Battleground Blogging
Mike M reports in again from Ohio.
This is about the third time I’ve sat down to rewrite this article, so I decided I had better just get it to Stephen or it might never get finished. I was going to write about the various steps Ohio is taking to fight voter fraud, but the stories and court cases are coming so fast that I can’t keep up with them.
One subject I touched on before was election “challengers.” Poll watchers certified by the Board of Elections to question suspicious voters and prevent fraud. Well it turns out that our quixotic Secretary of State Ken Blackwell has reccomended to the Ohio Supreme Court that challengers not be admitted to the polls on Election Day. No decision either way has been reached. This is just one of many legal questions that have arisen over Ohio election is the last week or two, and will have about one day (Monday) to actually get resolved. This is a cause for some concern, as the class I took on Tuesday on how to run the polls is already obselete.
I’m really more concerned about uncertainty and consistency than I am about fraud at this point. We as election officials may not know the rules until we open the polls at 6:30 AM on Tuesday. There are still unresolved questions about voter registration in Ohio, and there may be some unhappy people who registered as challengers that may or may not be able to observe and participate. The last thing me and the other thousands of Election Day newbies needs is a bunch of angry lawyers and partisan party workers breathing down our necks as we try to do our job.
One bright spot that I already have experience with, however, is Ohio’s absentee ballot. Sporting a new and improved styrofoam backing, these puppies are the…um…ok they’re just the same old punch cards everyone has used for decades. The trick is that the punched chads get buried in the foam right underneath the hole, providing a little error checking and preventing a mess at the same time. Since I’m working outside of my home precinct, voting absentee lets me avoid a cross town drive on my lunch break and makes sure that I have the opportunity to vote.
The individual candidates aren’t important for anyone outside of Ohio, but the Democratic field seemed particularly weak in Republican dominated Ohio. Incumbent Senator George Voinovich is expected to breeze to victory over his Democratic challenger, and there are is really only one hotly contested House race I’m aware of which is in Cleveland. Kerry is more or less flying solo in this election, as there is little else for the Democratic Party to get excited about on the ticket.
That’s about all I have for now. A lot of uncertainty and unanswered questions concerning the procedures and rules for Election Day. As I type, President Bush and Ah-nold are holding a joint rally in downtown Columbus. Schwarzenegger has ties to Columbus (business ventures and a huge yearly fitness expo) and is extremely popular here, so the appearance was a good decision for Bush. Hopefully I’ll have another post before Election Day if some of these issues get resolved on Monday. Until then I’ll try not to get hypnotized by the incessant bombardment of political ads on TV.
Question: how does one get to be a poll worker? I’m sure it differs by locality, but does one usually go through local political parties, or does one just volunteer to the board of elections? I’m thinking of volunteering in the future.
In Ohio you call either the Democratic or the Republican desk at the Board of Elections. Our laws mandate that an equal number of workers registered in the two major parties be present for all substansive decisions.
Ohio has tried to recruit extra workers for this election to handle the voting volume–and the extra partisan noise–but, in my county (Franklin, aka Columbus Metro), I think we have still come up short of our quota, so those of us who ARE there will be working our tails off for 13 hours.
Welcome aboard, Mike M. I wouldn’t be too worried about the uproar, or about your poll judge class being obsolete.
Very little has actually changed so far, legally, except that the ridiculous attempt to challenge 35,000 people (mostly poor and black) prior to the vote based on a public bulk mailing by the Republican Party has been rejected.
Provisional balloting is staying in the same place, as is the need for official credentials if you are a challenger or a witness.
You’ll probably see far more Democratic faces among the credentialed than Republican. Which is why Ken Blackwell would like to get rid of them. But they’re only lawyers, after all, not morphs of Hannibal Lector, so you should be safe.
There has been a serious neglect of political fundamentals among the GOP here, who have acted like they were still running against Al Gore in 2000, and haven’t caught up to ACT and the other 527′s. The massive Democratic registration effort in this state caught them flat footed.
In addition, most of those safe Republican “big names” in Ohio: George Voinovich, Mike DeWine, Bob Taft, Jim Petro, Betty Montgomery, Deborah Pryce, or even Ken Blackwell himself, haven’t REALLY been hitting the streets or the airwaves to talk old George W. up.
Why? George and the boys did a savage public hatchet job of local TV ads (classic Karl Rove material!) on Senator Voinovich way back when he wouldn’t play ball on approving record budget deficits.
Things like that don’t play well in Midwestern politics, however much they enjoy that macho crap down in Texas. George has no REAL friends of either party in this state, and genteel Ohio Republican knives will be the first in the backs of him and his people if he loses.
And if he DOES lose, what he did to our popular Republican senator might just be the key insider’s reason why.
The ridiculous attempt to challenge 35,000 registrations is very important. When the post office can’t deliver mail to the address of the “supposed” new registrant, it sends up a red flag. We will have to see how many dead democrats vote in Cleveland – a problem also seen here in Pittsburgh. I hope the poll watchers get in – its been the state law for 50 years.
Voinovich was popular with Republicans here while governor. He slashed budgets and lowered taxes–all standard Republican fare, but done quite effectively by Voinovich. However, his fiscal policies in Washington have suffered; many OH conservatives are unhappy with his tax policies since since becoming a senator. I know that I am. I will still be voting for Voinovich, though, since a tax-happy Republican is always better than his tax-happy Democratic counterpart.
Tomp, I agree that it is certainly important to challenge some of these voter registrations. But, when it is very obviously a typographical error, such as someone’s registration being sent to 430 S. ??? street rather than their accurate address of 480 S. Same St. then it becomes a problem..These are the type things that are occuring over and over, in many areas these people have been publically named in local newspaper as doing something wrong!!!Will this get settled in the one day they have left to settle it or will ALOT of these people lose their right to vote because of some such nonsense?
“The ridiculous attempt to challenge 35,000 registrations is very important.”
The only sensible (and legal) challenges in Ohio are those made by people who know something about the presinct where the voter is registering.
Challenging people with no good evidence is ALSO a form of illegal voter fraud in this state.
In Summit County (Akron) thousands of challenges were generated by a mere four individuals who came to the hearing and admitted they had no knowledge of the presincts, of the addresses involved, of the people who really lived in those addresses, or of the people who had registered to vote from them whom they were challenging.
They didn’t even have copies of the mail that was supposedly returned.
They testified that they were merely given a list of names to challenge by a Republican party official, whom they knew only as “Mike”, and who told them that it was ok to do so.
The Summit County Board of Elections is remanding the whole matter to the Ohio Attorney General’s Office for criminal investigation.
I don’t know, I’d say there’s two interesting house races in Cleveland. Dennis Kucinich made himself a household name and joke with his long drawn-out presidential joke, err campaign. People who have heard Ed Herman’s message are invigorated. The only thing going for Dennis right now is that he declined a debate and the media has stayed in his corner by just not saying anything about Dennis and Herman either way. Dennis will take the actual parts of Cleveland in his district and all the little old ladies in Parma who think they’re going to lose their social security if they don’t vote Kucinich. Herman easily takes the suburbs like Rocky River, Westlake, Bay Village, Olmsted Falls, North Olmsted… The toss-up becomes the ~50,000 residents of Lakewood. Traditionally a Democrat strong hold, I’m seeing a LOT of Ed Herman signs. If there’s a year to beat Dennis, this is it. (Then again, I’m being an optimist…)
On the east side, you’ve got Capri Cafaro spending her family’s fortune to try and beat a very popular Republican, Steve LaTourette. What’s not to love about a 26-year-old Democratic challenger who has immunity from federal prosecution in the matter of United States vs James Traficant of all things? Apparently when you and your family can’t buy off a congressman anymore, you attempt to buy an entire congressional district.
Frankly, I’ll enjoy the show…
Best of luck at the polls, Mike and Joseph. I’d love to help, but the state requested all county emergency operation centers to staff, so that pretty much shot my day.
Here’s a really disgusting case of voter fraud for you to research.
http://www.klas-tv.com/Global/story.asp?S=2421595&nav=168XRvNe
Cathy, As you should know, if the registrant cannot fill out the form correctly it doesn’t count. Are there transposition problems – probably – I just doubt 35,000. I’ve also heard about absentee ballots being FedEx’d in where the signatures do NOT match the signature on file. Do you think there is a very good chance for voter fraud. I find it interesting that most of these problems are in heavily democratic districts. This kind of crap has gone on for too long-it just seems that this year the democrats are trying to win by hook or crook. Emphasis on CROOK,
Just keep posted to http://electionlawblog.org/.
In terms of how the courts are handling these issues, the Sixth Circuit seems to be guided by this general principle: don’t mess around with anything before the election, and let all of the issues be handled as challenges to the provisional ballots afterwards.
“And if he DOES lose, what he did to our popular Republican senator might just be the key insider’s reason why.”
*snicker* I get a laugh out of that everytime I read it. Our “popular Republican” senator to whom you refer is neither. In a state whre Robert Bennet has successfuly run moderate Democrats under the Republican label and taken traditional Democrat issues away from them, the Ohio Democrats have been reduced to running tired has-been’s (Eric Fingerhut), nut cases (Lee Fisher), traditional tax and spenders (Tim Hagan), and trial laywers (Joel Hyatt). Christ, even Bob Taft managed to get re-elected… that should speak volumes alone. Robert Bennet endorsed candidates are neither Republican nor do they need to be popular. The only thing I like about Voinovich is that he’s tight with a buck (and even that’s out of character for an Ohio Republican)… he’s weak, weak, weak on everything else. Let’s not start hero-worshipping the guy.