Events Calendar
In This Section
Most Read Stories
Man robbed at Tallmadge Avenue eatery
Another winter punch heading toward Ohio
Four teens restrain man, take items from his Akron home
Complaints against officer keep coming
Police: Ohio girl dies after fall into snow bank
Region makes way for latest batch of snow; cancellations rise
Cuyahoga Falls residents come home to find burning couch on balcony
Blogs:
First Bell - On Education:
No City of Akron basketball tonight
Pets:
Pet telethon re-airs
The Heldenfiles:
Chipmunks "Squeakquel" on DVD/BD March 30
Akron Zips:
Late surge gives Zips ugly road win
Tribe Matters:
Blogmail response on Hafner
Cleveland Browns:
Stallworth's contract terminated
Balanced Ledger:
QB in Browns future: another mock draft
Kent State Sports:
KSU Notes – February 9
Cleveland Cavaliers:
NBA Power Rankings from Around the Internet
Buckeye Blogging:
Buckeyes grab 18 players on signing day
Varsity Letters:
Garfield at Buchtel basketball
All Da King's Men:
Palin At The Tea Party Convention
Blog of Mass Destruction:
Republican Pre-Conditions
Akron Law Café:
Citizens United v. F.E.C. (Part 4): Kennedy's and O'Connor's Basic Approaches to Constitutional Decisionmaking – Top Down and Bottom Up
Car Chase:
Collector Car Hobby Loses One of the Best—Jim Roll
Let's Talk Real Estate:
Decisions Decisions: Credit Cards or Your Mortgage?
Ohio Travels with Betty:
Loucile is looking for a Lake Erie getaway in June for three kids, ages 1, 3, and 5.
Sound Check:
Talk of the Town – Top entertainment picks for the weekend
HRLite House:
Track HR Research
Akron Gamer:
Makers of 'Castle Crashers' unveil 'BattleBlock Theater'
See Jane Style:
Do IT this week: Layering
Ohio's secretary of state sees the real issues
By Steve Hoffman
Beacon Journal editorial writer
Published on Thursday, Dec 04, 2008
COLUMBUS: While lame-duck Republican legislators chased after voter fraud, a post-election conference convened here Tuesday by Jennifer Brunner also reinforced the notion that the proper reaction to the avoidance of electoral chaos in Ohio on Nov. 4 was indeed ''whew!,'' not ''hooray!,'' but for different reasons.
In other words, there are fixes needed to make sure the state's elections machinery cranks out reliable, litigation-free results. It's just that attacking voter fraud isn't one of them, mainly because nobody can find much of it.
So where should Ohio's secretary of state, a Democrat, concentrate? Besides urging the governor, fellow-Democrat Ted Strickland, to veto a hastily conceived Republican bill moving through the Senate, the answer evident during the elections summit was Ohio's overreliance on provisional ballots.
Republicans' concerns about using computer cross-checks to verify voter registrations and eliminating a one-week period during which first-time voters may register and cast an absentee ballot pale by comparison. (It bears repeating that the state's voter database needs an overhaul before it can be used with reliability and that the absentee ballots Republicans are so upset about were not counted until local boards verified the registrations.)
Provisional ballots are a real problem, not an illusion. A legal fight over about 1,000 of them in Franklin County is crucial to the outcome of a recount in a very close U.S. House race. It could have been a lot worse. As part of a panel discussion on voter identification and provisional balloting, Ned Foley, director of the election law center at the Moritz College of Law at Ohio State, outlined the dimensions of the problem.
About 200,000 provisional ballots were cast in Ohio on Election Day, far more than in most other states and 3.2 percent of the total. Obama won Ohio by about 4 percentage points, so those ballots never became an issue. But in 2004, when George W. Bush edged out John Kerry in Ohio by about 118,000 votes (2.5 percentage points), locking up the presidency for a second term, Kerry's lawyers looked carefully.
Then, 158,000 ballots were cast provisionally, meaning questions about voter registration prevented them from being counted immediately. Kerry's lawyers did the math, concluding it was unrealistic to expect the provisional ballots to break almost entirely in his direction. They didn't.
Still, Ohio appears to be a lawsuit waiting to happen. Remember how Lee Fisher, now lieutenant governor, won the attorney general's race in 1990 by 1,234 votes? Jimmy Carter carried Ohio in 1976 by 11,116 votes.
Studies have shown that about 80 percent of provisional ballots cast in Ohio are counted. That's the good news. The bad news is that 20 percent are tossed. That would be about 40,000 ballots, given present trends.
Let's say half of those rejected get tossed because the voters are not really registered, a figure in line with newspaper studies of provisional balloting in Ohio. That assumes voter registration rolls are completely accurate, which they are not, but let's not get too picky.
Assuming rejections based on registration are legitimate, that means 20,000 provisional ballots get dumped because of errors such as voting in the wrong precinct (in Ohio, even though not required by federal law, provisional ballots must be cast in the right precinct) or failure to completely fill out the information required on the ballot envelope (the big issue in Franklin County).
Both can be attributed to poll worker, not voter, error. So, Foley calculates, any statewide race decided by 20,000 or fewer votes would probably end up within the margin of litigation.
By comparison, other battleground states don't use nearly as many provisional ballots. In Missouri, about 7,000 provisional ballots were cast Nov. 4, Foley said, about 0.2 percent of the total. In Virginia, about 4,500 were cast, about 0.1 percent of the total.
Ironically, Republicans have created a lot of the problem by insisting on the ''wrong precinct'' rule and pushing through a new, but confusing, voter-identification law. Poll workers, frustrated by the complexities, give voters a provisional ballot. Both Virginia and Missouri have voter ID laws, but seem to manage fine.
More accurate voter registration lists, dropping the ''wrong precinct'' rule and counting provisional ballots when the envelope contains enough information to verify registration would go a long way toward reducing both the number of provisional ballots cast and the potential for legal challenges.
Brunner deserves credit for confronting such issues so soon after Election Day. In all, she heard from five panels (this writer chimed in on shortening the absentee voting period). Another session may be held in February. By then, the lame ducks will have flown the pond.
Hoffman is a Beacon Journal editorial writer. He can be reached at 330-996-3740 or e-mailed at slhoffman@thebeaconjournal.com.
COLUMBUS: While lame-duck Republican legislators chased after voter fraud, a post-election conference convened here Tuesday by Jennifer Brunner also reinforced the notion that the proper reaction to the avoidance of electoral chaos in Ohio on Nov. 4 was indeed ''whew!,'' not ''hooray!,'' but for different reasons.
Get the full article here.
Comments
Click here to post your comments
