They Can’t Win Unless They Cheat, Ohio Edition
I was a perfectly mild-mannered, relatively happy-go-lucky guy for most of today.
That has changed. Read these:
- Michelle Malkin — Homeless Ohioans for Obama registering in droves.
- Third Base Politics — “(It’s) ‘Golden Week’ voting in Ohio.”
- (added just after midnight) Palestra.net — “A BUMmer of a Problem”
Special thanks goes to the allegedly GOP-led Ohio General Assembly that whooped through this utter nonsense a couple of years ago.
To avoid further bloviation, I will simply recompile nine reasons from previous posts about two years ago (here and here, with other links to other individual reasons) that identified why allowing unrestricted “early voting” is foolish and dangerous — at least if you want fairly and honestly conducted elections.
Oh. and to say “I told you so.”
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The reasons:
- The political landscape can change after you’ve voted.
- Candidates reveal their rude, deceptive, or self-righteous or other less-than-desirable sides (for the politician cited, there was still about a week to go).
- Unpleasant or pleasant truths about candidates that should legitimately affect voter opinion can come in the final days. (Do you really want to tell me you wouldn’t care if a candidate’s previously unknown violent crime history was discovered after you voted for him or her, but before Election Day?)
- Politicans can abuse it if they get into disputes over their own residency or voter registration situations (the link is to a mythical conversation between two Ohio politicians who did just that in 2006).
- Poll workers can assist the political parties in their Get Out The Vote strategies by letting party officials know how the absentee and early ballots are falling. The more of them there are, the more significant ths problem is.
- Letting the counting of ballots and finalization of results go past Election Day in all but the closest of races because of large pile-ups of absentee and early ballots (which shouldn’t be counted until the polls close on Election Day, and not a moment sooner) is inexcusable in the 21st century.
- There is no way to ensure that coercion will not take place.
- There is no way to ensure voting when not eligible, or ghost voting (voting using someone else’s ballot) will not take place.
- There is no way to ensure that losing or altering ballots will not take place.
So, what’s the problem?
Love,
The Democrats
Comment by Right Runner — October 1, 2008 @ 8:00 pm
I’ll admit that this stuff scares the crap out of me. It is ripe for exploitation. There are a lot of good people in Ohio. However, if bad people have no problem voting two or more times there is no way the good will outweigh the bad.
Comment by largebill — October 2, 2008 @ 8:29 am
I was just watching FNC this morning, they were talking about the groups going around taking people to register and vote for Obama. One of the film clips got my attention given the apparently loose criteria for voter registration in Ohio. College Students! How many out of state college students are in Ohio? What prevents out of state students from voting in the Ohio elections?
Comment by dscott — October 5, 2008 @ 9:16 am
Unfortunately, I don’t believe this is unusual. OH has allowed out-of-state/out-of-area students to register in the county of their university abodes for almost 40 years. I know this because some kind of dumb marijuana referendum pass in 1970 or so in Oxford, where Miami U is. No way it passes without student votes.
I also believe there is no control over such students voting in 2 states.
Comment by TBlumer — October 5, 2008 @ 10:16 am
What’s worse I just heard that some students admitted to voting multiple times using the absentee ballot. Supposedly, if they used the same name the board of elections will disqualify those extras. They said if they try to also vote on Nov 4th and have turned in an absentee ballot they will be given a provisional ballot and then the issue will be sorted out afterwards.
Supposedly, on all these absentee ballots, they are going to mail a letter confirming their information to the address given, if they get the letter returned then they will set out another letter and if that one comes back the absentee ballot will be voided. So my question here is given the massive numbers produced is it even possible for the elections board to resolve the problems before Nov 4th???? If they don’t, do they throw up their hands and say it’s too much and then just accept the fraudulent ballots as is?
FNC says they will re-interview the elections board official in a couple of weeks to see how many letters were returned for bad addresses.
Comment by dscott — October 5, 2008 @ 10:26 am