Ohio Voter Information

• Register by Monday, October 6th: If registering by mail, the envelope must be postmarked on or before October 6th. You can also register in person at a public library, motor vehicle bureau or county board of elections. For info and an online form to fill in and print out CLICK HERE.

• Check your registration: The State of Ohio now provides a search form to check that you are registered and give your polling location — CLICK HERE. If the online search does not find your registration, you can call your county elections board to check — for a directory of elections boards CLICK HERE.

• Absentee ballot: You can vote an absentee ballot by mail or in person at the elections board, without giving a reason, from Tuesday, September 30th, till the day before the election — INFO HERE. For an online absentee ballot request form to fill in and print out CLICK HERE

• Register and Vote same day: You can register and vote an absentee ballot the same day, from Tuesday, September 30th, through Monday, October 6th, at your county elections board office — for a directory of elections boards CLICK HERE.

• Vote (and bring ID): Election day is Tuesday, November 4th, voting hours are from 6:30 a.m. to 7:30 p.m. Bring your driver’s license, state photo ID or an ID showing your voter registration address, such as a utility bill — INFO HERE. For an Ohio sample ballot CLICK HERE.

• No vote challenges allowed at polling places: In 2004, long lines at some polling places were further slowed by Republican vote challengers. State law now requires challenges to be issued before election day.x⁹¹x⁸⁷

• Contribute: You can contribute to state candidates and get your money back as a credit on your Ohio income tax — up to $50 filing singly, or $100 filing jointly. The credit applies to these offices: governor, lieutenant governor, secretary of state, auditor of state, treasurer of state, attorney general, member of the state board of education, chief justice of the supreme court, justice of the supreme court, or member of the general assembly.x⁸⁹

Sources

Ohio Secretary of State’s Office

⁸⁰ ‘Analysis: Ohio 5-Day Window Suit’ by Sarah Cherry, Moritz College of Law, Ohio State University, September 25, 2008

Every newly registered early and absentee voter in Ohio — not just those who apply to vote an in-person absentee ballot— could be affected if the court decides that the Republicans’ interpretation of the law is correct and that a voter must be registered for 30 days prior to applying for an absentee ballot. Local officials probably do not currently check all absentee voters’ records to make sure the voter has been registered for 30 days before issuing an early or absentee ballot. However, with this lawsuit, the Republicans are now seeking to make that the practice. Changing the process by which local officials process ballot applications and distribute absentee ballots this late in the election season could cause substantial confusion and disorder.

⁸¹ ‘Ohio election officials brace for early voting’ By STEPHEN MAJORS, AP, 2008-09-30

For weeks, the Ohio GOP accused the state’s Democratic elections chief of interpreting early voting law to benefit her own party in a crucial swing state.

But the Republican-dominated Ohio Supreme Court decided on Monday that Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner was following the law when she ruled there is a six-day window in which voters can register and vote at the same time.

The decision — also backed by two separate federal judges — means election officials are preparing for the rush of early voting Tuesday, the first day absentee ballots are accepted in advance of the Nov. 4 presidential election.

⁸² ‘Vote Caging and the Attorney General’ by J. Gerald Hebert and Brian Dupre, The Campaign Legal Center, July 23, 2007

The Republican National Committee has been under a federal consent decree not to engage in the practice since getting caught in the 1981 gubernatorial election in New Jersey. Despite the injunction, which remains in effect, vote caging schemes continue to be used as an integral part of an ongoing campaign to suppress minority voting rights.

To bring these schemes to an end will require vigorous prosecution by the United States Department of Justice. But the Department’s priorities have shifted over the years, with the Bush-Ashcroft-Gonzales Justice Department not only ignoring vote caging schemes, but actively working to give them a boost in the courts.

⁸³ ‘Inside the Vote Cage: Griffin, Goodling and McNulty (No, Not Another Lawfirm)’ by J. Gerald Hebert, The Campaign Legal Center, June 20, 2007

“Sometimes vote suppression is as important in this business as vote-getting.” – Carl Golden, Republican Campaign Spokesperson

…

Vote caging is an illegal voter suppression technique used to keep minorities (mostly blacks) from voting. It’s a relatively-unknown cousin in the nefarious family of vote suppression techniques. The practice has been adopted and perverted from a practice utilized by direct-mailers to clean up their mailing lists by sending out mail to specific individuals and seeing what comes back. The real problems start when political operatives start cherry picking areas likely to vote against their candidates. And it’s inextricably connected to concerns about the politicization of the Justice Department being raised on Capitol Hill.

⁸⁴ ‘Ohio secretary of state prevents vote caging’ By BEN ADLER, Politico, 9/13/08

Kevin DeWine, a Republican in the Ohio State House of Representatives who authored the 2006 law, says it is not an undue burden on people whose mail is returned to show an identification card at the voting booth or to vote provisionally. “People think provisional ballots are a bad thing,” he said. “I think they are a safeguard on the integrity of the ballots.”

⁸⁵ ‘GOP Plans and Denials to Challenge Foreclosed Voters Examined’ By J. Gerald Hebert , Campaign Legal Center Blog, September 29, 2008.

As for Ohio, the initial story there suggested that an Ohio GOP official would not rule out the possibility that the party would challenge voters at the polls stating. Quoting the Franklin County GOP chairman, the Columbus Dispatch reported that Priesse “didn’t rule out challenges before Nov. 4.”

The latest story this week on possible efforts to challenge foreclosed voters came from the NY Times, and contained this passage: “Asked whether his party planned to use foreclosure information to compile challenge lists, Robert Bennett, a spokesman for the Ohio Republican Party, said the party did not discuss its election strategies in public.” While this is not an admission that a plan exists to use foreclosure lists to challenge voters, it sure isn’t a denial either.

⁸⁶ ‘Secretary Brunner Clarifies Challenge Laws to Protect Voters’ – Ohio Secretary of State’s office, 9/5/2008

Providing guidance to local election officials, Secretary Brunner directed that 60-day notices sent by boards of election to voters that are returned as undeliverable cannot be used as the sole reason for cancelling an Ohioan’s voter registration. These notices are required by law to be sent to voters by boards of elections.

Secretary Brunner also called on the General Assembly to amend this voter registration challenge law passed in 2006, urging that the law conflicts with federal law and violates the U.S. Constitution.

…

In Friday’s directive, Secretary Brunner also advised boards of elections that providing due process on challenges to voter registrations will diminish the likelihood of election lawsuits that can disrupt election planning and administration. The directive requires: providing every challenged voter with notice and an opportunity to be heard; holding a public hearing on all challenges; and holding all hearings prior to Election Day.

⁸⁷ ‘Foreclosed-on voters using old addresses could snag election’ By Robert Vitale, THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH, July 6, 2008

Although pre-election challenges still are possible, state law now bars party challengers at polling places.

⁸⁸ ‘Ohio elections chief challenges registration law’ The Associated Press, September 07, 2008

A review conducted by her lawyers found that the state law violates federal voting rights laws and the U.S. Constitution, making Ohio counties vulnerable to lawsuits should they use the returned mail as the sole reason for canceling a registration, Brunner said.

Undelivered election notices become public records when they are returned to county boards of elections. A political party could then file a public records request and challenge those voters’ eligibility, especially in precincts where the opposite party has a majority. The process is known as “vote caging.”

The 2006 law enables local election officials to side with the challengers before giving the voters a chance to respond, Brunner said.

⁸⁹ League of Women Voters of Ohio

Any Ohioan who pays state income tax is entitled to claim a 100 % tax credit for contributions to Ohio candidates, up to a limit of $50 per individual or $100 for two persons filing jointly. The tax credit applies only to statewide (including the Ohio Supreme Court but not including U.S. Senate) and to state legislative candidates.

⁹⁰ ‘Was the 2004 Election Stolen?’ by ROBERT F. KENNEDY JR., Rolling Stone, Jun 01, 2006

To stem the tide of new registrations, the Republican National Committee and the Ohio Republican Party attempted to knock tens of thousands of predominantly minority and urban voters off the rolls through illegal mailings known in electioneering jargon as ‘‘caging.’‘ During the Eighties, after the GOP used such mailings to disenfranchise nearly 76,000 black voters in New Jersey and Louisiana, it was forced to sign two separate court orders agreeing to abstain from caging.(63) But during the summer of 2004, the GOP targeted minority voters in Ohio by zip code, sending registered letters to more than 200,000 newly registered voters(64) in sixty-five counties.(65) On October 22nd, a mere eleven days before the election, Ohio Republican Party Chairman Bob Bennett — who also chairs the board of elections in Cuyahoga County — sought to invalidate the registrations of 35,427 voters who had refused to sign for the letters or whose mail came back as undeliverable.(66) Almost half of the challenged voters were from Democratic strongholds in and around Cleveland.(67)

There were plenty of valid reasons that voters had failed to respond to the mailings: The list included people who couldn’t sign for the letters because they were serving in the U.S. military, college students whose school and home addresses differed,(68) and more than 1,000 homeless people who had no permanent mailing address.(69) But the undeliverable mail, Bennett claimed, proved the new registrations were fraudulent.

By law, each voter was supposed to receive a hearing before being stricken from the rolls.(70) Instead, in the week before the election, kangaroo courts were rapidly set up across the state at Blackwell’s direction that would inevitably disenfranchise thousands of voters at a time(71) — a process that one Democratic election official in Toledo likened to an ‘‘inquisition.’‘(72) Not that anyone was given a chance to actually show up and defend their right to vote: Notices to challenged voters were not only sent out impossibly late in the process, they were mailed to the very addresses that the Republicans contended were faulty.(73) Adding to the atmosphere of intimidation, sheriff’s detectives in Sandusky County were dispatched to the homes of challenged voters to investigate the GOP’s claims of fraud.(74) — LaRaye Brown, ‘‘Elections Board Plans Hearing For Challenges,’‘ The News Messenger, October 26, 2004.

⁹¹ ‘Was the 2004 Election Stolen?’ by ROBERT F. KENNEDY JR., Rolling Stone, Jun 01, 2006

In another move certain to add to the traffic jam at the polls, the GOP deployed 3,600 operatives on Election Day to challenge voters in thirty-one counties — most of them in predominantly black and urban areas.(157) Although it was billed as a means to ‘‘ensure that voters are not disenfranchised by fraud,’‘(158) Republicans knew that the challengers would inevitably create delays for eligible voters. Even Mark Weaver, the GOP’s attorney in Ohio, predicted in late October that the move would ‘‘create chaos, longer lines and frustration.’‘(159)

…

In fact, Blackwell gave Republican challengers unprecedented access to polling stations, where they intimidated voters, worsening delays in Democratic precincts. By the end of the day, thanks to a whirlwind of legal wrangling, the GOP had even gotten permission to use the discredited list of 35,000 names from its illegal caging effort to challenge would-be voters.(162) According to the survey by the DNC, nearly 5,000 voters across the state were turned away at the polls because of registration challenges — even though federal law required that they be provided with provisional ballots.(163)

By Quinn Hungeski – Posted at G.N.N. & TheParagraph.com

Seven former Sequoia workers, with a combined 161 years with the company, appeared on the news show to tell the story.

Sequoia Workers on Dan Rather Reports

Sequoia management switched from their reliable card stock suppliers …

x[Pressman Trainer] Greg Smith: The paper changed. They decided that they wanted to go with a certain brand. And I think that everybody’s opinion was this 2000 election was going to be our demise. Because of the poor quality of what we put out the door.

Dan Rather: For decades Sequoia had ordered its punch card ballot paper from James River or International Paper; the only mills that had traditionally offered voting punch card stock. In 2000, the company switched to a new mill, Boise Cascade, which had virtually no experience making tab card stock.

recycled rejected paper rolls and tried to hide the fact with xeroxed labels …

“… But the workers say the problems they were having with the paper went beyond a mere change in suppliers. They say they were suddenly seeing paper rolls that weren’t clearly even Boise Cascade paper, because these rolls had Xeroxed Boise shipping labels, rather than genuine ones. …”

x[Pressman] E. Washington: One of the pressman … Bob Krause … had a thing if the paper was real bad, that he would write little nasty letters on the side of the roll. Well, we got one of those rolls back, with the same letter that he had written on it. So, then, that’s when it went through our mind that some of that paper was getting rewound and sent back.

Dan Rather: [The roll] presumably leaves the plant or goes somewhere and then it comes back with one of these Xerox Boise labels on it?

E. Washington: Yeah.

Dan Rather: Did you know about this as well?

Greg Smith: Well, I had the same suspicions as everybody else did as far as the paper. Felt that it, it was rejected and it was taken out of the plant and stored somewhere and then relabeled and brought back.

Dan Rather: Well let’s just go down the line — is there any doubt in your mind that the company was aware that the ballots for the 2000 general election … were being made with inferior paper?

Various: No doubt. They were told every day. Yeah. They were told everyday.

and seemingly fraudulent shipping documents.

Dan Rather: Sequoia management insists that all of the paper used to make punch cards ordered for the presidential election of 2000 came from a single shipment of some half a million pounds of Boise paper delivered directly to the Exeter plant.

We asked Sequoia to provide a complete set of shipping documents that would prove its version of events. They didn’t provide all the shipping documents, and what they did give us only raised more questions …

… spell it out for me. What’s missing?

x[Controller] Suzy Keller: The signed documentation that the paper was actually received. There has to be a signature on there, and there is no signature. Did the paper arrive or not? I can’t substantiate that, there is no signature on those packing lists.

Dan Rather: We also asked Tom Ayers the former head of shipping and receiving to review the documents Sequoia produced. Ayers was skeptical of them. He said that he had never stamped invoices as received, the company so far as he knows, didn’t even have such a stamp, all Ayers had ever done he says was sign and date the receiving invoices. … We also turned to … Walter Rantanen … perhaps the country’s leading forensic paper analyst. He works with top government agencies including the secret service and the F.B.I. …

… Rantanen analyzed the fibers in the Florida ballots. He discovered none of the cards had the composition of Boise Cascade tab stock, which contains softwood from the Northwest. He also sent Boise Cascade a Florida ballot sample. Boise confirmed the paper wasn’t theirs.

Management overrode workers’ quality control tries …

x[Pressman] Cy Turner: We took great pride in the quality of ballots we put out; there was no leeway. … A pressman running a press could reject a roll [of paper], kick it back to raw stock, say this roll was no good.

xGreg Smith: We had quite a bit of input, but towards the end, we had no input whatsoever. … After 1999, it was all over. It was like we were all put on the shelf.”

x[Quality Control Inspector] Linda Evans: … there was card bins I wouldn’t sign off. I refused to sign em. They’d sit there overnight and they would say, “you gonna sign em?” and I’d go “no”. Come in the following morning, all the bins had been signed off and moved to the front. … Which means someone else signed em off and said let em go.

ordered the chads of ballots for Palm Beach County to be misaligned …

E. Washington: We were told to run those cards short because they would grow by the time they got to Florida in the humidity.

Dan Rather: Running short didn’t mean the cards were actually shorter. It simply means lowering, on the face of the ballot, the position of the chads. So the orders were for the ballots going to Palm Beach, don’t make them meet the normal specifications?

E. Washington: Right.

…

Dan Rather: Were you surprised by it?

E. Washington: Oh yeah, I questioned it, and I even had the plant manager sign it. Because I was having arguments with quality control about the size. And so I said, ‘The only way I am going to run it is if Brian (the plant manager) comes out here and signs it.’ He came out, he signed the ‘okay’ card to run ‘em.

…

Dan Rather: Had this happened to you before?

E. Washington: No.

Dan Rather: Was there any other area, somebody say “Well these ballots are going to Louisiana Or Texas Or Arizona?”

E. Washington: Never.

…

Dan Rather: … Linda Evans recalls the chad testing of ballots manufactured for the 2000 election.

Linda Evans: Chads were falling out. Chads were hanging up. We’ve got a machine that we call a gang punch, which in a sense punches out all the holes at the same time. … They weren’t punching out. They were hanging up all over the place. They were aware of that. Oh, management was aware of it. We told ‘em.

…

Dan Rather: We asked Evans if she could demonstrate for us the chad testing that had led to her concerns. This became possible when last, Fall Palm Beach County released over 200,000 unvoted ballots left over from the 2000 election. We had a gang punch identical to the one used by Linda Evans at the factory, made by an engineer familiar with Sequoia’s test instruments. Rantanen met with Linda Evans at her home in Exeter and they tested ballots together.

(they test a ballot)

Walter Rantanen: Oh, oh. It’s got something.

Linda Evans: Its got a whole bunch of somethings.

Gang punched ballot – Dan Rather Reports

Dan Rather: While older Sequoia ballots, made earlier, for another county, punched perfectly, The Palm Beach ballots made for the 2000 election showed a troubling pattern: many cards showed clusters of hanging chads, primarily in the column that contained the presidential candidates.

and after the election tried to destroy all evidence.

Dan Rather: When you got to the plant in the days after the election, what was the scene there?

E. Washington: It was chaotic. They were moving stuff, hiding stuff.

Dan Rather: They were hiding stuff?

E. Washington: Yeah, because the news people wanted to come in and talk to people and they wanted to tour the plant.

E. Washington: We were told to get rid of everything, anything that had Florida on it had to disappear.

Dan Rather: And did it disappear?

E. Washington: Yup. Nothing with any kind of Boise Cascade labels was supposed to be left around.

Dan Rather: And that word came from whom?

E. Washington: Brian Lehrman. … The plant manager.

Dan Rather: We repeatedly invited Sequoia to have Brian Lehrman on camera to answer some of the workers allegations. Sequoia declined.

The workers gave their thoughts on the affair:

Greg Smith: My own personal opinion was the touch screen voting system wasn’t getting off the ground like that they, like they would hope. And because they weren’t having any problems with paper ballots. So, I feel like they, deliberately did all this to have problems with the paper ballots so the electronically voting systems would get off the ground, and which it did in a big way.

…

Cy Turner: You hope for the best in people and you hope it was just some bad circumstances that came together all in one place. But it should matter to people and they should check it out, and investigate it more thoroughly, because if something else was going on, and these people profited by intentionally screwing up our elections, they ought to pay. They ought to pay hard.

…

x[Shipping and Receiving Foreman] Tom Ayers: I don’t think any company should profit from something like this, I mean, it is almost to the point where it would be illegal. You are putting out a product that you know isn’t going to work to make a profit.

…

Suzy Keller: For years elections took so much pride, they all took pride in the quality of card we put out, and this card that went into Florida created a lot of problems. A lot of problems. Substandard paper? Are we trying to force something here? Are we trying to change the elections community? I thought those things. I can’t substantiate those things but that’s what I thought.

…

x[Manager] Giles Jensen: It was something that that really influenced the direction of this, this nation. Intentionally or unintentionally. Let’s leave it that way. But, it’s a sad state of affairs that it takes seven years for somebody to actually ask the question to the people that might have the answer.

Sources

¹⁰ ‘Dan Rather Reports: The Trouble with Touch Screens (and more) – transcript

HDNet video – Sequoia punch card story starts around 38:20

¹¹ ‘Election 2000: Our final tally’ – Unknown News – Palm Beach County “certified” results: Bush 152,951 – Gore 269,732

‘The Florida Overvote: Tragic Mistake, or Katharine Harris with Tweezers?’ – Sharman Braff – Palm Beach County Overvote 19,100 (4.2% of ballots cast)

‘Newer machines had more under-votes’ By Marc Caputo, Palm Beach Post – Tuesday, November 28, 2000 – Palm Beach County Undervote: 10,311 (2.3% of ballots cast)

¹² Google News archive search – A search for the words “Florida”, “Sequoia” and “Rather” from the Dan Rather Reports air date of 8/14/2007 to two months later, returned just one mainstream news reference to the bad ballots story — a letter to the editor of the Mobile Press-Register.

But many blogs covered the story – among them Wired and Brad Blog, which also did further reporting.

Ohio Voter Information

• Register by October 10th: If registering by mail, the envelope must be postmarked on or before October 10th. Here is a link to the registration form. You can register in person at a public library, motor vehicle bureau or county board of elections – info here.

• Check your registration: Call your county board of elections or the state-wide elections hotline (866-687-8683) – info here

• Absentee ballot: You can vote an absentee ballot by mail or in person at the elections board, without giving a reason, from now till the day before the election – info here

• Vote (and bring ID): Election day is Tuesday, November 7th, from 6:30 a.m. to 7:30 p.m. Bring your driver’s license, state photo ID or an ID showing your voter registration address, such as a utility bill – info here

• Contribute: You can contribute to state candidates and get your money back as a credit on your Ohio income tax – up to $50 filing singly, or $100 filing jointly. The credit applies to these offices: governor, lieutenant governor, secretary of state, auditor of state, treasurer of state, attorney general, member of the state board of education, chief justice of the supreme court, justice of the supreme court, or member of the general assembly. See info here

Sources

¹ ‘Was the 2004 Election Stolen?’ by ROBERT F. KENNEDY JR., Rolling Stone

² ‘Testimony of Jennifer Brunner before Ohio Senate Rules Committee’ Wednesday, December 7, 2005 – pdf file

Since 2002, according to the League of Women Voters, there have been only four
individual instances of vote fraud in the entire State of Ohio. Mandating a technical and
cumbersome identification process is a “solution” that creates a problem.

This provision disproportionately affects the elderly, the impoverished and minority
communities in Ohio. It also affects many young and first-time voters who may not have
yet obtained a proper form of ID. A recent Wisconsin study finds that 30% of youth from
18 to 24 years do not have official state identification, with 98% of college students
having only non-local IDs. The League of Women Voters in Ohio found that 4% of
adults 18 and over do not have a driver’s license or state issued ID, more than 300,000
Ohioans. Many elderly Ohioans no longer have driver’s licenses.

…

At the same time, because you are eliminating the ability for the board of elections or
Secretary of State to utilize split shifts of poll workers, you have a retiree working the
13-plus-hour day at the polling place who must use discretion to determine if the ID
presented is valid. All the while, lines keep getting longer, people are getting tired,
pollworkers are getting tired, and people are upset and uncertain about being told they
can only vote a provisional ballot, when many times, they have known their pollworkers
for years, and their pollworkers know them. …

³ ‘Am. Sub. H.B. 3 126th General Assembly (As Passed by the General Assembly)’ Effective date: May 2, 2006; certain provisions effective June 1, 2006, and January 1, 2009

Requires all voters to provide to election officials at the polling place on the day of an election proof of the voter’s identity in the form of a current and valid “photo identification” (see below), a military identification that shows the voter’s name and current address, or a copy of a current utility bill, bank statement, government check, paycheck, or other government document, other than a previously mentioned notice of an election or a notice of voter registration mailed by a board of elections, that shows the voter’s name and current address. If the voter provides a driver’s license or a state identification card that does not contain the voter’s current residence address, the voter must provide the last four digits of the voter’s driver’s license number or state identification card number; the precinct election official must then mark the poll list or signature pollbook to indicate that the voter has provided a driver’s license or state identification card with a former address and record the last four digits of the voter’s driver’s license number or state identification card number. (R.C. 3503.16(B)(1)(a) and 3505.18(A)(1).)⁵

⁴ ‘Why Common Cause-Ohio had to go to court on HB 3’ by Samuel Gresham, Common Cause – .doc file

We always believed that this legislation as structured would have the net effect of deterring and disenfranchising several classes of voters in the state of Ohio. Older Ohioans that do not have the proper identification, as outlined in the bill, such as a driver’s license or a utility bill that identifies them by name and address, will have more difficulties executing their right to vote. Students who live in university housing that may not have an address that identifies their residence will find their ability to register and execute their right to vote more difficult. Individuals who move frequently or persons with no evidence of permanent residency will find it difficult both to register and to exercise their right to vote.

It is the opinion of the leadership of Common Cause Ohio that HB 3 could be a devastating piece of legislation that could reverse all the voter registration and voter turnout gains of our organizations and sister organizations over the last eight years.

⁵ ‘Ohio: HB 3 Would Make It Harder to Vote, Harder to Ensure Accuracy, Harder to Recount’ By John Burik, Phil Fry, Susan Truitt, and Pete Johnson, CASE Ohio, January 30, 2006

• Issue 2 – Vote by Mail: In the 2004 election many Ohioans waited in line over an hour, some as long as ten hours, to vote³. Thousands left the long lines without voting. Issue 2 would allow any voter to vote by mail within the 35 days before election day.

• Issue 3 – Limit Campaign Contributions: In the year after the 2004 election, news reporters exposed much corruption involving the winning politicians and their contributors. One large contributor and fund-raiser, the coin dealer Thomas Noe, got $50 million of the state’s worker’s compensation program money to put into rare coins⁴. Many coins went missing and the state is now investigating him for stealing millions⁵. Governor Bob Taft was convicted on four counts of failing to report gifts from contributors⁶. Issue 3 aims to slow large contributors by lowering the contribution limit for state-wide races from $10,000 to $2000, and by reinstating the ban on corporate contributions.

• Issue 4 – Stop the Political Gerrymander: In the last four elections, no incumbent US Congressmen from Ohio lost⁷. The ruling party draws the legislative districts to win as many as possible. This results in ‘gerrymanders’ such as the 13th congressional district, which corrals Democratic-voting precincts while snaking from Lorain to south of Akron. Issue 4 would give redistricting authority to an independent board, which would do its first redistricting before the 2008 election.

• Issue 5 – State Board of Elections: In 2004 Kenneth Blackwell, as Secretary of State, was in charge of administering the election, while he also served as a co-chairman of President Bush’s campaign in Ohio. His actions served to suppress Democratic party votes. For example, he made a late decision that provisional ballots could only be issued to voters in the correct precinct, a rule which was more restrictive than the prior Ohio standard⁸. Issue 5 would move authority for administering elections to a bi-partisan board, much like the boards of elections that are in place in Ohio’s 88 counties.

After a problem-ridden election in 2004, Ohio voters can, one year later, vote on possible solutions.

Gerrymander

Ohio 13th Congressional District

Further Reading

Issues pros and cons + links to ballot language – THE LEAGUE OF WOMEN VOTERS OF OHIO

Sources

¹ ‘Preserving Democracy: What Went Wrong in Ohio’ – Status Report of the House Judiciary Committee Democratic Staff, January 5, 2005 [¶]

² Reform Ohio Now [¶]

³ ‘Preserving Democracy: What Went Wrong in Ohio’ – Status Report of the House Judiciary Committee Democratic Staff, January 5, 2005 “Numerous irregularities were reported throughout Ohio. In particular, in predominately Democratic and African-American areas, the voting process was chaotic, taxing and ultimately fruitless for many. The repeated and suspicious challenges of voter eligibility and a lack of inadequate number of voting machines in these areas worked in concert to slow voting to a crawl, with voting lines as long as ten hours.”

⁴ ‘The Noe File’ (Coingate Timeline) – The Toledo Blade, 2005-10-28 “April 3, 2005: The Blade reports the Ohio Bureau of Workers’ Compensation invested $50 million in rare coins with Maumee coin dealer Tom Noe, a prominent GOP donor and a Bush “Pioneer” for raising at least $100,000 for the President’s re-election campaign.”

⁵ ‘The Noe File’ (Coingate Timeline) – The Toledo Blade, 2005-10-28 “Sept. 29, 2005: Attorney General Jim Petro accuses Tom Noe of stealing millions from the state’s coin funds. Mr. Petro, in a lawsuit, charges that Mr. Noe engaged in check forgery, presented false profits, and stole millions from the state’s $50 million rare coin investment.”

⁶ ‘The Noe File’ (Coingate Timeline) – The Toledo Blade, 2005-10-28 — Aug. 18, 2005: Governor Taft pleads no contest and is convicted of four ethics violations for not properly reporting gifts. He becomes the first sitting Ohio governor convicted of a crime. He is fined $4,000 but avoids jail time.”

⁷ ‘OHIO Rankings 2004’ – fairvote.org “In 1992-1994, five incumbents lost their seats. Since then 70 of 71 incumbents have been re-elected.”

⁸ ‘Preserving Democracy: What Went Wrong in Ohio’ – Status Report of the House Judiciary Committee Democratic Staff, January 5, 2005
“Mr. Blackwell’s decision to restrict provisional ballots resulted in the disenfranchisement of tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of voters, again predominantly minority and Democratic voters. Mr.Blackwell’s decision departed from past Ohio law on provisional ballots, and there is no evidence that a broader construction would have led to any significant disruption at the polling places, and did not do so in other states.”