Way back in 2006, the Northeast Ohio Coalition for the Homeless sued the State of Ohio over identification issues and voting. We reached settlements for the 2006 and 2008 elections on the procedure for accepting identification on election day and how to count the provisional ballots. The Hamilton County Board of Elections in supervising the 2010 election decided to ignore the Secretary of State directive on counting of provisional ballots that were based on our settlement. There was an extremely close race between Tracie Hunter and John Williams for juvenile court judge. The final total provided by the Board was Williams winning by 23 votes. This last week, a federal court judge in Cincinnati ruled that the hundreds of votes tossed out should be counted.
The Board of Elections excluded ballots that were cast with some error associated with the provisional ballot. Many of these errors were the result of the poll worker misdirecting the voter in the proper procedure for completing the ballot. It would seem obvious if the employee of the Board of Elections misdirects the voter, that voter should not be disenfranchised and have their vote thrown out. The federal court judge has decided that these voters cast legitimate votes that must be counted if the poll worker erred. After two years of the seat being vacant and the people of Greater Cincinnati waiting for a decision in the case, the federal court has upheld our settlement. The Cincinnati Inquirer story says that most of the disputed ballots are in heavily Democratic areas of town. The local media is predicting that the election will swing the other way and Hunter will prevail. Judging from the visceral response from the Hamilton County officials who answered the lawsuit and represent the other political party, they seem to agree.
This is a victory for the Coalition and a victory for providing as many citizens as possible the chance to participate in democracy. These same rules will be in place for the upcoming presidential election unless the state legislature makes changes this spring. The difference is that these settlement and the directives will now have the success of being verified by the federal courts. The Hamilton County Board of Elections has not decided if they are going to appeal this ruling.
Brian
Posts reflect the opinion of those who sign the entry.
I received my absentee ballot last week, and found that for the first time I have to pay to mail the ballot back with my 64 cent stamp. Was this part of the deal that Fitzgerald struck with Husted over not sending out absentee ballot request forms? We have already expressed how this was a bad deal for the Cuyahoga County voter, but it gets worse. We save money if a person votes by mail over going to a polling place and voting on election day. Why can't we pay to get a voter to return their absentee ballot? I know that the post office charges around $1.20 for postage paid mail, but that is cheaper than employing a poll worker for 16 hours and all the processing and transportation of those ballots. It is better for voters to vote by mail over standing in a long line at the polling place or feeling that their government is broken by witnessing polling places opening late or poll workers not understanding provisional ballots. We believe that any barriers to voting should be minimized in order to encourage the other half of the population to actually participate. Going out and finding a 64 cent stamp or wasting two stamps on a ballot is a barrier for the fringe voters. Help people vote with free return of the ballot to the board of elections.
Brian Davis
Posts reflect the opinion of those who sign the entry.
The National Coalition for the Homeless has written to Attorney General Eric Holder seeking a Justice Department investigation into all the changes that have taken place over the last nine months in voting rules and the concern that homeless participation will suffer with an upcoming Presidential election. The letter prominently features the changes in Ohio law, which NCH fears will disenfranchise homeless people.
"Ohio increased the size of precincts, which could increase the lines on Election Day, a huge problem in the 2004 Presidential election in Ohio.Poll workers will not be required to tell voters that they are at the wrong precinct.The Ohio legislature increased the number of technical reasons for not counting provisional ballots, which homeless people are often forced to use because of their residency problems.They have reduced the number of early voting days including eliminating Sunday voting and outlawed Counties from reaching out to voters that have mailed early voting forms"
There is a page on their website detailing the issue, and guides advocates through the process of sending a similar letter to the Attorney General. Many of the changes in the laws across the country are targeted to disenfranchise lower income voters. These new laws are passed largely along party lines, with the claim that these new rules protect against voter fraud, but the new rules disenfranchise more voters than they catch engaged in fraudulent activities. No one has been able to prove that there are duplicate or non-citizen voters. In fact, the only allegations of irregularities were ACORN canvassers registering multiple voters in an effort to collect a bounty on each registration form turned in, and most of these rules do not address registration issues.
We urge you to follow the National Coalition's lead and send a note to the Attorney General asking for an investigation. We believe that many of these new laws violate the Voting Rights act and are a violation of the Help America Vote Act. Congressional leaders sent a similar letter earlier this year, but that was centered on the new mandatory identification requirements. The ID issue was cited in NCH letter, but there are bigger issues of disenfranchisement issues in Georgia, Rhode Island, Florida and Maine that serve only to reduce the number of potential low income voters. Take Action! Write to the Attorney General and ask for an investigation to protect access to the polls by those without housing.
Brian Davis
Posts reflect the opinion of those who sign the entry.
It Looks Like the County is Going to Send Out Early Voting Applications.
Update from Previous Post. On Monday we told you about the conflict at the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections over sending out early voting ballot request forms. As predicted Republican Secretary of State issued an order preventing any Boards of Elections in Ohio from sending out an unsolicited mailing to voters urging them to vote early. Husted is claiming that smaller counties don't have the money to send out unsolicited mail so no county should do it. This does not make sense since it saves money and time for the large counties to encourage early voting. It prevents the long lines in high population density counties and not having to hire large numbers of workers on election day to handle the crowds. Think how long the lines would have been in Cuyahoga County in 2008 if the 50% who voted by mail had to show up in person and vote. The good news is that advocates contacted Cuyahoga County officials and urged the County to send out the mail instead of the Board of Elections. County Executive Ed Fitzgerald announced that he was going to ask County Council on Monday to authorize this mailing. This is good news, and you can call your County Council member to thank them and urge them to vote to send out this mailing. We hope that at least in Cuyahoga County this is not a partisan issue, and all Council members will see the value of urging people to vote early in this upcoming election.
It brings up the reminder that Cuyahoga County voters need to sign the petition to get House Bill 194 on the ballot next year. If advocates can collect 300,000 signatures, the changes in voting procedures would be on hold and Ohioans can decide if this limiting early voting was a good idea. We need to decide if not informing voters that they are at the wrong precinct is a good idea. We need to decide if large counties should be allowed to send out postage paid early voting applications. NEOCH and the Cleveland Tenants Organization are gathering signatures. If you would like to help please call the office at 216/432-0540.
Brian
Posts reflect the opinion of those who sign the entry.
Cuyahoga County: Send Out Notice of Early Election
This morning the Cuyahoga Board of Elections split along party lines about sending out applications for early voting in the November 2011 election. As you are aware, the State of Ohio passed a law in June which bars local county boards of elections from paying for a mailing that includes a blank early voting application. That law will take effect in late September unless advocates collect enough signatures to get the voting law on the ballot. The County had already approved the funds for a mailing, but the Board of Elections just needed to send out the mailing. This morning the Board could not achieve a majority of votes to authorize this mailing. It is likely that Republican Jon Husted, current Ohio Secretary of State, will side with the two Republican Board members in Cuyahoga County and not approve the mailing.
Cuyahoga County has the opportunity to claw back these funds for the mailing from the Board of Elections, and do the mailing themselves. This is not a Presidential election, and these odd year elections can sneak up on voters. The shut in, the person who travels a great deal, and the homeless individuals waiting for their birth certificate from another state so that they can get identification, would appreciate a blank application in the mail to complete and send back to make sure that they do not miss the opportunity to vote. This is a bad state law that we hope will be overturned by voters. We need more participation in the election, and reminding voters only boosts turn out. Urge the County Council to send out this mailing to all eligible Cuyahoga County voters. They have a month and half to make this happen. Give your Councilperson a call to urge them to send out this early voting information mailing. Here is the contact information:
http://council.cuyahogacounty.us/en-US/council-members.aspx
Brian
Posts reflect the opinion of those who sign the entry.
How do you vote, when you can bring your residence to the polling place?
Photo by Cheryl Jones of the Grapevine Photo Project
Why Are We Making All These Changes?
Was the 2010 election corrupt in Ohio? Did we have long lines at the polling places? Did we have a flawed electronic voting system without a backup for verification purposes? Were there charges from either side that voters were casting multiple ballots? Were there problems with counting the ballots or with provisional voting? So, why did we change the procedure for voting Ohio with the passage of House Bill 194?
NEOCH has been involved in a lawsuit against the State of Ohio since 2006 that we finally settled in 2010. We have a 20 year history of working to assure that those without a traditional residence have a right to vote. We believe that it is critical to have homeless people participate in the electoral process under the thinking that they above other citizens need to vote for leaders willing to address the housing, job and healthcare crisis. These changes are especially troubling to groups that represent very low income individuals, and will make it difficult for our constituency to participate in democracy.
The leaders down in Columbus made changes to the procedure for voting with the passage of HB 194, and then two weeks later corrected the law that they had just passed. Strange, and it does not inspire confidence in the law if they needed a fix only two weeks later. So what are the changes and what will they mean?
The size of the precincts will be changed so that they are larger, but for some reason only in urban communities. This will mean longer lines for those in cities where the majority of homeless people reside.
Poll workers will not be required to tell people that they are voting in the wrong precinct, which will result in many more spoiled ballots and disenfranchised voters.
Counties may not send out an application for early voting to registered voters. Large counties tried to encourage voting to cut down on lines by sending out notices to every registered voter, and paid for the return of the ballot to the Board. This new law will prevent counties from communicating with voters and prevents them from paying for the return of the completed request. This will result in more people voting in person thus causing lines.
There are a whole series of changes that allow corporations greater participation in the election, which will bring more dollars into the election.
The time to bring citizen petitions to a statewide ballot would be shortened making it harder to get ballot issues before voters to decide.
Provisional ballots could be excluded from being counted for technical reasons. This was the settlement of the NEOCH vs. State of Ohio lawsuit that will be overturned. Homeless people often have to vote a provisional ballot because they move around so frequently. It was our position that if a poll worker makes the error the ballot should count. This new law would allow that a poll worker who suspects the voter to be casting a ballot for the other party they could make an intentional error on the processing of the ballot and it would not count thus benefiting the poll worker's party.
They have taken away the ability to open early voting sites on Sundays and reduced early voting to 16 days (down from 35). This will result in longer lines for early voting and fewer people with the ability to vote early in person. Again, more people will be forced to vote in person on election day again resulting in lines.
Long lines at the polling place cannot interfere with local surrounding businesses. I have no idea what this means or how it is can be enforced. Would the county sheriff or Ohio Highway Patrol shut down voting activities because it was interfering with a local bowling alley which happens to share a parking lot with a church polling place? Would the local police have jurisdiction to enforce this part of the law?
There are new rules for when to take a voter off the voting rolls. This would allow the state to search databases and take a voter off the list of eligible voters. Often there is a conflict between two state databases due to clerical errors, and with this new law that could involve the individual being taken off the voting roles. The voter would then have to vote a provisional ballot and hope that it gets counted under the new rules.
These changes will be harmful to those who live in cities. They will make it more difficult to vote in person and by mail. They will fix problems that never existed in Ohio, and will reduce confidence in the election. Ohio had major problems with voting in the 2000 and 2004 Presidential election, but the only problem in 2008 election was with duplicate registrations. No one charged that there were duplicate voters or that Mickey Mouse voted in Ohio, just that ACORN paid people to register people and many of these canvassers made up registrations in order to get paid. Why would we want to go back to long lines and attempts to trip up voters by figuring out ways to disqualify voters? We should try to get as many people as possible to want to vote and make that process as easy as possible. Ohio is moving the wrong way in providing an efficient and trustworthy process for participating in democracy.
Brian
Posts reflect the opinion of those who sign the entry.
Advocates sign up homeless people and take them to the polling places during the 2010 election during "Golden Week."
Advocacy Update: VOTING
In another effort to solve a problem that does not really exist in Ohio, legislators have proposed a reform of voting laws in Ohio. This voting legislation will make it more difficult for low-income voters to participate in the electoral process. Current Secretary of State, Jon Husted has proposed a reform of Ohio election law despite not having any evidence that there is a problem with the current system. Activists are hosting a press conference on Monday to show their opposition to this reform of the voting system. The Northeast Ohio Coalition for the Homeless, Cleveland Tenants Organization and others oppose this proposed bill. We believe that these are bills to limit access to the ballot box ahead of the 2012 Presidential election, and Ohio will again see a controversial presidential election like we saw in 2004.
PRESS CONFERENCE DETAILS:
When: Monday, May 16, 12:30pm or 1:00pm Where: Steps of the Board of Elections Invited participants: -Rep. Sandra Williams -Councilman Jeff Johnson -Rep. Mike Foley -Rick DeChant, Voting Rights Institute -Rev. Marvin McMickle
The plan will make it harder to vote. The bills slash early voting days from 35 to as few as 6 days. In 2010, 1,200 homeless people in Cuyahoga County voted early. In addition, the bills eliminate the busiest early voting days: the Monday and Saturday preceding the election. Politifact recently gave Secretary of State Jon Husted a “Pants on Fire” for the lies he told while advocating fewer early vote days. The bills also give the Secretary of State unprecedented ability to purge Ohioans from the voter rolls.
Under the plan, fewer votes will count. Under the bills, a vote won’t be counted if a voter fills in the oval for a candidate and also writes in the name of the exact same candidate. This particularly disenfranchises low-income voters who aren’t familiar with optical scan ballots. An estimated 10,000 voters would have their ballots thrown out, even though their intent is 100 percent clear. In addition, these bills require additional personal information from voters casting provisional ballots, including a voter’s full Social Security number, exposing voters to potential identity theft.
Local control is eliminated under this plan. The bills take away the right of local boards of elections to determine how best to use resources to run smooth elections in their counties. Larger counties have made it easier to vote early by mail, which helps prevent long lines on Election Day. The plan would take us back to the days of voters standing for hours in line in the rain on Election Day. In addition, the plan eliminates counties’ ability to set up early vote locations that accommodate older voters and may provide adequate parking. NEOCH supports uniform standards across the state, but we feel that we should implement laws that allow the largest number of voters to participate and not limit access to the ballot box as this legislation does.
Brian Davis Posts reflect the opinion of those who sign the entry.
After seeing all the opposition to the end of collective bargaining for public employees that was met with deaf ears, it is probably a waste of time contacting your state legislator at this point. So, this is just for information purposes. The State of Ohio is proposing another reform of voting procedures in Ohio. Remember that this was tried in 2005 and a number of organizations including NEOCH sued to protect access to the ballot by homeless people, seniors, immigrants, college students, and people interested in the smooth operation of government. So the state does not have the best track record for reforming voting laws in Ohio. This time they are going to require state identification in order to vote (Ohio HB 159). Most of the state legislators in Cuyahoga County oppose this voting identification law, because they realize that this will suppress voting.
The legislation will allow "indigent" individuals a free state ID, but they are not considering the basis of all ID is the birth certificate. The birth certificate can cost anywhere from $5 to $60 depending on the state an individual was born. So, paying for the state identification does not guarantee access to a government identification card. There is a vague definition in the potential law describing how a person establishes themselves as indigent. It is unclear how to prove the negative of not having any money. The other issue is that for many homeless people it is difficult to establish residency in the state. Ohio will only give identification to individuals who can prove residency within the state. Some homeless people who live in shelters or on the streets are turned away from receiving identification because they can’t prove they are a resident.
Advocates claim that one fourth of African Americans, 18% of those over 65 years old, and 15% of low income individuals do not have government issued identification. According to the US Census there are 830,000 people living in Ohio who fall below the poverty level. Many of those very low income individuals will have a difficult time voting because they may not have a government issued identification. Over the last major election in Ohio in 2010, there was only one documented case of voter fraud, and there were 3.9 million votes cast. The state is proposing paying for the state identification, but not the birth certificate or guaranteeing access to homeless people who may have a difficult time proving residency.
This is another horrible reform of the election law that will do nothing to protect the ballot. The only thing that this does is to discourage fragile populations from attempting to vote on election day in person. It also destroys the settlement that we had with the state last year over identification procedures for voting in person.
Brian Posts reflect the opinion of those who sign the entry.
2010 American Civil Liberties Union Brown Bag Lecture Series You bring your lunch. We’ll bring the experts.
Homeless, Not Hopeless: The homeless community’s fight for fair treatment July 7, 2010 on Wednesday |Noon - 1:00 p.m. Max Wohl Civil Liberties Center 4506 Chester Ave., Cleveland 44103
Far too often municipalities enact unconstitutional ordinances that criminalize homeless people and greatly restrict their access to public space.
Join us for a discussion of the homeless community’s fight for equality with Brian Davis, executive director of the Northeast Ohio Coalition for the Homeless and advocate for the estimated 26,000 homeless in the Cleveland area.
This program is part of the Brown Bag Lecture Series. Lectures will be held throughout the summer on Wednesdays from noon – 1 pm at the Max Wohl Civil Liberties Center, 4506 Chester Ave., Cleveland.
This event is free and open to the public. Free parking is available. Drinks and desserts will be provided. To RSVP, call (216) 472-2200 or click the RSVP button.
Save the date for our statewide membership conference! July 30 - 31, Columbus. Get more information at www.acluohio.org/conference2010
Join the ACLU and help strengthen our freedoms. Already a member? Click hereto find out what else you can do to restore our rights.
Stand up! Get active! Make some noise! Our new website has all the tools you need to restore lost liberty.
From an e-announcement from the ACLU
Posts reflect the opinion of those who sign the entry.
This week the Plain Dealer and most of the television media reported on the arrest of Darnell Nash for fraud in voting during the last election. The problem is that the PD reported that Nash was homeless and made up addresses in order to vote. I see this as a success for the process. The workers at the Board of Elections in Cuyahoga County flagged Nash and contacted him. Then when he showed up to vote they turned him away. The other issue not addressed in the article was that Mr. Nash is also Santina Gibbs, a transexual, who was not afraid to proclaim that she was in fact a woman to Carl Monday. She was allegedly scamming people last fall, and was caught by Carl Monday and the police in our building. This seems like a big part of the story that was missed by the Plain Dealer. Don't those who are accused of a crime get to be referred to by the sex of their choice in newspapers? If a person outwardly appears as a woman, don't newspapers have an obligation to refer to that individual as a "she"?
We did not need this negative attention for homeless people. Ms. Gibbs will only make it more difficult to convince the legislators of the merit of the registration/voting overlap week. This was a wonderful quirk in the law that allowed hundreds of additional voters in Cleveland. By the arrest of Gibbs aka Nash, we see that the system worked. There was plenty of time before the election day to screen out bogus voters. The Board quickly caught the fact that there was one person registering in multiple locations and that some of these locations were fictitious. In fact, I am not sure that Ms. Gibbs was even able to vote one time. She was pulled out of the line and told that there was a problem with her registration.
Anyway, this attention taints the thousands of legitimate homeless voters. We registered 371 people using sheleter addresses in Cleveland in 2006 and 891 at homeless addresses in 2008. Over 400 people voted during the golden week (overlap week) in Cuyahoga County, which was about one-eighth of the total early voters in Cleveland. Every shelter helped out to make it possible for homeless people to change their address and cast a ballot in the last election. There was so much good that happened with homeless people participating in democracy. It is too bad that people like Ms. Gibbs and those ACORN workers who turned in hundreds of bogus registrations get all the headlines.
Brian Posts reflect the opinion of those who sign the entry.
Lame Duck Congress Attempts to Change Voting Law in Ohio
In December 2005, the Ohio Legislature voted to overhaul the voting process in Ohio. This end of the term overhaul was wildly successful with homeless, immigrants, unions, minority groups, students, and those serving the elderly all suing the state over the last three years. Ohio became the laughing stock of the country, because we could not run an effective election. So, now at the last few hours of this Congress, they are back at it. The State legislature dominated by Republicans is not trying to fix all the problems from 2005, but are proposing new issues for NEOCH and others to sue. So, I went down along with the NAACP, League of Women Voters, ACLU, COHHIO, and Common Cause to testify against this silly bill which would extend the deadline to 60 days before election day. This is a clear violation of federal law, and would result in Ohio being the only state in the union with a registration deadline greater than 30 days before the election day.
Here is a most of what I said:
"We are back here again during the end of a term as we try at the last minute to reform the voting laws in Ohio. It was December 2005, at the end of the last Congressional session that state legislators went behind closed doors and crafted a bill to restrict access to the ballot box. Now, having two years to work on changing poorly constructed HB 3 from 2005, we are at the end of the term and we are trying to restrict access to early voting.
Three years ago, we testified against HB 3 which reformed the voting law to include identification requirements.In fact, the hearing in December 2005 featured a large number of groups opposed to the bill and then only the author of the bill testifying in support.No one listened when we said that this was a bad bill and should be defeated.No one heard us list the flaws in the bill, and the state was repeatedly sued because of the unclear and contradictory law.So, today, I am here to take the opposite position in hopes that you will again disregard what this expert is saying and do the opposite.If you think all these community groups who oppose this bill are down here just to sway the election for one party and not in an effort to make sure that every legitimate voter has a chance to vote, then we will argue in favor of this bill.The Northeast Ohio Coalition for the Homeless strongly supports Senate Bill 380 further restricting access to voting, and we urge you to pass this bill in to law so that fewer people will be able to cast a ballot or will have to wait in long lines or vote when it is least convenient.
The last voting reform was so successful, we should do it again at the end of another legislative session.Students, immigrants, unions, homeless people, and groups representing the elderly all sued the state over the last voting overhaul in Ohio.This strategy has inspired such confidence in the legislators and elected officials in control in 2005 that many of those politicians who passed the HB 3 have moved into the private sector and out of the limelight.So, I say keep trying to reform the voting process because for every homeless person who was a likely Democratic voter who is forced to cast a second class provisional ballot there is an elderly woman and likely Republican voter who will have to cast a provisional ballot because she has no driver’s license and lives in a nursing home. For every union household who will no longer be able to vote early and register at the same time there is a suburban traditionally Republican family facing foreclosure who are not sure where they are supposed to register now that they are sleeping on a friend’s couch so they go to the Board of Elections and change their registration and cast their ballot at the same time.
So, who will be affected by this change in the law?There are the thousands in foreclosure who are unsure where they are allowed to vote.There are homeless people who are waiting for the state of California to send their birth certificate so that they can get a state identification.They used the “golden week” to change their registration to the shelter where they currently reside and then cast a ballot since they already waited in line.Thousands of elderly people went after church to vote on a bus in Cuyahoga County, and a few had relocated to a nursing home in 2008 so they updated their registration at the same time.Voting multiple times is the fraught with huge risk, and is the least likely way to corrupt an election.Once again, this bill is addressing a problem that does not exist in the state of Ohio, and that is what it seems we sent you people down here to do.This law also makes it easier for party officials to challenge voters by releasing information on database mismatches.We believe that it is a good idea to model our system of voting after Soviet style tactics where party officials in trench coats challenge the validity of veterans who show up to vote without the proper identification because it worked so well in 1970s USSR.
Voting is the cornerstone of our confidence in government.If it is the strategy of the state legislators is to limit access to the ballot box then this legislation needs to be passed. If it is the strategy to undermine confidence in government then this bill is the perfect compliment to the 2005 House Bill 3, because the state will no doubt face more lawsuits.If the state legislators long for the days of a poll tax that restricted access to the ballot box, then this bill will maintain the mistakes of the last bill.Identification is not free in Ohio so for a homeless veteran to vote a standard ballot on election day they must pay a fee to secure identification.By the way, military identification does not contain an address, which was a requirement from the last voting bill passed. If you are nostalgic for the days when only land owners voted then keep the current rules in place that make it difficult for homeless people to vote.
If state legislators want to show that the state can stop the assault on home rule by challenging the Help America Vote Law, which requires registration deadlines no more than 30 days before an election, then vote for this bill.Who cares about the 11 states that allow voter registration within two weeks of the election or on the same day as the election without any reported problems. Who cares that Ohio would be the one state with a deadline more than 30 days before an election. Ohioans should not care that there are no reported problems in traditional Republican states of Alabama, South Dakota or Utah which has registration deadlines within one or two weeks of the election.
It is a good idea to continue to tinker with the voting process, so that Ohio can continue to viewed nationally as unable to administer an honest election.These last minute laws will only reinforce that national reputation.We should keep the courts busy with repeated challenges to voting procedures and challenges and contradictory statutes.Think how many lawyer we will keep in business over the next four years challenging this law.In a down economy, it is important to keep lawyers in business.This could be considered a mini-stimulus bill for lawyers in Ohio. Most people are not educated about the issues, so current elected officials who spend all day working on these issues should figure out ways to make it harder for the undereducated to vote.Please pass this law, because the last voting overhaul was so successful we need to keep going"
The vote in next week. The state legislators quizzed the Board of Elections Chairperson from Allen County who supported this bogus legislation for over one hour. They dismissed those opposed to the legislation after only a few questions, and the author of the bill left during the testimony of all those who opposed the legislation. So, this bill will pass. Our only hope is that Governor Strickland will veto this bill in an effort to allow the Secretary of State to craft a comprehensive bill that will fix all the problems with the voting system.
Brian Davis
Posts by Northeast Ohio Coalition for the Homeless staff and Board.
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.
This is not confirmed yet, but rumors have it that Republicans will hold a Senate hearing on their proposed changes to election law on the same day that Secretary of State had invited election experts down to talk about reform of Ohio Election Law. I have heard that in this lame duck session, the Republicans are going to host a hearing on December 2 to talk about their proposal to "reform" Ohio election law. This is the exact day that Brunner called her "election summit" to work out a plan for improvement for 2009. Now, NEOCH did not get invited to the Brunner summit. I guess she does not like being sued, ignoring our calls for a settlement and then losing in court. We will certainly be at the Republican hearing to tell them that their proposed legislation is not only disenfranchising, but illegal. They crafted legislation in 2006, and did not listen to activists who said that the law would not work. Then they sued because they did not like the law that they passed on their own. Now, they are back at the table proposing laws that will easily be challenged. Will they ever learn? I hope Strickland vetoes this desperate power grab.
Brian Posts by Northeast Ohio Coalition for the Homeless staff and Board.
The Columbus Dispatch, my least favorite paper, has had stories three days of this last week about the provisional ballot court case against Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner. Saturday's story is here, and Fridays story is here. This is an important story about how to count provisional ballots in Ohio, but we have not seen any stories in the Plain Dealer in the last two weeks. Why not? The judge in the case will decide if the case stays in Federal court or goes back to the Ohio Supreme Court on Monday morning. The case could decide the winner of the 15th Congressional district to the House of Representatives in Columbus. Out of the 26,000 provisional ballots there are nearly 1,000 that apparently had some kind of poll worker error and could be disqualified. It seems like an important story for Ohio.
Plus, the Columbus Dispatch has stopped using the Coalition's name in their coverage of this court case referring to us as a Cleveland homeless advocacy coalition. We were stripped of our name in the Columbus paper. Please Plain Dealer editors, write about this story so that NEOCH can get its name back.
Brian Posts by Northeast Ohio Coalition for the Homeless staff and Board.
Brunner Settlement Made Before Election Under Scrutiny
As we discussed back in October, Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner, temporarily settled the voter ID lawsuit. We could not reach agreement on the ID provision for election day because of time, but we got a directive to count the provisional ballots in a way that is fair and consistent with the law across the entire state. We signed a settlement that was certified by the court to have uniform standards for counting the provisional ballots in all 88 counties. Now that there is a close race between Stivers and Kilroy in Central Ohio for the U.S. Representative in District 15 the Republicans are claiming that there is a problem with our settlement. The Republican who currently leads by 400 votes has objected to the settlement agreement for how to count provisional votes.
The new lawsuit asks the Court to reopen this settlement and two voters have filed suit to overturn the Brunner issued settlement as well as her first directive. They are trying to eliminate provisional ballots in which the poll worker did not follow the proper procedure. So, in other words, the voter did everything that they were supposed to do, but for whatever reason their name did not appear in the poll book. The local board of elections certifies them to be a legitimate voter having voted in the correct precinct. The Board determines that they were who they said they were when the voter signed the provisional ballot. The voter filled out everything correctly on the provisional ballot, but because the poll worker did not sign or date the ballot those filing suit want the voter stripped of their vote. Through no fault of their own, but because an overworked elderly individual who only is employed for this one day by the County makes a mistake, the Republicans want to have the voter denied the ability to participate in the democratic process. Is that fair? Is that really what the Republican party has become?
We will keep you informed as the judges and lawyers work this out. I hope that the judges side with Ohio voters and give every legitimate voter the chance to cast a ballot.
Brian Davis Posts by Northeast Ohio Coalition for the Homeless staff and Board.
The Homeless Coalition with one volunteer, John, spent election day driving people to their precinct to vote. We went to East Cleveland, Euclid, Maple Heights, and Cleveland and had no problems. It is time to give out a few awards. First, John the Lawyer (no friend to Joe the Plumber by the way), gave up his day to drive homeless people all over the county. The second award goes to the Board of Elections who did a great job preparing and staffing this election here locally. We were extremely critical of the Cuyahoga Board of Elections for the 2004 and the 2006 elections, but there were no major problems with this election. The staff were prepared, and during the first week of voting everything went smoothly. Election day saw no major problems, and the staff were helpful. In 2006, I nearly got arrested because the staff were not trained sufficiently; they were understaffed; and they were not willing to listen that they were making mistakes. In 2008, the polling places were ready to go on time and staff knew what to do, and were pleasant. At the main office, they were ready for early voting and seemed to have enough staff and workers. It was rough on the weekends, but that was a problem with having only one polling place available for early voting. It might be a good idea to use the convocation center or the Higgbees building or the Medical Mart or some other large complex in 2012 for the Obama vs. Palin race.
The shelters of Cleveland also should get a gold star. Every one of the shelters made an effort to get everyone to vote. Cleveland is one of the only cities in the United States that requires the publicly funded shelters to offer registration/change of address to every person entering. This is thanks to the County Office of Homeless Services who have also asked that every shelter record how many people voted. On November 4, there were very few left who had not already voted. The staff at the shelters did a great job, and I am sure that homeless turnout in Cuyahoga County surpassed the 64% voter participation nationally in this last election. Of special recognition, the Salvation Army Harbor Light Complex helped 160 people to vote early. The Y-Haven program made sure that most of their clients voted in this election, and many also worked at the polling place on November 4. 2100 Lakeside had one staff person assigned to help with registrations and to get people to vote. The new North Point Transitional Shelter made sure that everyone in the place was registered, and the few that did not vote early walked down the street to Bohn Tower to vote. Thanks to all the shelters for working to keep homeless people engaged in the democratic process. We will collect the numbers and release those later this month.
One big criticism goes out to the Ohio State legislature for putting in place horrible rules for voting. There are so many things in the law that are confusing, stupid, useless, and backward. The whole system needs to be redesigned. We need a blue ribbon commission appointed to reform voting in Ohio, and put some dollars into improving this system. The ID provision is worthless and basically a poll tax (since ID is not free and takes months to obtain). The precinct based system does not reflect the needs to current voters, and the entire registration system is antiquated. Please change the voting laws this next year.
Brian Davis Posts by Northeast Ohio Coalition for the Homeless staff and Board.
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.
It is election day. All the hard work is over. Put down your computer and go help two or three people get out and vote. You can help transport homeless people through NEOCH or just call a few family members and make sure they voted. Everyone must participate. GO VOTE!!!
Brian Posts by Northeast Ohio Coalition for the Homeless staff and Board.
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:
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. )
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.
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.
The Ohio Supreme Court and Federal District Court Gwin both issued decisions in support of our position that voters should be allowed to vote and register over the next week. It was covered by the PD in the previous link, and in the Dispatch as well as the Beacon Journal. I was surprised by how close the Ohio Supreme Court decision was so close at 4-3. The argument seems clear to me in that we should make it as easy as possible for citizens to cast a vote. The lawyer who argued the case for Madison County in Cleveland did a terrible job. Madison County had the opinion that they could defy the Secretary of State's order. Our opposition did not seem to have a good handle on how their position would throw the other 87 Boards of Elections into chaos. They have done this same process for years. It is only in the last two major elections (2006 and 2008) that there was "no fault" early voting. The deadlines are clear, and there is plenty of time to figure out if there is fraud in the system before the votes are actually counted on November 4. There will be no duplicate voting because of these decisions. I think it just makes it looks like one party is trying to supress the vote.
We are moving forward to try to get everyone to the polling places early. Some of those will need to register or change their registration. Democracy triumphed today.
I have to say also, that the Board of Elections in Cuyahoga County has done a good job getting ready. They are ready with trained workers and easy access to the building. If you are voting early remember that you still have to go through the metal detector.
Brian Posts by Northeast Ohio Coalition for the Homeless staff and Board.
