Cuyahoga County changes criteria for counting provisional ballots

From Jesse at Pandagon:

Now, apparently, votes will not be counted unless the date of birth is on the ballot. The initial rules for casting and counting ballots declared that birthdate didn't need to be on the ballot. That therefore makes it incredibly likely that a lot of votes will be disqualified because they were legal on November 2nd, and illegal now.

Ok.  This is clearly not acceptable.  People cast their provisional ballots according to the rules at the time.  Now the rules change after the fact.  This is ridiculous.  Make some noise people.

Update [2004-11-15 14:15:34 by DaveS]: Additional info from Make Ohio blue:

Are the provisional ballots in Ohio being thrown out? A new rule for counting provisional ballots in Cuyahoga County, Ohio was implemented on Tuesday, November 9 at approximately 2:30 in the afternoon, according to election observer Victoria Lovegren.

The new ruling in Cuyahoga County mandates that provisional ballots in yellow packets must be "Rejected" if there is no "date of birth" on the packet. The Free Press obtained copies of the original "Provisional Verification Procedure" from Cuyahoga County which stated "Date of birth is not mandatory and should not reject a provisional ballot." The original procedure required the voter's name, address and a signature that matched the signature in the county's database.

Lovegren described the clerks as "kind of disturbed" after the new ruling came down. She said that one of the clerks told her, "This is new. This just came down. They just changed it in the last thirty minutes." According to Lovegren, 80 yellow-jacketed provisional ballots piled up in the hour and 45 minutes she observed. By Lovegren's tally, three provisional ballots were rejected because the registered voters' registration had been "cancelled." The rest, she said, were being discarded because of no date of birth.