Reader Comment On Ohio Election Law Problems

This comment was posted as a comment on the post about the GOP putting the fix in for the 2008 election in Ohio. We found it so interesting that we thought it deserved its own entry.

This is not only a highly potential caging issue, it is one of abuse of power by anyone in office, the "party of money and power" as so many have come to call our governments, that reaches far beyond all too typical, and now almost inconsequential party lines.

Focusing on just the possible challenges that would tie up polling place lines, as indicated by SoS Brunner, which was also a major Dem put-out-there diversionary fear in '04 and '06 that didn't happen is only a minor focus.

As you explained above, HB3 mandated that a government paid, non-forwardable mass mailing be sent out to all registered voters previous to elections. AND that studies have shown that low income voters are far more likely to move, live in mass rental areas which receive far less than all their mail (left on counters, floors, no one takes the time to find them) and not even have forwarding addresses.

What Brunner is NOT saying is that when the HB3 pieces sent out by the election boards come back to them as non-deliverable, then the fact is these names can be used NOT ONLY as the basis for voter challenges in a general election, tying up the polling places; but ALSO such non-deliverability of the HB3 mailing, also mandates that that voter votes a Provisional Ballot - which then is subject to further, often confused and confusing ID requirements. The problems that election advocates have found in election officials invalidly not verifying/not counting such Provisional Ballots has been huge.

Also what Brunner is not saying is that:
• despite the fact that Ohio has had one of the largest numbers of Provisional Ballots of all states in our elections;
• and has one of the highest rates of provisional voters being discounted/not counted/not verified;
• and despite the fact that to date it is only through public action - way after the election - when such Provisional information is finally released to the public - has it been found, BY THE PUBLIC - that some of these unverified ballots should have been verified,and that many of the reasons voters were given provisional ballots, and rejections were due to numerous "mistakes"in the state's and local elections boards own registration lists, or in lack of poll worker training.

And despite all of the above, she has currently been considering a directive that would keep all such provisional information - not how people voted, just their names and whether or not their ballots were counted - from the public eye in the future.

THAT would realistically, invalidly disenfranchise far more. Even the most dedicated elections boards have shown neither the time nor certainly the to properly investigate and often to expose their own problems.

Dedicated, mostly unpaid activists have, and the results have not been pretty for election officials.

Absentee ballots are NOT the solution, especially to this put-forth problem that, once again, uses the old saw of partisanship being the problem in elections.

Abuse of power, and/or protecting inside wrongdoing or incompetence from exposure, not the voters, is a huge problem. The glossed over, but ultimately FALSE assumption of no need for transparency to the people, or that the people are "bad" and all election officials are "trustworthy" is a huge dynamic that keeps the entire huge election messes going.

A far larger solution to the problem - which is certainly not only partisan caging, which has been labeled as THE problem for years, and has not happened as stated for years ( did happen to some extent with GOP threat letters sent out in '04) but is more endemically making us think that those inside, are the OWNERS of OUR elections, and are somehow worthy of our blind trust, in whatever they tell us.

A far larger solution to the problems as you've set them out is, and remains, TRANSPARENCY in everything the SoS office and our boards do, so we can oversight, point out any wrongdoings, ask and get answers, and help fix them.

A big part of the solution to the problems as you've set them out is keeping Provisional Voter information public, so the major organizations who have worked so hard in the past to aright people's votes invalidly not being counted, and to stop the same people from thinking year after year, that they went to the polls and voted, so falsely, that their votes counted from continually being caught in what could be a growing method of government disenfranchisement - especially of the poor and most vulnerable.