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By Dennis Willard
Beacon Journal staff writer
POSTED: 08:36 p.m. EDT, Jun 17, 2009
COLUMBUS: If you have been a voter for all or any part of the past 30 years, then a court settlement on Tuesday should be an insult to your democratic sensibilities
The Ohio League of Women Voters agreed to drop a federal lawsuit against the state in return for promises that Ohio would ''fix defects in the way it conducts its elections.''
In 2005, the league's Toledo chapter and 12 voters sued then Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell, then-Gov. Bob Taft and their predecessors to protect the right to vote and to ensure the vote counts.
Here's where it gets truly insulting.
The complaint chronicled ongoing deficiencies in the voting system for three decades.
So some of these problems have been around since Gerald Ford was president.
Now this is the part where it gets truly, truly insulting.
In order for the league to drop the lawsuit, the state must promise to stop messing around with the most important aspect of our democracy and start taking elections seriously.
And the to-do list for the state sounds like Elections 101, which raises an even bigger question: What has been going on in Ohio for 30 years?
First, local boards of elections must do advance planning for elections, figuring out where lines will be long and making sure enough voting machines are present, taking steps to secure the votes, handing out paper ballots in polling places with long lines, and communicating these ideas to the public.
It took a federal lawsuit to get this promise?
Let's go on.
Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner and her successor must study and report on why some provisional ballots were not counted in 2008, try to reduce the number in future elections and seek pre-election information on absentee ballots from local boards.
And she thinks she has time to run for the U.S. Senate.
Poll workers must be trained and recruited. This is not a mistake. You are not reading an idea from the turn of the last century. In federal court, that crazed assemblage of suffragettes, the League of Women Voters, wrestled this promise from the state on June 15, 2009.
The settlement also calls on local boards to conduct post-election reporting on precinct-level voting in the state's largest counties, including Summit, and across the state on voter registration, ballots cast and counted while monitoring the performance of the local boards.
''Duh'' is too refined of a comment to make at this point.
Good news for the physically disabled. The settlement requires local boards to ensure polling places are handicapped accessible.
This is a good time to be facing this issue straight on, considering 2009 is the 25th anniversary of the 1984 Voting Accessibility for the Elderly and Handicapped Act.
On to the issue of voting technology and security where the state has agreed to maintain improvements in these two areas while adopting procedures for paper-ballot backups, statewide standards for testing tabulating machines and other measures.
Granted, this is the one area in the past 30 years where there have been significant and challenging changes, but did we really need a federal lawsuit for compliance?
There is one outstanding issue brought to the table by the league, but unresolved in the settlement.
Ohio still has yet to implement a statewide voter-registration database.
Many of the problems in this lawsuit occurred on watches prior to Brunner and Gov. Ted Strickland taking office, but these two officeholders, particularly the governor's Bureau of Motor Vehicles, are responsible for this ongoing problem.
The statewide database is important so that local boards can cross-check to ensure Elmer Fudd has not registered in more than one county.
On Wednesday, Brunner and league representatives gathered at a press conference to cheer this historic settlement.
League President Meg Flack said the state will pay $450,000 as part of the settlement, but that was a savings considering that continued litigation could have cost as much as $5 million.
Brunner also boasted about the savings to the state, but she had little to say about the added cost of handicapped accessibility, poll-worker recruitment and training, data collection and analyses, and a myriad of other mandates the resolution will cost.
It is a pittance because one cannot attach a price tag to a vote cast and properly counted.
Still, one must wonder how much less expensive this all would have been if phased in over the past 30 years?
Dennis J. Willard can be reached at 614-224-1613 or dwillard@thebeaconjournal.com.
COLUMBUS: If you have been a voter for all or any part of the past 30 years, then a court settlement on Tuesday should be an insult to your democratic sensibilities
The Ohio League of Women Voters agreed to drop a federal lawsuit against the state in return for promises that Ohio would ''fix defects in the way it conducts its elections.''
In 2005, the league's Toledo chapter and 12 voters sued then Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell, then-Gov. Bob Taft and their predecessors to protect the right to vote and to ensure the vote counts.
Here's where it gets truly insulting.
The complaint chronicled ongoing deficiencies in the voting system for three decades.
So some of these problems have been around since Gerald Ford was president.
Now this is the part where it gets truly, truly insulting.
In order for the league to drop the lawsuit, the state must promise to stop messing around with the most important aspect of our democracy and start taking elections seriously.
And the to-do list for the state sounds like Elections 101, which raises an even bigger question: What has been going on in Ohio for 30 years?
First, local boards of elections must do advance planning for elections, figuring out where lines will be long and making sure enough voting machines are present, taking steps to secure the votes, handing out paper ballots in polling places with long lines, and communicating these ideas to the public.
It took a federal lawsuit to get this promise?
Let's go on.
Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner and her successor must study and report on why some provisional ballots were not counted in 2008, try to reduce the number in future elections and seek pre-election information on absentee ballots from local boards.
And she thinks she has time to run for the U.S. Senate.
Poll workers must be trained and recruited. This is not a mistake. You are not reading an idea from the turn of the last century. In federal court, that crazed assemblage of suffragettes, the League of Women Voters, wrestled this promise from the state on June 15, 2009.
The settlement also calls on local boards to conduct post-election reporting on precinct-level voting in the state's largest counties, including Summit, and across the state on voter registration, ballots cast and counted while monitoring the performance of the local boards.
''Duh'' is too refined of a comment to make at this point.
Good news for the physically disabled. The settlement requires local boards to ensure polling places are handicapped accessible.
This is a good time to be facing this issue straight on, considering 2009 is the 25th anniversary of the 1984 Voting Accessibility for the Elderly and Handicapped Act.
On to the issue of voting technology and security where the state has agreed to maintain improvements in these two areas while adopting procedures for paper-ballot backups, statewide standards for testing tabulating machines and other measures.
Granted, this is the one area in the past 30 years where there have been significant and challenging changes, but did we really need a federal lawsuit for compliance?
There is one outstanding issue brought to the table by the league, but unresolved in the settlement.
Ohio still has yet to implement a statewide voter-registration database.
Many of the problems in this lawsuit occurred on watches prior to Brunner and Gov. Ted Strickland taking office, but these two officeholders, particularly the governor's Bureau of Motor Vehicles, are responsible for this ongoing problem.
The statewide database is important so that local boards can cross-check to ensure Elmer Fudd has not registered in more than one county.
On Wednesday, Brunner and league representatives gathered at a press conference to cheer this historic settlement.
League President Meg Flack said the state will pay $450,000 as part of the settlement, but that was a savings considering that continued litigation could have cost as much as $5 million.
Brunner also boasted about the savings to the state, but she had little to say about the added cost of handicapped accessibility, poll-worker recruitment and training, data collection and analyses, and a myriad of other mandates the resolution will cost.
It is a pittance because one cannot attach a price tag to a vote cast and properly counted.
Still, one must wonder how much less expensive this all would have been if phased in over the past 30 years?
Dennis J. Willard can be reached at 614-224-1613 or dwillard@thebeaconjournal.com.
Comments
Click here to post your comments
Cuyahoga Falls, OH
Posted 01:20 AM, 06/18/2009
Filed in 2005? Another reason to hate attorneys. This is elections 101, yet somehow judges HELPED attorneys squeeze hundreds of thousands of dollars from tax payers and the LWV before they could do what should have been done in 2005.
