Voter disenfranchisement

[Crissa]

Voter disenfranchisement in Ohio.

HuffPo reports the ongoing court case brought by Republicans to stop the votes of more than 200,000 flagged registrations for misspellings, of the 600,000 new registrations this year.

Basically it goes like this:
[*]Registrars aren't allowed to edit or destroy any registrations that were filled out. It's illegal tampering to do so. So they turn them all in.
[*]Republicans noticed that sometimes someone fills out a registration for Mickey Mouse. So because of a few fraudulent applications, they want to stop all the new applications from having errors.
[*]This would put everyone into filling out 'provisional' ballots - ballots which take longer, are all hand filled out, and then not even counted until they've been checked. Often these provisional ballot run out at the polls, people don't want to bother filling them out, and in some cases in Ohio recently, they haven't been counted.

It's not as though Mickey Mouse is going to show up to vote. Or that registration drives like ACORN are allowed to do anything about someone filling out a fraudulent ballot.

And even 'Joe the Plumber's' registration has a typo. (it's listed WO instead of WU).

Grr.

-Crissa

[angelfromanotherpin]

It's reprehensible, but it's not exactly news. It has been known for years that the Republicans would try to suppress people's votes in this election. Fortunately, this sort of thing only works if the result is close, and it doesn't look like that's going to be the case.

[Crissa]

They're aiming at a larger number of voters than usual, and they are scaring up the same ACORN department of justice raids they did in 2006.

To that end, the Obama campaign and the DNC have lawyers in every county of the country this time. As many as 50x more than usual watchers in some states.

-Crissa

[Lago PARANOIA]

If when Obama becomes President all he ever does push Hillary to become Senate Majority leader, ends torture, permanently kicks Fox News out of the press corps, and ends this shameful vote surpression scheme of the right, I will be overjoyed.

By the way, who the fuck is this Joe the Plumber greedy fuck? I have to give up some of my quarter million a year to feed poor kids, boo hoo.

[Absentminded_Wizard]

I'm not sure if he actually makes that much money, but it does seem like he's afraid of new taxes mostly because he doesn't pay the ones he owes now. That's right, even though he has enough money to think of buying the plumbing company he works for, he owes something like $1200 in back taxes to the state.

[Username17]

No seriously, who the fuck is Joe the Plumber?

-Username17

[Koumei]

This explains... well, rather little. Turns out he's exactly as unimportant as the name sounds

[erik]

That's hilarious.

Joe the Plumber, brought to you today by Irony.

[Count Arioch the 28th]

I know that in this area, people called up registered democrats and threatened to have them arrested if they tried to vote. I wonder if this is on a similar vein.

[Neeeek]

The Supreme Court overturned the 6th Circuit ruling on the basis that the GOP doesn't have standing to bring the suit in the first place.

So that's the end of that particular disenfranchisement plan, I guess.

[Crissa]

Not really, now nuts are calling in death threats to ACORN organizers; while McCain and the RNC are calling this a 'heavy cloud of suspicion over this election'.

Once legal means have been delayed, on to the illegal means.

-Crissa

[Lago PARANOIA]

Not really, now nuts are calling in death threats to ACORN organizers; while McCain and the RNC are calling this a 'heavy cloud of suspicion over this election'.

Once legal means have been delayed, on to the illegal means.

-Crissa

I wonder if the Republican party realizes that this is a particularly bad year to pull that stunt.

[Absentminded_Wizard]

I think the Republicans are fighting the 2000 and 2004 elections all over again. They seem to be working on the assumption that this one's going to be close enough for this kind of thing to matter. The interesting thing is that ACORN only registered like 20,000 of the 600,000 new registrations in Ohio.. And of those,only 4,000 are suspected to be fraudulent.

If you look at the 2004 results, there were approximately 5.6 million votes cast in Ohio. That makes one percent of the votes cast equal to about 56,000 votes. 4,000 would be less than 1/10th of one percent. Assuming we can expect equally high turnout this time, the odds that Ohio would be close enough for 4,000 votes to matter (even if all those false registrations turned into fraudulent votes, which is highly unlikely) are very small. And for the "stealing the elections" charge to be legitimate, you would have to have a close enough count in enough states that the loss of electoral votes would turn the election.

I doubt there will be any way for the Republicans to really make this charge stick anywhere except Fox News.

[Absentminded_Wizard]

The Supreme Court overturned the 6th Circuit ruling on the basis that the GOP doesn't have standing to bring the suit in the first place.

So that's the end of that particular disenfranchisement plan, I guess.

Apparently not.

New suit over voter registrations goes to top Ohio court
U.S. Supreme Court on Friday threw out on technical grounds a lower court ruling in similar lawsuit filed by Ohio GOP.

By William Hershey

Staff Writer

Sunday, October 19, 2008

COLUMBUS — Now it's the Ohio Supreme Court's turn to wrestle with the dispute between Democratic Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner and Ohio Republicans over mismatched voter registrations.

Just hours after the Ohio Republican Party lost in the U.S. Supreme Court on Friday, Oct. 17, David Myhal, a registered Republican from New Albany in Franklin County, asked the all-Republican Ohio Supreme Court to tell Brunner to instruct county boards of elections not to process or count absentee ballots cast by voters registered after Jan. 1 before reviewing them for mismatches.

"Absent this court's immediate intervention, the votes of Ohio's qualified voters risk being diluted and public confidence in the integrity of the electoral process will be severely undermined," the new lawsuit said.

While the Ohio Republican Party is not a party to the suit, Myhal is represented by Columbus attorney William Todd, who has close ties to the Ohio GOP. Todd could not be reached.

Jeff Ortega, Brunner's spokesman, responded to the new suit:

"The nation's highest court has sided with Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner. It's time for the Ohio Republican Party to stop injecting chaos and confusion into our excellent bipartisan election system."

The state Supreme Court ordered Brunner to respond by Monday, Oct. 20, and for both sides to submit briefs by Friday, Oct. 24, the day before absentee ballot envelopes are to be opened. After that, it won't be possible to identify who the ballot came from.

Earlier Friday, the U.S. Supreme Court threw out an order from a lower federal court directing Brunner to provide county boards of elections with details of how personal information on new voter registration forms doesn't match information on drivers' licenses or Social Security records.

The U.S. Supreme Court said the Ohio GOP likely would not prevail on the underlying question of whether the lower federal court was authorized to act on a lawsuit brought by a private entity — the state GOP — as opposed to a governmental entity.

The U.S. Supreme Court did not express an opinion on whether Brunner was correctly implementing the federal Help America Vote Act, the law the Ohio GOP said she was not complying with.

Edward "Ned" Foley, an election law expert at Ohio State University's Mortiz College of Law, said the Ohio Supreme Court first must determine if Myhal has legal standing to challenge Brunner before ruling on whether Brunner was following the law.

Brunner has said that an estimated 200,000 of the nearly 666,000 voter registration forms filed since Jan. 1 have mismatched information but that much of it is spelling or clerical errors. Her office has said a system to check the mismatches exists, just not the one the Ohio GOP is seeking.

The new lawsuit would affect only absentee ballots, not all 200,000 mismatches.

[Neeeek]

While the Ohio Republican Party is not a party to the suit, Myhal is represented by Columbus attorney William Todd, who has close ties to the Ohio GOP. Todd could not be reached.

A general rule: If the attorney cannot be reached, the case is bullshit.

Just saying.

[Absentminded_Wizard]

You know, it is kind of interesting, now that you've highlighted it, that the attorney doesn't want to do any grandstanding on this issue.

[Judging__Eagle]

I know that Frank isn't in the states right now, but who else here is from the US and not living there?

Also, have you all set up your absentee ballots or are they moot in the locations that you would be voting in?

[Crissa]

The Times is reporting today that voters are being harassed and heckled at some pre-voting locations by disaffected Republicans. via Steve Benen at the Washington Monthly.

-Crissa

[Crissa]

Black Bear cub shot, stapled with yard signs, left dead on campus...

That's pretty sick.

-Crissa

[Crissa]

Car trashed, political bumper sticker stolen.

So, when do you think the overt violence will start? This isn't something that can be washed off or TP'd. That's actual, dangerous, damage.

-Crissa

[Crissa]

Thirty cars have tires slashed while owner's attend a political rally.

-Crissa

[Maxus]

Y'ever get the urge to smack the bejeezus out of someone?

[Absentminded_Wizard]

The lawsuit's been withdrawn, but the state GOP is still at it.

GOP shifts gears in voter registration battle with secretary of state

By William Hershey

Staff Writer

Wednesday, October 22, 2008

COLUMBUS — Ohio Republicans are bringing in state Attorney General Nancy Rogers and the U.S. attorney general in their ongoing squabble with Democratic Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner about mismatched voter registrations.

On Tuesday, Oct. 21, Republican David Myhal withdrew his lawsuit from the Ohio Supreme Court asking that Brunner be compelled to instruct county boards of elections not to process or count absentee ballots cast by voters registered after Jan. 1 before reviewing them for mismatches.

Ohio Republican Chairman Bob Bennett said he asked that the suit be withdrawn and today, Oct. 22, will meet with Rogers to "begin a dialogue" to get Brunner to "provide an adequate system of validating questionable registrations." Rogers represents Brunner.

"I'm hopeful that we can work together on a solution that will give Ohioans greater confidence in the integrity of this election," Bennett said.

On the other battlefront, a letter from nine of 11 Ohio Republican U.S. House members to Michael Mukasey, the U.S. attorney general, was less conciliatory.

It asked Mukasey to require Brunner to comply with the Help America Vote Act. Republicans contend that the federal law requires Brunner to provide local boards of elections with details of how personal information on new voter registration forms doesn't match information from driver's licenses or Social Security records.

Brunner has said the information is available, just not in the way Republicans want it.

She also has said that an estimated 200,000 of nearly 660,000 voter registrations since Jan. 1 have mismatched information, but that much of it is clerical errors or misspellings.

Brunner said she welcomed the dismissal of the lawsuit.

It was filed Oct. 17, the same day the U.S. Supreme Court threw out an order from a lower federal court requiring her to provide the mismatched information to local elections boards.

The U.S. Supreme Court said the Ohio GOP was unlikely to prevail on the underlying question of whether the lower court was authorized to act on a lawsuit brought by a private party — the GOP.

[Crissa]

Yes, this is the state where Joe the plumber also has a mismatched record.

I'm not sure what the Republicans think this will get them. But Joe was a winning issue with voters (+11% for McCain vs +6?% for Obama)

-Crissa

[Absentminded_Wizard]

That's how the state Dems should play this: "GOP seeks to disenfranchise Joe the Plumber!"