“More Ohio Voting Problems”: Thousands Of Mail-In Ballot Applications May Have Been Unfairly Rejected
It’s no secret that the presidential race could come down to Ohio. The Buckeye State has loomed large for months, and word is, both Romney and Obama will be in Columbus on Election Night. According to Nate Silver, there’s a nearly 50-percent chance that the state will determine the election outcome. All eyes seem to be there—when WaPo’s The Fix shifted it from “leans Democratic” to “toss up” yesterday on the electoral map, half the internet seemed to respond with either cheers or jeers.
But while everyone’s been watching the polls and political rallies, the chances that the election will be mired in confusion and controversy increased this week. Thousands of requests for mail-in ballots across the state may have been unfairly rejected, thanks to a technical glitch in the data-sharing software between the state Bureau of Motor Vehicles and the Secretary of State’s office. The idea is that when a voter updates her address at the BMV, it also gets updated at the Secretary of State’s office. But for 65,000 registered voters, the updates weren’t made. About half of those voters submitted a separate update to the voting registrar. That left 33,000 people whose address on the voter rolls did not match their actual address. The information is now being updated, so that by Election Day, the rolls should be correct.
But there’s still a big problem for voters who chose to request mail-in ballots—an option Secretary of State Jon Husted has repeatedly encouraged. It’s hard to know how many of the 33,000 requested absentee ballots, but those who did were probably rejected for the address discrepancy. The Cuyahoga County Board of Elections has already found 865 requests for ballots have been unfairly rejected. According to the Columbus Dispatch, the Northeast Ohio Voter Advocates (NOVA) estimates that if the same rate holds true across the state, 4,500 registered voters may have not have received the requested ballots, and another 6,000 provisional ballots might go uncounted. (Those who request absentee ballots and then choose to vote in person must vote provisionally.) This week, NOVA’s research director, Norman Robbins, sent a letter to Husted requesting that he order all counties to doublecheck whether requests had been wrongfully rejected.
Husted, who’s come under fire from voting-rights advocates for trying to limit early-voting hours, has bragged repeatedly in press releases about the state’s absentee voting program—just Tuesday, his office sent a press release boasting that “1.2 million Ohioans have already cast ballots.” But there’s been no press release on the address mix-up. Ostensibly, there was enough time to get the wrongly rejected voters their mail-in ballots, but with the election only days away, they’ll need to send them back at lightening speed. According to the Secretary of State’s website, the mail-in ballots must be received by Saturday.
Even then, the mail-in ballots won’t all be counted; as I wrote last week, a new study shows that once sent in, mail-in ballots have a higher rate of being unfairly tossed out than any other form of voting. Nobody can say how many Ohioans will have their votes—or their requests for ballots—wrongfully rejected. But no matter what, it will be far too many.
By: Abby Rapoport, The American Prospect, November 2, 2012
“Hanging In The Balance”: The Supreme Court, The Elections And Beyond
Just a few elections ago, I remember people wore button that said, “It’s the Supreme Court, stupid.” But during this fall election season, the future of the Supreme Court has received very little mainstream attention, even though decisions by that august body have an impact that can last far longer than the term of a member of the House or Senate and certainly longer than that of any single president. On the current court, four justices are 74 years old or older — two from each side of the ideological divide, and it is quite likely the next president will pick at least one new one.
What hangs in the balance? Many issues but of particular note is: Roe v. Wade. It need not be completely overturned for abortion to become out of reach for the vast majority of American women, or to undermine their autonomy in making this most personal decision. In fact 87 percent of all U.S. counties — counties in which 35 percent of all women in the US now live — already lack an abortion provider. Efforts to make abortion even more inaccessible continue apace, with many states passing huge increases in anti-abortion regulations after the election of 2010. The fate of those laws with this Supreme Court remains to be seen, but should any of them reach the court, a majority may well seize the opportunity to strike down Roe in its entirely or eviscerate it beyond recognition.
Years of progress on keeping the principle of separation of religion and state alive and well is also endangered. Despite a track record in the law that upholds government enforcement of anti-discrimination laws regardless of religious belief — for example, you can’t refuse to serve an African-American a cup of coffee based on a biblical belief of inferiority — the current court may give employers the right to cite their religious beliefs as a justification for discriminating against women by denying them insurance coverage for contraceptives, even when the employer isn’t paying for it.
Other reforms of the mid-20th century are also at stake. Laws that finally made it illegal to discriminate on the basis of race, religion, gender, and national origin are under attack. The basic principles may remain, but the ability to enforce them has repeatedly been weakened by the Supreme Court, most recently in the Lilly Ledbetter case when the court rendered an unreasonably narrow interpretation of the federal law against job discrimination. The long Supreme Court campaign against affirmative action could produce another setback by spring in Fisher v. Texas case heard October 10, if efforts to achieve diversity in higher education are overturned.
Voting rights protections, the bedrock of the 1960s civil rights revolution, are being unraveled in many states, and appeals to the Supreme Court are certain to happen in the next session. The new state laws undermine the idea that government should make voting as easy as is reasonably possible. The Supreme Court’s faulty 2008 decision in Crawford v. Marion County Election Board, an Indiana case upholding photo ID requirement without any inquiry into their chilling effect, has reaped a whirlwind of efforts to disfranchise millions.
The Supreme Court’s willingness to reverse long-standing precedent in the service of an ideological agenda is epitomized by its decision in Citizens United where the court went out of its way to rule that corporations have the same free speech rights as living people. That ruling overturned a principle of 70 years’ standing and unleashed a flood of money into the election process that eclipses the Watergate era and has seriously altered the political landscape of this election.
A look back at the last decade is not encouraging to those who believe as I do that our courts should dispense justice in keeping with the progress we have made in upholding individual rights, ending discrimination, and adhering to our founding principles of liberty and justice for all. Often we can’t quite put our finger on the correlation between a judge’s background and life experiences and the rulings rendered by the courts on which he or she presides. But it is surely there. It is widely conceded that a majority of those who sat on the Supreme Court before the Civil War were in fact slaveholders. It’s pretty hard to imagine that their decisions weren’t influenced by that fact. The first black justice, Thurgood Marshall, did not serve until 1967; the first woman, Sandra Day O’Connor, not until 1981. Their life experiences, for centuries excluded from our judicial system, were certainly linked to their legal decision-making.
Today with the court polarized, every presidential nomination to the Supreme Court matters. Each can help further the progress our country has made in achieving equality and justice, or transport us back to a time when the courts ignored the rights of women and African Americans, of religious and ethnic minorities, of criminal defendants and others to equal treatment and due process. As voters, we bear the ultimate responsibility for making sure we know what kind of justice the candidates for president would likely appoint.
By: Nancy K. Kaufman, CEO, National Council of Jewish Women: Published in The Blog,The Huffington Post, October 25, 2012
“Democracy Is An Annoying Obstacle”: Plutocrat Bosses To Employees, “Vote For Romney, Or Else”
It’s quickly becoming the story of the election season. Every day there’s a new report of bosses putting pressure on employees to vote for Mitt Romney or very bad things will happen. The threats range from job loss to wage cuts, and the Gilded Age-style strong-arming shows no signs of slowing.
Most recently, we’ve learned that Arthur Allen, CEO of ASG Software Solutions, sent an email to workers with the following subject line: “Will the US Presidential election directly impact your future jobs at ASG? Please read below.”
David Siegel, the billionaire founder of Westgate Resorts, has been playing the worker intimidation game. So have the Koch brothers, sending anti-Obama voter materials to 45,000 employees of their Georgia Pacific subsidiary (thanks to AlterNet’s Adele Stan for bringing us that story). In Michigan, the president of Lacks Enterprises warned his company’s 2,300 employees that their paychecks will shrink if Obama is re-elected.
On a June conference call to the National Federation of Independent Businesses, Mitt Romney himself enthusiastically pushed the tactic:
“I hope you make it very clear to your employees what you believe is in the best interest of your enterprise and therefore their job and their future in the upcoming elections.”
At a time of rampant job insecurity, workers across the country are fearful of doing anything to jeopardize their paychecks. And in a tight race, every vote counts.
Which is what the plutocrats are worried about.
Unfortunately, the history of worker intimidation during election season has a long and sordid history in the United States. Thomas Ferguson, professor of political science at the University of Massachusetts, Boston, notes that such activity has repeatedly bubbled up during periods of turmoil: “In the 19th century, voting was often public, so manufacturers would sometimes march their workers to the polls to vote as a bloc,” said Ferguson. “In company towns, employers used all kinds of tactics to intimidate workers. During political crises, such as the 1890s or the New Deal, heavy-handed efforts by employers to influence worker votes were rampant. In 1896, for example, factory owners posted signs saying that their businesses would close if Republican William McKinley lost to William Jennings Bryan. Similar efforts also marked the New Deal elections of 1936 and 1940.”
In a nation where children are taught that every citizen has the right to vote, it would be nice to think that voter intimidation was relegated to the history books by the Voting Rights Act of 1965. But that legislation only outlawed the targeting of voters by race or color.
Bosses have little to fear from knowingly misinforming or threatening workers during election season. Calculated and determined efforts at worker intimidation are as brazen as ever this year. Professor Ferguson notes that the waning power of unions, along with non-enforcement of laws, has emboldened employers. CEOs are feeling quite comfortable putting their intimidation efforts into writing and making them public. There is no federal election law that specifically blocks bosses from telling workers they could lose their jobs if they vote for a particular person.
Defenders of the practice like to say that bosses are just expressing their opinions, much in the way a union might expressing political opinions to the owner of a firm. Except for this small difference: a union can’t fire an employee.
The recent voter intimidation frenzy points to the plutocrats’ pesky problem of basic math: They are outnumbered. Citizen United, which unleashed unlimited corporate spending, certainly tilted things in their favor, but even that has not been enough to ensure that the presidency is in their pocket. The 2008 financial crash and ensuing recession have exposed enough of their dangerous and criminal activity to make voters question the idea of putting a financier in the White House. Ironically, a Romney win would likely lead to austerity policies that would weaken the economy and make the products and services of most businesses harder to sell. But plutocrats can see no further than the number represented by their marginal tax rates, and so they must have Romney in Washington. Democracy is merely an annoying obstacle.
By: Lynn Stuart Parramore, Sr. Editor, AlterNet, October 16, 2012
“Democracy Is Still Alive”: Ohio GOP Loses Another Round In Early-Voting Fight
When we last checked in with Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted (R), he was still trying to limit early-voting opportunities in advance, taking his case to the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals.
Today, he lost there, too.
The 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled on Friday that Ohio must make early voting during the three days before the election available to all voters if it’s available to military members and voters who live overseas. The ruling upheld a lower court’s decision.
“The State’s asserted goal of accommodating the unique situation of members of the military, who may be called away at a moment’s notice in service to the nation, is certainly a worthy and commendable goal,” the court ruled. “However, while there is a compelling reason to provide more opportunities for military voters to cast their ballots, there is no corresponding satisfactory reason to prevent non-military voters from casting their ballots as well.”
The full ruling is online here.
To briefly recap for those who haven’t been following this story, Ohio had previously allowed voters an early-voting window of three days before Election Day, which in turn boosted turnout and alleviated long lines in 2008. This year, Republican officials wanted to close the window — active-duty servicemen and women could vote early, but no one else, not even veterans, could enjoy the same right.
One prominent Republican official recently conceded he opposes weekend voting because it would “accommodate the urban — read African American — voter-turnout machine.”
President Obama’s campaign team filed suit, asking for a level playing field, giving every eligible Ohio voter — active-duty troops, veterans, and civilians — equal access. Ohio Republicans kept pushing back, but as of today, they’ve lost.
There is, however, a catch.
For one thing, Husted and the Kasich administration may well appeal to the full 6th Circuit — which isn’t exactly the 9th Circuit when it comes to being reliably progressive — and hope for an en banc reversal. There isn’t much time remaining, but it’s something to look out for.
For another, the federal appeals court panel doesn’t require early-voting opportunities, and leaves the matter up to individual county elections boards to decide how to proceed.
As Rick Hasen explained, that may cause new problems.
[T]he court’s remedy creates a potential new equal protection problem for the state, by allowing different counties to adopt different uniform standards — though the Secretary of State could well impose uniformity.
Hasen’s take on this is a little wonky, and too long to excerpt here, but it’s worth checking out for a fuller understanding of today’s outcome.
That said, to make a long story short, today is a win for voting-rights advocates and the Obama administration, and a defeat for Ohio Republicans. It is not, however, the end of the fight, and GOP officials have some available options.
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow blog, October 5, 2012
“A Great Day For Democracy”: Federal Judge Upholds Early Voting Rights For All Citizens
A federal judge has ordered Ohio to restore in-person voting rights on the weekend before election day, in the second major victory for voting rights advocates in two days.
In July, the Obama campaign filed a lawsuit stating that Ohio’s new election law “arbitrarily eliminates early voting during the three days prior to Election Day for most Ohio voters, a right previously available to all Ohio voters.” The recently enacted law gave preferential treatment to members of the military, who were allowed to vote at a board of elections up through the Monday before Election Day, while civilians had an earlier voting deadline of 6 p.m. on the Friday before Election Day.
The Obama campaign argued that the law was politically motivated and designed to suppress Democratic voters, who are most likely to utilize early-voting options. Additionally, the campaign disputed the legality of instituting unequal voting rights for UOCAVA (“Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voter Act) and non-UOCAVA voters.
In his opinion, Judge Peter C. Economus agreed with the Obama campaign’s complaint.
“A citizen has a constitutionally protected right to participate in elections on an equal basis with other citizens in the jurisdiction.” Dunn v. Blumstein, 405 U.S. 330, 336 (1972). In Ohio, that right to participate equally has been abridged by Ohio Revised Code ‘ 3509.03 and the Ohio Secretary of State’s further interpretation of that statute with regard to in-person early voting. In 2005, Ohio expanded participation in absentee balloting and in-person early voting to include all registered Ohio voters. Now, “in-person early voting” has been redefined by the Ohio legislature to limit Plaintiffs’ access to the polls. This Court must determine whether preliminary injunctive relief should be granted to Plaintiffs on their claim that Ohio’s restriction of in-person early voting deprives them of their fundamental right to vote. Following Supreme Court precedent, this Court concludes that Plaintiffs have stated a constitutional claim that is likely to succeed on the merits. As a result—and as explained below—this Court grants Plaintiffs’ motion for preliminary injunction.
Just hours after the decision, Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine announced that he will appeal to the Sixth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals. As election law expert Rick Hasen notes, the Sixth Circuit has been “bitterly divided in election law disputes in the past”, and the case “could get very ugly very quickly.” So while the Obama campaign won a victory today, the battle for voting rights in Ohio is far from over.
By: Axel Tonconogy, The National Memo, August 31, 2012
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