Good News For Ohio Voters

United States Supreme Court Sides with Ohio Voters

Last night, the Supreme Court ruled that the Grand Old Party would not be able to search the Social Security and Ohio Division of Motor Vehicles websites to exclude voters overturning the Ninth Court of Appeals ruling earlier in the week. NEOCH lost the Grapevine case in the Ninth Court of Appeals, so we have previous experience with their bad decisions. The Supreme Court in a short decision said that the GOP would most likely not prevail, and so they were not going to force the Ohio Secretary of State to check every registration against state and national databases. I never did understand this lawsuit. The State GOP was not authorizing additional dollars to undertake this massive effort to verify every registration, so how did they expect this to get done? This was an unfunded mandate on a grand scale. It was forcing the local boards to do something that they were never set up to do--verify voting eligibility with government databases constructed for vastly different purposes.

What exactly did this mean for the average voter? Here are some examples:

1. Joe the Plumber from Toledo had his voting registration spelled wrong when he signed up for the Natural Law Party in 1992 compared to the social security or DMV database. He would have to vote by provisional ballot and then show up at the Board of Elections within 10 days to prove that he was who he said he was. (By the way...if the Republicans had their way he should have been purged from the voting roles since he had not voted for so many elections in a row. )
2. Any woman who did not bother to notify the Board of Elections or the Social security office that she changed her name after getting married would vote with a provisional ballot. Then she would have to take some official document to the Board and prove she is the person that voted.
3. Those women who are married and hyphenate their names are always problematic for government databases, and may have problems because there is not a standard among the various government offices of how to characterize these hyphenated last names.

This would mean that up to one third of the new registrants could be challenged because of a mismatch. Most would most likely be Democrats, but many Republicans would certainly be caught up in this quest for bogus voters. I believe that where we would see this play out most is in small towns and small counties in an attempt to frighten potential voters.

Now, how do we address this problem going forward? I think that every citizen and every eligible voter should be automatically registered to vote. Every contact with a government entity should update registration records. If you want a fishing license--your voting registration would be checked to make sure it is accurate. When you pay your property taxes, they make sure that your address matches the voting database. If you transfer ownership of a car or property they would check your voting registration. If there is a correction, the government entity would fill out a registration change of address form and deliver it to the Board of Elections. Why do we make it so difficult for people to vote? Why should a person have to sign up to take advantage their right to vote? This current anger around registrations could all be taken care of with every citizen automatically registered. This current dispute is all nonsense and scare tactics to keep legitimate voters away from the polling place.

I also believe that every government entity should give a small benefit for everyone that votes. If you get food stamps, you get an extra $5 for voting. If you are in subsidized housing, you would get a $5 rent reduction for voting or a $5 break on your income tax for voting in every election for that year. We should automatically register everyone and give incentives for voting.

Brian
Posts by Northeast Ohio Coalition for the Homeless staff and Board.