Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted became one of the villains of the 2012 presidential election for his multi-pronged efforts to restrict voting. After the election, Husted ordered all boards of elections to hold public hearings on voter fraud suspicions. Conservatives, long bereft of compelling evidence that in-person voter fraud actually exists, rushed to point out Hamilton County, Ohio, where 93 cases of anomaly votes are being investigated by the board.

The only problem is, 59 of the voters facing possible felony prosecution appear to have cast two ballots by mistake — and ultimately only had one ballot counted. The Cincinnati Enquirer conducted an extensive review of these cases, finding that most involve errors by Board of Elections employees or voter confusion:

• Five are the result of acknowledged errors by a board of elections office. In another nine cases, voters said they did what they did because a Board of Elections employee told them – or didn’t tell them – what to do.

• Eight are the result of postage problems.

• 12 came from people who were confused, according to the board’s own investigation.

On Wednesday, the board of elections split along party lines over whether 39 of these voters should be reviewed for prosecution. Husted will now have to decide whether to pursue cases like 64-year-old Bella Lipavisky, a Russian immigrant and long-time voter who feared she made a mistake on her absentee ballot and was told to cast a provisional ballot by poll workers. Many other Ohioans shared similar worries with the Enquirer that they had made an error on their absentee ballot or that it would not reach the board of elections. These voters then showed up at the polls and cast provisional ballots, which are used if the voter’s legitimacy is in question. In all 39 cases reviewed Wednesday, only one vote was counted.

Tim Burke, Hamilton County Board of Elections chairman, expressed misgivings to the Enquirer about “an effort by some to make it appear there is more voter fraud than there actually is” by inflating the number of allegations with people who were simply confused by the system. The Hamilton County prosecutor, Joe Deters (R), has charged 6 people for voter fraud thus far.

It’s no surprise these voters were concerned their ballots would not count; Ohio has the highest number of provisional ballots in the country, and routinely tosses thousands of legitimate votes every election. The confusion among voters and poll workers was exacerbated by Husted’s war with the courts over his voting hour restrictions and last-minute changes to vote protocols. Critics predicted that even Husted’s well-intentioned initiative to mail absentee ballot request forms to every registered voter would flood the system with provisional ballots from people who chose to return an absentee ballot application but later decided to vote in person. Sure enough, the number of provisional ballots increased in several Democratic strongholds.

While the hearings have netted a couple of cases of legitimate voter fraud — a nun who voted for a friend who passed away shortly before the election and a poll worker who filled out ballots for her granddaughter and other relatives — they make up less than .0034 percent of all Ohio voters. By contrast, laws meant to combat voter fraud raised obstacles for hundreds of thousands of people — primarily minority, low-income, and elderly Americans — trying to cast their votes all over the country. As many as 49,000 people in Florida, Ohio’s partner in election woes, were discouraged from voting by Republican voter suppression laws.

Film star Christian Slater live-tweeted his nightmarish voting process in Florida on Election Day. Even as a celebrity, Slater had to endure the same hours-long lines as other Florida voters. Once he finally made it to the front of the line, Slater was told his DMV registration was out of date and he had to cast a provisional ballot. Today he received a letter informing him that, after all that trouble, his vote was discarded.

BuzzFeed posted the letter, addressed to “Christina Slater,” and Slater’s tweets though he later deleted them:

The election chaos in Florida can largely be blamed on several reforms undertaken by Gov. Rick Scott (R-FL) to restrict early voting hours and tighten restrictions on eligible voters. A post-election study found that these election law changes led to a huge increase in provisional ballots. Clearly, countless other Floridians besides Slater had their votes wrongly discarded. State GOP members have openly admitted that these laws were geared toward suppressing the minority and Democratic vote, even though they were billed publicly as ways to combat voter fraud. Florida Democrats called for a federal probe of Florida’s election laws earlier this week.

Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted (R) became the public face of vote suppression this year for his overreaching election directives, which restricted early voting hours and forbid election officials from counting legitimate votes. Though President Obama won the state, Husted has not halted his efforts. With two House races heading to a recount, Husted is now facing accusations that he is illegally tossing provisional ballots. These House races will determine whether state Republicans get a super-majority to put constitutional amendments on the ballot without a single Democratic vote.

State representatives Kathleen Clyde (D-OH) and Debbie Phillips (D-OH) threatened to sue Wednesday evening over at least 384 ballots that have been discarded in the two districts in question, Tuscarawas and Cuyahoga. According to the state reps, some ballots were put in plain manila envelopes instead of provisional ballot envelopes, rendering them invalid. Additionally, they say Husted is rejecting ballots covered under the National Voter Registration Act of 1993, which allows voters who have moved to a different address within the same congressional district to vote at their former precinct.

Even more ballots are likely to have been wrongly discarded because officials are using a database already proven to be flawed and incomplete to determine the voter’s registration status.

Besides these possible breaches of federal election law, Husted is also tossing innumerable ballots that were thrown into question by poll worker error through no fault of the voter. A federal judge tried to stop him, declaring “I don’t want to see democracy die in the darkness on my watch.” But the conservative Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals issued a stay that allowed Husted to throw out these votes.

Ohio leads the country in provisional ballots, with 200,000 cast this year. In 2008, the state discarded 1 out of every 5 provisional votes. These ballots are often concentrated in urban, Democratic areas — and huge percentages get discarded every election.

Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted is fast becoming one of the most despised election officials in the country for his many attempts to restrict early voting and throw out legitimate provisional ballots. He’s also alienating federal judges left and right. After Husted issued a last-minute directive that could invalidate thousands of Ohioans’ votes, US District Judge Algenon Marbley did not bother to hide his impatience with the secretary’s hijinks.

Husted’s directive, which was issued at 7 pm on the Friday before the election, openly defies Ohio state law by shifting the burden of correctly filling in a provisional ballot form from the poll worker to the contested voter. As Andrew Cohen at the Atlantic explains, Judge Marbley had already worked out an agreement that placed the responsibility on poll workers and the state, so a vote would still be counted if the poll worker made an error. Husted’s directive snuck around this agreement, apparently infuriating the judge:

THE COURT: Mr. Epstein, would you agree that voting is the linchpin of our democracy?

[STATE ATTORNEY] MR. EPSTEIN: Yes, Your Honor.

THE COURT: I do too. What concerned me about the 2012-54 directive is that it was filed on a Friday night at 7 p.m. The first thought that came to mind was democracy dies in the dark. So, when you do things like that that seeks to avoid transparency, it appears, then that gives me great pause but even greater concern. So, if anyone I’m going to give additional time to, it’s going to be you, Mr. Epstein, because you have a lot of explaining to do [...] I’m really trying to get to the root of this, and I don’t want to see democracy die in the darkness on my watch, especially with voting. You know I have a special place for voting.

Ohio’s attorney was unable to point to any legal justification for ignoring the law and shifting the burden to the voter. Marbley exploded:

THE COURT: So show me where it is. Show me where it’s meant. Show me the legislative history. Show me the facts that the secretary used to make the decision to change this directive at seven o’clock on a Friday night on the eve of an election. I want to see it, and I want to see it now. Show it to me.

MR. EPSTEIN: Your Honor, I have no legislative history to present to the Court.

Marbley isn’t the first federal judge to be provoked by Husted’s defiance. After another district judge, Judge Peter Economus, ruled that Ohio must restore early voting hours on the three days before the election, Husted forbade the local election boards from following the court order. Husted backed down when the judge issued a terse order that demanded he appear in court to personally explain himself.

Marbley’s ruling is expected Monday. Provisional ballots will be counted on November 17.