skin is burned away down to the muscle/fatty-tissue layer) in two to seven seconds;

Third-degree burns do not heal without skin grafting, debridement and whirlpool treatments that cost tens of thousands of dollars and result in permanent disfigurement, extreme pain and disability of the victim for many months, and in some cases, years

The chairman of the department of mechanical engineering and bio-mechanical engineering at the University of Texas testified that this risk of harm is unacceptable, as did a widely recognized expert on burns, the editor in chief of the leading scholarly publication in the specialty, the Journal of Burn Care and Rehabilitation;

McDonald's admitted that it has known about the risk of serious burns from its scalding hot coffee for more than 10 years -- the risk was brought to its attention through numerous other claims and suits, to no avail;
From 1982 to 1992, McDonald's coffee burned more than 700 people, many receiving severe burns to the genital area, perineum, inner thighs, and buttocks;

Not only men and women, but also children and infants, have been burned by McDonald's scalding hot coffee, in some instances due to inadvertent spillage by McDonald's employees;
At least one woman had coffee dropped in her lap through the service window, causing third-degree burns to her inner thighs and other sensitive areas, which resulted in disability for years;

Witnesses for McDonald's admitted in court that consumers are unaware of the extent of the risk of serious burns from spilled coffee served at McDonald's required temperature;

McDonald's admitted that it did not warn customers of the nature and extent of this risk and could offer no explanation as to why it did not;

McDonald's witnesses testified that it did not intend to turn down the heat -- As one witness put it: “No, there is no current plan to change the procedure that we're using in that regard right now;”

McDonald's admitted that its coffee is “not fit for consumption” when sold because it causes severe scalds if spilled or drunk;

Liebeck's treating physician testified that her injury was one of the worst scald burns he had ever seen.

Moreover, the Shriner’s Burn Institute in Cincinnati had published warnings to the franchise food industry that its members were unnecessarily causing serious scald burns by serving beverages above 130 degrees Fahrenheit.

In refusing to grant a new trial in the case, Judge Robert Scott called McDonald's behavior “callous.” Moreover, “the day after the verdict, the news media documented that coffee at the McDonald's in Albuquerque [where Liebeck was burned] is now sold at 158 degrees. This will cause third-degree burns in about 60 seconds, rather than in two to seven seconds [so that], the margin of safety has been increased as a direct consequence of this verdict.”

When you hear this little tale of danger to small business, property owners, remember the real facts of this case from witness testimony found credible by a judge and jury of people like you. McDonald’s knew of the dangers of their coffee for 10 years before Stella was hurt.  They served it at that temperature to make inferior coffee taste better and make more profits.  And in the 10 years leading up to that day, over 700 customers and dozens of employees suffered to that same part of the body as Stella.  Why?  Because we do sometimes put coffee there to mix in our favorite ingredients.  And at those temperatures, it’s impossible to get the coffee off you fast enough to prevent burning.  

So, the next time you hear the call of tort reform using this case, or others like it, remember, juries are made up of people like you.  Politicians by putting limits on what hurt people can prove they deserve to keep profitable insurance companies, who interestingly tend to give big campaign contributions to their favorites in Columbus and Washington.  And those costs go somewhere, usually onto all of us as taxes to pay for Medicare, Medicaid, or in higher medical bills for us due to hospitals and doctors not getting properly paid for their work.

If you ever do get hurt on the job or elsewhere by a defective product or careless person, if at work that can even be you, give us a call.  Our attorneys have decades of experience helping workers and the disabled get help.  They offer free no cost, obligation initial consultations.  And if they don’t handle that kind of case, they know a qualified attorney who does.  Call us at 419-244-7885 and let us help guide you to the best outcome in bad situation.