Guest blogged by Winter Patriot
Mother Jones has the skinny on eleven of the worst places to try and vote in America, courtesy of Sasha Abramsky:
Just Try Voting Here: 11 of America’s worst places to cast a ballot (or try)
I won’t spoil the top ten for you. But here’s what Sasha says about number eleven:
Ohio
Election activists don’t have Florida’s Katherine Harris to kick around anymore, but in a system where most states’ top election officials are also politicians, there’s no shortage of other nominees for worst secretary of state. The current leading candidate must be Ohio’s Ken Blackwell, now a Republican candidate for governor, who seems intent on making sure as few Ohioans as possible are registered to vote. In 2004 Blackwell achieved national notoriety when he announced that his office would accept only voter-registration forms printed on paper of at least 80-pound weight. Blackwell had to back off that requirement, but a slew of other restrictions remain, including one under which door-to-door registration workers must sign in with county officials, and another requiring them to personally mail in the registration forms they collect. “The constant promulgation of rules and regulations keeps members of the Board of Elections jumping around like cats on a hot tin roof,” says Chris Link, executive director of the Ohio ACLU. “And this essentially hurts Democrats. Who is newly registering? People who’ve just become citizens, young people who’ve just gotten the right to vote.” Meanwhile, Blackwell’s office has done nothing to inform voters that come Election Day this year, they will have to bring photo IDs to the polls — guaranteeing that tens of thousands of mostly Democratic voters will be turned away.
Please read the whole article.
CONFESSION: This piece was originally blogged with an incorrect heading which claimed “Ohio didn’t even make the top ten” … in fact Ohio claimed two of the top four spots. So that was a big FUMBLE! by your nearly frozen host, spotted by Lorraine Bieber. My apologies.
I’m glad you posted this, I nearly sent you the link, but figured you would find it on your own;) The sneaky poll tax is showing up in more and more places. Here in Az they justify it as part of the illegal immigration crackdown.
Correction re: “Ohio didn’t even make the top ten” in the Mother Jones article “11 Worst Places to Try to Vote”
Actually, if you read the article you will see that Ohio _did_ make the top ten – twice!
Ohio occupied 3 places on this 11-part list – #3 (line forms here), #4 (incompetence), and #11 (politicos in charge).
The article actually could have been written entirely about Ohio. Whether as a result of actual law, SoS Blackwell’s directives, or common polling place practice, we see all eleven forms of election fraud here in Ohio.
If you find this disturbing and you’re not in a position to come volunteer for the election protection efforts, please send money! Suggested recipients:
People For The American Way pfaw.org
League of Young Voters columbus.indyvoter.org
Jennifer Brunner for Secretary of State jenniferbrunner.com
Good catch, Lorraine … my bad! I was really reaching for a headline and jumped too soon … thanks for pointing out my error.
re #2 and #3 Lorraine: as much as it pains me to say this, I have to, otherwise I won’t be able to look myself in the mirror: I WISH I could say I didn’t read the whole article! I wish I could say I never noticed that Ohio took two of the top four places! Because if I hadn’t read the book I could claim negligence but now my only defense to the charge of Temporarily Posting An Inaccurate Headline is “not guilty by reason of temporary insanity”. ;-(
No problem Winter Patriot.
And by the way, huge huge thanks to all you progressive bloggers for doing your part to shed light on so many of these issues.
Although so many of us saw a lot of this stuff firsthand on 11/2/04 and/or listened to the testimony at the post-election hearings organized by the League of Young Voters… my fellow Ohioans still didn’t want to believe there was a problem with Ohio’s elections, and wrote us all off as tin hat conspiracy nuts.
Something changed midway through ’06, and people here in Ohio finally started taking it all seriously and seeing Ken Blackwell et al for what they are. From my perspective, Robert Kennedy Jr (in his influential Rolling Stones piece), Bill Clinton (in his comments in response to that), and the Mother Jones article under discussion here were just repeating what many of us have been shouting since 11/2/04. But this time, the message came from the right vehicles at just the right time, and that made the difference. Bloggers like you did their part by extending the buzz. It got the momentum going again toward clean elections, and we’re thankful for that.
Stay tuned as the Columbus League of Young Voters and our partner organizations (PFAW, LWV, CASE, etc.) work with our new Secretary of State, Jennifer Brunner, to transform Ohio’s election system. Building clean elections here is going to be as fascinating a process as uncovering corrupt ones!
Lorraine Bieber
columbus.indyvoter.org