[Mb-civic] GOP Dirty Tricks in Ohio?

[Michael Butler]

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  GOP Dirty Tricks in Ohio?
  By Lisa Chamberlain
  salon.com

  Saturday 09 October 2004

Voter registration is exploding in the swing state, but a ruling by the
obstructionist Republican secretary of state may result in thousands not
voting.

  On Monday, the final day of voter registration in Ohio, the Board of
Elections in Cleveland had a line out the door. "I've never seen anything
like this in my life," said John Ryan, head of the Cleveland AFL-CIO. "We
did a voter registration drive four years ago. We turned in 14,399 new
registration forms, and we were pleased with that. This time, there are
about 100,000 newly registered voters. That blows my mind. This is not
Arizona with a growing population. People are leaving this area, not coming
in."

  That people are moving to other states is due in no small part to the fact
that Cleveland is now the poorest big city in the country, with a poverty
rate of 31.3 percent, according to a recent Census report. The rest of Ohio
isn't faring much better, with poverty rates in Cincinnati at 21.1 percent,
Toledo at 20.3 percent and Columbus at 16.5 percent. For those who can't
leave, voting seems to have taken on an urgency not seen in many years, if
not decades.

  With the registration deadline past, the focus for the numerous groups in
Ohio that are working to mobilize voters has now shifted to making sure
those voters get to the polls and, once they get there, are able to vote.
Conventional wisdom has always held that the hard part is getting people
signed up and to the polls. But with millions of dollars being spent by
groups such as America Coming Together, MoveOn PAC, 21st Century Democrats
and others on such efforts, a more important problem may be getting those
votes counted -- a fear given definite shape thanks in no small part to
Ohio's obstructionist Republican secretary of state, Kenneth Blackwell.

  While there had been a lot of hand-wringing among elected officials,
voting rights groups and the public over electronic voting, Ohio passed a
law in May requiring that all new machines have a paper receipt by 2006.
This, of course, won't occur until after the 2004 presidential election, but
the change has had a deterrent effect on a switch to electronic voting
machines. According to Petee Talley, who is chairing the Ohio Voter
Protection Coalition, made up of labor, civil rights, voting rights, retiree
and community organizations: "Ninety-five percent of Ohio's voters will be
voting on the same equipment they did the last time."

  So, befitting the state's anachronistic Rust Belt economy, tactics have
turned to good old-fashioned voter suppression and intimidation rather than
high-tech tampering. In a recent campaign stop in Cleveland, Sen. John Kerry
suggested that such intimidation was already underway. His comments came on
the heels of Blackwell's backpedaling on his decision to enforce an archaic
law requiring that all new registrations be on postcard-weight paper. But it
seems Blackwell may have several more tricks up his sleeve.

  "What's happening in Ohio," says Talley, "is that the secretary of state
has issued a statement saying that provisional ballots should not be issued
if voters are in the wrong polling location." With tens of thousands of
newly registered voters, confusion about where to go is likely. Withholding
provisional ballots -- which the Help America Vote Act, passed in 2002 in
the wake of the 2000 election debacle, specifically mentions as an
alternative voting method when valid registration is in doubt -- will result
in many people simply not voting.

  We "sent a letter to the secretary of state saying that it's a violation
of the Help America Vote Act," says Talley. Not getting an adequate
response, the Ohio Voter Protection Coalition filed a lawsuit on Tuesday.
The Ohio Democratic Party has already sued on this issue, and a judge is
expected to issue a ruling on that suit by Oct. 15.

  Provisional ballots might seem like small potatoes in the scheme of
things. But one professor at Case Western Reserve University -- site of the
recent vice presidential debate in Cleveland -- has crunched some numbers
and he's not at all convinced this issue is of little consequence.

  Using data from the 2000 election, the professor, Norman Robbins,
calculates conservatively that as many as 13,000 Clevelanders will have to
use a provisional ballot as a result of clerical and other errors. The
typical discard rate for provisional ballots means that nearly 2,300 of
those will be invalidated. But this doesn't include all the people who show
up at the wrong polling place and don't get a provisional ballot at all.
Multiply this by the eight urban areas around Ohio and the potential for
disenfranchisement is high. Considering that Al Gore lost Ohio by 165,000
votes and Ralph Nader (who will not be on the ballot) took 117,857 votes, it
could impact the election not just in Ohio, but affect the outcome of the
national race.

  "Who does this provisional ruling affect most?" asks Robbins. "People who
move. Census data shows that low-income people are 90 percent more likely to
move. If you're poor, you're twice as likely to have to vote provisionally.
On top of that, when they get a provisional ballot, they're likely to
encounter [poll workers] who give them unclear information on a complex
form. That's already difficult.

  "Now, if you're in the wrong precinct, don't bother voting because your
provisional ballot is going to be thrown out, even if it was a clerical
error that got you into provisional world. These are the people who are most
likely going to have two jobs. They're not going to be able to go to another
poll. They might have kids in day care. They may have no car. This ruling
disproportionately targets one part of the Ohio population." And they are,
needless to say, most likely Democratic voters.

  Ohio's secretary of state was also sued because 21 counties were wrongly
informing ex-felons that they had no right to vote. According to Robbins,
the secretary of state's office agreed to inform all ex-felons of their
voting rights in time for the registration deadline, but then backed out
based on a "distorted" interpretation of the law.

  And then there is the specter of hanging chads if the race in Ohio is
close enough to trigger a recount. Sixty-eight counties in Ohio (out of

  88) will vote using punch card ballots. (In fact, it was little noted at
the time, but Cleveland also had its very own butterfly ballot in 2000, and
it was as poorly designed as Theresa LePore's in Palm Beach County, Fla.).
Again using the 2000 election as a guidepost, Robbins says punch card
ballots have nearly a 4 percent error rate. With some 300,000 voters in
Cleveland, that's nearly 8,000 lost votes, factoring in the turnout rate. He
is critical of Blackwell for doing very little to educate voters about how
to use punch card machines, and points to Los Angeles as having undertaken a
model educational campaign that greatly reduced the error rate.

  "In 2002, the Federal Election Commission said that these error rates were
unacceptable," says Robbins. Blackwell "knew the majority of counties would
be using punch cards, and he'd done nothing to improve that situation until
a week ago. What they're doing now is good, but it's very late in the day
and he had to be badgered into it."

  Blackwell has defended himself and his office by saying that these
criticisms did not surface until recently. But Robbins says the voter
coalition he's been working with sent letters to Blackwell on July 29 and
again on Sept. 2, pointing out the problems and making suggestions.

  Finally, of course, there is the specter of voter intimidation, something
that -- until Florida 2000 -- some people didn't believe ever happened in
the United States, even though it occurred not only during the civil rights
movement but has been going on covertly since Reconstruction after the Civil
War.

  "As someone who's worked in Democratic politics in Ohio, I've seen these
tactics done for years," says Mike Casey, who runs Tigercomm, a media
consulting firm in Cleveland, and is working with a newly established group
called Citizens Against Un-American Voter Intimidation. "Every election
cycle, you hear after the fact about the white sheriffs who sat there for
five hour with guns holstered who are there to intimidate. They're there to
shave 1 percent off. With all this voter registration activity going on,
some people don't want those people to vote."

  But the Ohio Democratic Party, which has been keeping the heat on
Blackwell, doesn't think voter intimidation is going to be much of a problem
this year. "There have been claims of that in Cincinnati and other places,"
says Dan Trevas, a spokesperson for the Ohio Democratic Party. "But this is
going to be such a heavily attended and watched election, the ability to
intimidate voters is going to be very difficult, especially in places that
really matter, like large cities."

  Given a recent alarming report by the NAACP and People for the American
Way, the Ohio Democratic Party's cavalier attitude may be misplaced. Citing
intimidation tactics outlined in the report, such as sending security teams
to minority polling places, wrongly demanding I.D.'s and taking photos of
voters, the New York Times concluded, "The suppression of minority votes is
alive and well in 2004, driven by the sharp partisan divide across the
nation. Because many minority groups vote heavily Democratic, some
Republicans view keeping them from registering and voting as a tactic for
victory -- one that has a long history in American politics."

  "Basic democratic rights are being tampered with by political thugs," says
Casey. "Think about that. It's the most un-American thing you can possibly
do, besides spy for al-Qaida. So we're trying to pay heightened, advanced
attention to things that rarely surface until Election Day. It's after
everything is decided [that] some evidence comes to light, and there's some
reporting by an exhausted press corps, but it's already over. If you don't
call attention to it beforehand, to hold people accountable, then this
activity pays."

 

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