Strengthening Constitutional Self-Government

No Left Turns

Voting in Ohio

On Tuesday, the full Sixth Circuit found that the Secretary of State actually needs to follow federal law and send records mismatches identified between motor vehicles and the Secretary of State records to the county election boards. The only thing surprising about this case is that the Secretary of State arbitrarily decided not to do this leading up to the election. As Judge Gibbons said in her concurrence, “As far as I can tell, the Secretary submitted no affidavits relating to harm to her in carrying out her duties or the public interest.” Despite howls of disenfranchisement, the court noted that a mismatch does not remove a voter from the rolls, it simply permits the board to investigate to see whether there are errors or fraud (multiple or false registrations). What the Secretary of State seems to forget is that allowing fraudulent votes to be cast dilutes the votes of actual legal voters, and that this is itself a violation of the right to vote.

Discussions - 3 Comments

My friend works at the local board of elections, here in Geauga County, Ohio. She is in charge of absentee ballots. Her job has become even more stressful than usual in election season, because people are coming in to the Board of Elections and screaming at her for allowing fraudulent votes to be counted. She has no control over which ballots are allowed or not. She is supposed to presume voter innocence until said voter is proven fraudulent. I wonder if this ruing will help her situation. Opening the voting process as we have allows for the possibility of all sorts of voter fraud and my friend hasn't got the resources to follow up on every possible fraudulent voter. What do you suppose the situation is like in Cuyahoga County; much larger and largely Democratic?

people are coming in to the Board of Elections and screaming at her for allowing fraudulent votes to be counted
Hey Kate: is it possible that the problem lies more with the screamers and the folks who whip them into a frenzy? Generally, screaming is an intimidation tactic.

I will happily blame the screamers. I do not blame them for their moral outrage, but for not listening carefully to the news reports which indicate that the local boards are actually being kept from dealing with the problem. The state's SS office is actually preventing my friend from doing her job. She is already frustrated, being agitated herself with the news about ACORN's work in our state. It seems unseemly partisan to say the crooked voter registrations are all or vastly Democrat, but that does seem to be the case. Does ACORN register Republicans? I would love to see a statistical analysis of the voters they register. Especially since they are tax-payer funded.

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