Homeless People Do Vote

Early voting activities from 2008--staff photo

Homeless Coalition Urges Those Experiencing Homelessness to Vote Early

PRESS RELEASE CLEVELAND OHIO: The Northeast Ohio Coalition for the Homeless is organizing homeless people to urge them to vote early at the Board of Elections main location on Euclid Ave. In 2010, NEOCH settled its four year old lawsuit with the State of Ohio over voting procedures especially with regard to the counting of provisional ballots. “We finally reached a settlement with Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner earlier this year that assures clear guidelines are distributed to all 88 Boards of Elections regarding voting procedures for homeless people,” said NEOCH director Brian Davis.

Highlights of the settlement include:

1. The Secretary will issue a directive to all 88 Boards of Elections that clarifies that homeless people have a right to vote, and that all legitimate ballots must be counted.
2. Homeless and low income shall not be deprived their right to vote because of poll worker error or because of differing interpretations of the law by local boards.
3. The settlement spells out specific requirements for counting provisional ballots after election day. Provisional ballots are cast if the individual does not have identification on election day or there is some other issue with their registration when they show up at the polling place. In 2006 and 2008, there were wide disparities in the percentage of provisional ballots accepted as legitimate votes among the 88 counties. This settlement should standardize the counting of provisional ballots so that every county is operating under similar guidelines.
4. A legitimate registered voter who votes in the correct precinct and has completed the provisional ballot correctly but does not have identification can present the last four digits of his or her social security number and that ballot will be accepted as a legitimate ballot when the provisional ballots are reviewed.
5. The settlement clarifies why a provisional ballot would not be accepted and therefore not counted as a vote in this and every election through 2013. Just because a person is registered at a shelter or street address, the Board of Elections cannot reject their provisional ballot.

If a homeless person does not have identification, they can vote early at the main office of the Board of Elections. They will only be asked for their last four digits of their social security number of state identification number if they vote early. They will not have to show anyone their ID by voting early. It is for this reason that the Coalition is urging shelter staff to alert their clients of the ease in voting early. “With the change in the County government and the important state election, it is critical that all homeless people vote in 2010,” said NEOCH executive director Brian Davis.

Securing and maintaining identification is difficult and expensive for many homeless individuals. Voting is the great equalizer in the United States. Everyone from the doctors at the Cleveland clinic, the rocket scientists at NASA Glenn Center, and homeless people have a right to cast one ballot to select who will lead this country,” said Davis. The Settlement with the State of Ohio is posted on the NEOCH Website under http://www.neoch.org/chlap.htm, and the Coalition is always willing to help anyone in the state with questions or concerns about voting. Early voting ends November 1, 2010.

written by Brian

Posts reflect the opinion of those who sign the entry.

Supreme Court Rules Against Voters

Ohio Supreme Court Throws Out 1,000 Legitimate Voters

On Friday, the Ohio Supreme Court decided that the 1,000 provisional ballots in the U. S. House of Representatives Kilroy vs. Stivers race would not be counted. This was a Republican generated lawsuit that was a direct assault on the settlement that we made with the State of Ohio. The other 25,000 ballots will be counted today, but those individuals who did not sign the provisional ballot envelope will not be counted. They basically overturned our settlement with the State of Ohio on the counting of provisional ballots, and made a new rule that did away with a bunch of voters. The problem was that Franklin County had the voters fill out the envelopes themselves contrary to the Secretary of State's advice, while the other two counties in which Stivers and Kilroy were competing had the poll worker fill out the outside envelope. There was no dispute in the other two counties of Madison and Union counties, and they had long since certified their provisional ballots. Franklin County was still up in the air until Friday.

It is sad that the Supreme Court disenfranchised so many people. The Republicans who filed suit did not, in the end, get their candidate to win. With the counting of the other 25,000 provisional ballots, the Democratic candidate, Kilroy, prevailed by over 2,000 votes. In the end, the 1,000 disputed ballots did not matter, but it still is frustrating for these individuals to lose their legitimate vote.

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

Appeals Court Strikes Down Our Victory

Some Voters in Jeopardy of Disenfranchisement

The U.S. Appeals Court in a surprising reversal of Judge Marbley's decision sent the provisional ballot case back to the Ohio Supreme Court. As the Dispatch article points out, this was decided by two Bush appointed judges and one Carter era appeals court judge. I do not understand why politics has paid such a large role in how we vote in Ohio. I also do not understand how the court could decide that our settlement with the State is ignored because two voters file a separate lawsuit in a different venue. Our case is exactly on point, and our settlement should be respected and honored. We fought this case for two years, and the case belongs in the federal courts because the Help America Vote Act established the provisional ballots in 2002. Here is the text from the 2002 Law:

Provisional Voting Requirements.--If an individual
declares thatsuch individual is a registered voter
 in the jurisdiction in which the individual desires
to vote and that the individual is eligible to vote
in an election for Federal office, but the name of
the individual does not appear on the official list
of eligible voters for the polling place or an election
official asserts that the individual is not eligible to
vote, such individual shall be permitted to cast a
provisional ballot...

and:
If the appropriate State or local election official
to whom the ballot or voter information is transmitted
under paragraph (3) determines that the individual is
eligible under State law to vote, the individual's
provisional ballot shall be counted as a vote in
that election in accordance with State law.

Since a federal law established provisional voting, it would make sense that the federal court can order how those votes are uniformly counted.

Here is Jennifer Brunner's statement from her website about this case:

"This litigation has already delayed the final certification of the November election. It is our hope that the Ohio Supreme Court will quickly affirm their previous clear guidance “to liberally construe election laws in favor of the right to vote,” so as not to disenfranchise approximately 1,000 Ohio voters with a hyper-technical interpretation of Ohio law."

Now, I do not know who is doing press for Brunner, but did they have to use the word "liberal" when referring to how the notoriously conservative Ohio Supreme Court should order the counting of provisional ballots. Couldn't they have used a better word? Is she just trying to bait them? I too hope that every voter is counted, but I would not say the word "liberal" or "liberally construe election law" in my sound byte. She needs a new press person.

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

VICTORY!!

Judge Rules to Keep NEOCH Agreement in Place!!

Judge Algenon Marbley ruled on Friday against the two Republican challengers who sued to overturn the NEOCH settlement with the State of Ohio in the voting ID case. The federal judge made a few changes, but ordered the provisional ballots counted even if there was poll worker error. In dispute is a U.S. Congressional race in Central Ohio and two State House races, and how the provisional ballots in those races will be counted. NEOCH temporarily settled the case against Secretary of State Brunner and the state of Ohio before the election providing two directives backed by the court to standardize the counting of provisional ballots in all 88 counties. In the District 15 race between Republican Steve Stivers and Mary Jo Kilroy, the Democrat, there are only 500 votes separating the two with over 27,000 provisional ballots to count. The Republican voters, who sued after the election, do not want the 1,000 provisional ballots counted in which the poll worker did not complete the outside envelope correctly.

The only down side is that the Judge put off the counting until November 28 (the day after Thanksgiving) to start counting in order to give time to the U.S. Court of Appeals to rule. I am sure that the Appeals Court justices will love to rule on this case after a great Thanksgiving dinner. We trust the court to rule for allowing legitimate voters to cast a ballot. Imagine waiting in a long line at the drive-thru window at Wendy's, and you finally get up to the front of the line to put in your order. Then you drive around to the pay window, and they tell you, "Sorry, you will get no food today, because our order clerk took your order wrong." This is what the Republican operatives are asking for except in the most important thing a citizen is entrusted with: voting for president of the United States. "You did nothing wrong, but the person who took your ballot screwed up, and so you are out of luck for four years. Have a great day, and come again."

What judge in their right mind would side with people trying to disenfranchise voters? We shall see.

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

Voting Case Update II

Judge Keeps the Case in Federal Court

Federal Judge Algenon Marbley ruled this morning that he would maintain jurisdiction over the provisional ballot case filed by Republicans down in Columbus regarding the US Representative District 15 race (Stivers vs. Kilroy). The case involves our settlement of a case with Secretary of State Brunner and the uniform counting of provisional ballots. Judge Marbley has decided to keep the case in his court to avoid lawyers "venue shopping." This is a victory for Ohio voters. The bizarre aspect of this case, as we described in many posts over the last year, is that the Republican legislature babysat Brunner's office throughout this case. They were involved in the settlement, and if they had a concern should have raised it before we signed this agreement. Why are they standing on the side of disenfranchising legitimate voters who tried to cast a ballot, but were let down by the poll worker? The Republican legislature wrote the law on provisional ballots. They supervised the NEOCH vs. Brunner case for two years, and a Republican Taft drafted the original rules for homeless participation in voting when he was Secretary of State. We trust that this case will quickly be settled, and every legitimate voter can have their voted counted.

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

Challenging Voters

Republican Lawyer Challenged One of Our Voters

We have spent the day driving homeless people to their polling place. There are not many left who have not voted, but we have a couple of dozen that we have taken. One of the voters was challenged by a Republican lawyer, because he did not have a current identification. The voter was in the poll book, but had lost his identification. I know that it is legal to challenge voters, but it just seems like such a bullying tactic. I mean the guy is homeless living in a shelter, and had his identification stolen. He is working on putting his life back together and some Republican lawyer in an inner city polling place attempts to disenfranchise this guy. It seems desperate and an extreme form of harassment tactic for someone to do this to an American citizen down on his luck.

Also, the Republican party went to court today to challenge our settlement last week with Jennifer Brunner over the counting of provisional ballots. They drew a conservative judge, and so our case is probably not settled as we had thought. We have a signed settlement with the other side, so I do not understand why the court is even hearing this case. Details to follow.

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

Second Court Order On Homeless Voting

Brunner Issues Second Directive On Provisional Ballots

As discussed over the weekend, the Secretary of State issued a second directive to settle (for now) our lawsuit. There were two outstanding issues that were not covered in the directive issued Friday October 24. These issues include: what happens to a provisional ballot if the poll worker does not do their job or incorrectly completes the provisional ballot envelope? Also, what happens to the provisional ballot if a homeless person shows up and is using a non-traditional address like a park bench? The Associated Press and therefore other media have made a big deal out of this second piece, and made this seem like some "scandal" and our attempt to undermine the election. This "controversy" is bunch of people making a mountain out of a mole hill. All we settled on was that the state must uphold an existing law that dates back to Secretary of State Robert Taft. If a homeless person especially in areas that do not have enough shelters (Lorain, Ashtabula, Trumbull Counties), and has taken up residence in a tent or other structure, they should get to vote. These citizens want to vote, and this settlement allows them that opportunity. These voters would have already had to register that tent as a residence before October 6. They would most likely vote by provisional ballot, because their mail would have come back to the Board of Elections. All this settlement says is that those provisional ballots be counted in compliance with existing law.

I have to say that there are couple dozen people in the woods in Lorain County who fought for the United States in Viet Nam. These guys and their opinions about a government at war are effectively silenced without an exception to linking voting to a fixed structure. I raised these problems when the 2006 ID voting law was proposed in the legislature, but the leadership did not listen. Why shouldn't they have the opportunity to vote? I believe that they earned the right after sleeping in the rice fields in Southeast Asia and now the woods of Lorain County to decide who leads this country no matter if they live under a framed roof or not.

As an election observer in 2006, there were many problems with poll worker error and provisional ballots. The polling place I observed had around 34 people voting by provisional ballot and I saw half of those ballots incorrectly filled out by the poll worker. In fact, I think the first 15 did not have the poll worker's signature before they had a supervisor come to the polling place to give them instructions. This settlement clarifies that an individual should be allowed to have their provisional ballot counted even if the poll worker does not process the envelop correctly. This part of the settlement is the more important aspect of the agreement, but has received little attention. This entire settlement prevents a Florida-style "hanging chad" situation of mass confusion in a close election. The park bench provision will only have an impact on a couple of dozen people throughout the state, but the counting of the provisional ballot procedure could be the difference in a close election.

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