Off Kilter Results in Cleveland

The election results tabulated from the two precincts at Benedictine High School seemed off-kilter from the start.

Had more than a third of the 1,000-plus voters at the East Side school really embraced the ideals of Michael Peroutka, the candidate of the Constitution Party, and Libertarian Party candidate Michael Badnarik?

Could 215 people have voted for Peroutka in a precinct that delivered 299 votes for John Kerry?

Did Badnarik win 164 votes to Kerry's 334 in the precinct that was in the same room?

At more than a dozen Cuyahoga County precincts - primarily on Cleveland's East Side - spikes in votes for the little-known third-party contenders shot up a flare that something went awry on Election Day.

Some "smoke signals from hell" from the blogosphere? (Nah, those yahoos caught this a while back).

Nope, the Cleveland Plain Dealer. Of course, it's an honest mistake, and what are a few hundred votes here and there anyway? Didn't help things that this heavily Democratic area didn't have enough machines and then had one of them break down.