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Mr. Destro said preservation decisions belonged to the county public records commissions, the county boards of elections and the Ohio Historical Society.
"But by issuing this order," Mr. Destro added, "the secretary of state will prevent any records from being destroyed for at least several months while this matter is studied more closely."
Steven Rosenfeld, a freelance reporter formerly with National Public Radio, said the investigative team analyzed three types of sources. They are poll books used by officials to record the names of voters casting ballots, signature books signed by voters and used to verify that signatures match registration records, and optical scan and punch card ballots, used by 85 percent of the voters in the state. The rest used touch-screen machines.
"We're not claiming that what we found reveals a huge conspiracy," Mr. Rosenfeld said. "What we're claiming is that what we found at least reveals extremely shoddy handling of ballots, and there are some initial indications of local-level ballot stuffing."
In Miami County, Mr. Rosenfeld said, the team found discrepancies of 5 percent or more in some precincts between the people in the signature books and the certified results.
In 10 southwestern counties, he said, the team found thousands of punch card ballots that lacked codes identifying the precinct where the ballot was cast. The codes are typically necessary for the machines processing the ballots to "know'' to record which candidate receives the votes.
Mr. Rosenfeld is a co-author of a book that The New Press is to publish next month, "What Happened in Ohio?: A Documentary Record of Theft and Fraud in the 2004 Election." The other co-authors are Harvey Wasserman, an election rights advocate and an adjunct professor of history at Columbus State Community College, and Robert J. Fitrakis, a lawyer who is running for governor as an independent.
Robert F. Bauer, a lawyer from Washington who represented Mr. Kerry and the Democratic National Committee on voting issues before the 2004 election, was skeptical about the critics' case.
"The major discrepancies that they are identifying are not materially different than what has already been highlighted," Mr. Bauer said.
On Tuesday, Mr. Kerry sent a fund-raising e-mail message calling for support for Representative Ted Strickland, the Democrat who is running for governor. Mr. Kerry wrote that Mr. Blackwell "used his office to abuse our democracy and threaten basic voting rights" in 2004.
Multiple suits failed in challenging the 2004 election in Ohio, and most studies after the election concluded that irregularities existed, but that they would not have changed the outcome.
In January 2005, the Democratic members of the House Judiciary Committee issued a report finding "massive and unprecedented voter irregularities and anomalies" in the election.
In March 2005, the Democratic National Committee issued a report that said 2 percent of the Ohio electorate, or "approximately 129,543 voters," had intended to vote but did not do so because of long lines and other problems at polling stations.
But the report said those and other frustrated voters "would not have erased Bush's 118,000 vote margin in the state."
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