Televised screen shots taken Tuesday night of live election returns in Ohio provided by the Secretary of State’s office showed hundreds of thousands of votes flipping from the “yes” to “no” column of Issue 3, the ballot measure to legalize marijuana.

When seen against the backdrop of Ohio’s longstanding history of Republicans manipulating the vote count to obtain the outcome they seek, such as in the 2004 presidential election when Ohio returns elected George W. Bush to a second term, there are compelling reasons to question the official result where the pot measure went down to defeat.

To understand the context for this likely chicanery, you have to understand the backdrop of current Ohio politics.

According to the election night returns provided by Secretary of State Jon Husted, the people of Ohio defeated a November 3 proposition to legalize marijuana by a tally of nearly two-to-one.

The controversial measure would have established an oligarchy of 10 licensed growers operating regulated indoor grow sites of up to 300,000 square feet each. The pro-marijuana activist community was divided on the measure.

Husted was not a neutral election administrator. He vehemently opposed the measure, threatened its proponents with legal action, and live TV results showed hundeds of thousands of votes moving from the yes to no column in a matter of minutes.

Take a look at the two screen shots below, where hundreds of thousands of votes flipped from the ‘yes’ to the ‘no’ column in 11 minutes, even though the number of precincts that reported only increased by 6 percent. These figures are provided by Husted’s office to the media and public. In the first screenshot, with 39 percent of precincts reporting, the measure is winning 65-to-35 percent.