Will We See a Florida Recount Rematch in Ohio?
The marauding Democratic legal team received an assist on Thursday when SEIU v. Husted was resolved (for now). The SEIU had argued that voters who cast their ballots in the wrong precinct (but in the right location in a multi-precinct site) should have their votes counted unless election officials could prove that they instructed the voter to go to the correct polling location and the voter refused and demanded a provisional ballot. The 6th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in favor of the SEIU, saying those votes must be counted. BOE officials will be required to “modify” the ballots after the fact if the voters cast ballots for down-ticket races for which they were not entitled to vote. The other part of the lawsuit said that the state erred in not counting provisional ballots that contained incomplete identifier information, namely, the voter’s signature. The court sided with the state, finding that provisional ballots must at least have signatures (even if they are not required to be cast in the proper precinct).
Husted’s press release applauded the signature requirement but made no mention of the wrong precinct issue, indicating that he will not (immediately) pursue the case and will leave the 14,000 votes (the number thrown out in the last election) on the table. However, if the election were to come down to 14,000 votes, it’s reasonable to assume those votes would be contested.
In addition to the numerous challenges by the Democratic legal eagles, last Wednesday, Cleveland’s Channel 5 News reported that 45,000 absentee ballots were improperly printed and mailed to voters in Cuyahoga County. The boxes that require the name, address, and signature have text printed in a dark font, requiring voters to write on top of the printed text in order to fill out the ballot. Not only is this causing confusion for voters, it raises the possibility of error at the BOE and increases the chance that voter fraud will go undetected.
Provisional ballots already present an added degree of difficulty for election officials. They are all hand-processed and officials must verify signatures and cross-check addresses to determine if the voters are eligible to vote and therefore decide if the vote should be counted. Although the Cuyahoga County BOE is making assurances that they will not have a problem reading the identifying information and signatures, once again, in a close election, those ballots will almost certainly be heavily scrutinized for irregularities. The Florida hanging chad inspector will likely be deployed to Ohio to peer at thousands of illegible provisional ballots.
We can be certain of one thing: if the election is close, the real winners will be the lawyers. There are several potential avenues for legal challenges based on contested ballots, in addition to the usual Democratic claims of disenfranchisement. Although the threshold is high for the automatic recount trigger, any individual candidate may request a recount. And so, even as you read this, the state is lawyering up and attorneys are booking their flights to Ohio and reserving rooms for the month of November. Don’t forget your snow boots and parkas. November isn’t our best month.
UPDATE Tuesday, October 16, 1:00 pm EST: The U.S. Supreme Court sided with the Obama campaign on Tuesday, turning down Ohio’s petition in Obama for America v. Husted and clearing the way for county boards of elections to set their own hours for early voting. Without comment or dissent, the court refused to stay the lower court’s ruling. In essence, the decision affirmed that courts can overrule state election laws for the sake of voter convenience. The decision also agreed that non-deployed members of the military should not be treated with special consideration under UOCAVA. The Obama campaign had argued that their circumstances are not more difficult than a firefighter or a civilian citizen who may have an unexpected illness on election day. The U.S. Supreme Court agreed, which will likely open the door to other attacks on voting rights for members of the military.
UPDATE Wednesday: In response to the decision, Secretary of State Jon Husted ordered all county boards of elections to open for early voting the Saturday, Sunday, and Monday before Election Day. For most Ohio counties, this will be the first time they have offered extended weekend voting hours prior to Election Day. In a press release, Husted said, “Despite the Court’s decision today to deny our request for a stay, I firmly believe Ohio and its elected legislature should set the rules with respect to elections in Ohio, and not the federal court system.”
Also read: Former Ohio Governor Quotes Bible in Romney Opposition
A recount is the least of what the citizens will face.
IF ‘The One’ loses, there will be mayhem from pillar to post. In fact, his goons are promising it! His shock troops take their orders from the tippy top, and Van Jones is pulling many of the strings, via funds from Soros etc. The Black Panthers are chomping at the bit, and so much more is in store!
And, the following is hardly conspiracy theory nonsense -
http://adinakutnicki.com/2012/07/22/update-multiple-sources-within-dhs-ringing-alarm-bells-is-anyone-listening-northeast-intelligence-network-others-too-
commentary-by-adina-kutnicki-105/
Hell hath no fury like a revolutionary (and his surrogates) forced to give up power!
Patriots, stay alert.
No worries…Al Franken will see to it that everything stays on the up and up.
One good reason why I now am carrying two 40 caliber pistols and a 5.56 NATO AR 15 with 5 30 round mags.
“IF ‘The One’ loses, there will be mayhem from pillar to post.”
I really think that scenario is extremely unlikely. There may be some mischief around the ghettos because they won’t be gittin’ no mo’ Obama money. But that can be limited to their own immediate vicinity.
I honestly don’t believe it will be as close as people are saying. Have our people become THAT stupid? We only need three issues: Lies, corruption, incompetence. We don’t even need to get into policy differences. If you want a lying, corrupt, incompetent President, then by all means vote for Obama. But who wants that?
We just can’t have another four years of this clown. We just can’t. It will kill us as a nation.
You’re right. That would be the case for those voting legally with forethought. However, the Obama campaign has not been recruiting from that demographic. And no one really REALLY knows just how many of the illegal variety wait in the wings to be released on command. That is the great unknown in this election.
Even if The One is decisively defeated we will likely be treated to civil unrest. Obama and his minions have made it perfectly clear that to disagree with them is racist. The fact that Obama is a bumbling, vacuous, narcissistic mediocrity unfit to manage a mom an pop grocery is besides the point. So be prepared, folks.
That’s where my fears lie. Even a substantial defeat of Obama — say, a 6% popular vote margin and 300+ electoral votes for Romney — would mean nothing to his hairier-eyed backers. Obama’s lieutenants would think little of egging them on to outright violence for “their guy.”
Such violence probably wouldn’t change the result of the election…but it would surely have an impact upon subsequent ones.
As long as cable TV still works, and “Dancing with the Stars” or whatever, is on, there won’t be any Civil Unrest. Television – the ultimate “opiate of the masses.”
and where will the “unrest” happen?
it will happen in the bluest of blue cesspools around the country
in other words, i’m not very concerned
I hear you… let the obama maggots riot. Burn down their space and the space of the progressive/liberals who moved into segregated suburbs next door.
Meh, I does not care.
One thing I do know, there will not be any obama rioters within’ 200-300 yards of me… well not for very long anyways.
Even if he loses, I shudder at the damage this lame duck would do.
If I remember correctly there was some talk about a recount in Ohio in 2004. The Dems decided against it. My thought then was that Ohio’s voting system could never withstand such close scrutiny.
We simply need to encourage the highest possible turnout everywhere. The larger the margin of victory for Romney in the popular vote, the less chance of unrest.
It is easy to talk protests on Twitter, but I think even the majority of Obama’s own voters realize he has not met their expectations.
Even so, election day is likely to be chaotic in many areas. Vote early if possible. Encourage others to vote early.
IMO, Romney can win big. But he will lose a close race.
Close races can be stolen in big Democrat strongholds like Cleveland.
I hope another big state, Pennsylvania or Wisconsin can give Romney a cushion.
Depends who is running Ohio, esp. the secretary of state. Jon A. Husted is a ‘Pubbie and so is the Governor.
If it is close, and if the initial recount reconfirms the original outcome, Husted just needs the guts to go ahead and certify the election and enjoy the screaming from the Democrats.
You forgot the lamentations of their women…
Gotta love the lamentations of their women!
What?… they have women? How do you tell? Maybe the beards… Ahh yes, the democrat men are so effeminate.
Eric The Red Holder is against anything that inhibits illegal voting and supports anything that encourages the lazy and irresponsible to vote.
If long lines on election day are that big a problem, the state needs to open more polling stations. The early voting for the military is fine, but I can think of very few other reasons why it should be allowed.
Of course early-in-person is better than absentee when it comes to the integrity of the vote, but I’m not a big fan of either one. Register where you live, and get your fanny out to the polls with photo ID in hand.
And this is why Soros has made it an important goal to get “his” people elected to the Sec. of State in as many states as possible, they control everything after the votes are cast. Any discrepancies, they have control of it.
I just watched the movie Atlas Shrugged Part-1 and had to laugh when I noticed it started out as taking place in the year 2016. coincidence? I don’t think so. So many things in that book/movie are so close to what I am seeing in the news today. If Obummer gets reelected it may turn from a great book into prophecy come true.
I live in Ohio. Northwest Ohio, to be exact.
I’ve been driving around a lot lately. I can tell you all, I see at least five Romney/Ryan yard signs for every one Obama/Biden yard sign. That’s a conservative estimate (no pun intended). I did not see anything like this level of support for McCain four years ago (but I still have my McCain/Palin yard sign…).
I agree with “crosspatch” #2 above. Or at least, I’m tempted to agree. The polls are skewed because they are using turnout models either based on 2008 – which way over-predicts the Democratic turnout for this election – or 2004, like Rasmussen (which is actually a combination of ’04 and ’08). In both cases, what is being missed here is that we’re likely to see a very big spike in turnout from GOP and GOP-leaning independents. This is not in the polling models, at least not in any major ones that I’ve heard of.
So, I expect Romney to win in Ohio and nationally by a comfortable margin. Not a 1980-style landslide – the MSM is sure to cushion the blow against Obama, whom I expect to carry between ten and fourteen states – but this is not going to be a recount situation a la 2000….
…Unless the election is rigged. And I am worried about that. I put NOTHING past Obama & Co.
I also fully agree with “carla” #3 above. While I expect Romney to win, I also expect BIG 1960s-style (think Watts or Detroit, or the Rodney King riots) in many major cities. The big flashpoints will be New York, LA, Chicago, Miami, Cleveland, Detroit. The inner city “free phone” set is going to go bonkers when their messiah loses. To them, a Romney win will surely represent a ‘rigged conspiracy’ propagated by “the man”. It will be very messy.
Are there butterfly ballots in Ohio??
Fortunately, there are no butterfly ballots. Ohio uses a combination of optical scanners and direct recording electronic (DRE) machines.
Hanging chads and votes found in hatch-backs…watch for it.
Democrat pundits and officials already tried the false narrative in the Bush election in Ohio. It didn’t work out for them because each polling place has an equal number of Democrats and Republican watchers who all agreed there was no funny business by Republicans. This did not stop the Official Democrat goons from holding a kangaroo court making then Secretary of State Ken Blackwell explain why it was close because they couldn’t prove anything else. For years after it was proven there was no funny business anywhere liberal pundits still saw no reason not to say Republicans had somehow cheated in the election. I expect the same will happen this time if it’s close and as usual it will be all talk of Republican chicanery even if proven otherwise and we can expect the lie to continue far into the future. This is what liberals do. They never give up not even in defeat it’s about time we took that page and put it in our book. Investigations of wrong doing by liberals should never stop just because we won.
No, but especially if we play it right. We know what is going to happen, union thugs and community organizers (mostly black) are going to try to stuff the ballot boxes in many ways. One way will be to pay folks cash, $10, maybe, $20, each time they vote.
You know there will be shrinkage given the innate integrity of, well, union thugs and community organizers. We can further shrink the amount available to buy votes by launching a whisper campaign. We need a couple of Ohio “voters” to “publicly” complain that they “only” got $500 each time they early voted. Whether they complain on Twitter, on call-in leftist radio, college radio or whatever, I don’t know. But, let’s help the dems to raise the cost of voter fraud to living wage levels!