10.30.06 UPDATE // Once again the rules have changed and the original absentee voter ID rules are in place. This is YET ANOTHER EXAMPLE of voting rules constantly changing and confusing voters. What a convenient way to disenfranchise people! Another reason to establish NATIONAL voting procedures and quit leaving it up to the states and counties because they sure as hell can’t figure out what they’re doing. I hope more than one lawsuit comes of this. It’s 8 days before election day and 4 days before absentee ballots are due, this is UNACCEPTABLE. At the very least there should be a deadline for when voting rules can be changed. Again, who are we to build democracy in other countries when we haven’t even gotten it working properly here?
10.27.06 UPDATE #2 // Nevermind that last update because a federal judge has just suspended the absentee voter ID requirement! This is a huge victory because an estimated 5,000 people may have put the wrong License Number on their ballot and would have lost their vote! Judge Algenon Marbley says he will rule Wednesday on whether to block new requirements to provide certain types of identification on both absentee ballots and at the polls Nov. 7.
10.27.06 UPDATE #1 // There was a story on NPR yesterday about how some Ohio Absentee Voters who are using their drivers license to prove their identity are writing down the wrong number. There’s a long number on top of your photo, that’s not the one!! That’s an administrative number and is NOT a unique identifier so you will essentially be forfeiting your ballot. You need the number on the left side under your address where it says (oddly enough) “License Number”, it should start with a couple letters. Please double check this!!
10.26.06 UPDATE // I just saw that a recent visitor came here looking for how many stamps were needed to mail the ballot and I mistakenly said just one 39 cent one but that’s wrong!! It’s 63 cents, so use 2 stamps!! They tell you this in the voting instructions but just in case, now you know.
10.03.06 UPDATE // More Columbus Dispatch coverage:
Decided? Vote starts today “…But most absentee ballots not ready to mail.”
09.26.06 UPDATE // Check out this story printed in today’s Dispatch:
Early ballot requests rising “…Franklin County has received about 40,000 requests for absentee ballots — far more that it normally does at this point before a gubernatorial election.”
I got a newsletter/card in the mail last week from the Franklin County Board of Elections, it included a form to request an Absentee Ballot for the November 7th Ohio elections. FYI, in Ohio absentee ballots aren’t just for people in the military or overseas anymore. Anyone can vote by mail for whatever reason they want, and this is a great thing. My first thought was that I probably should vote absentee because I trust the U.S. Postal Service more with my vote than I trust a Diebold machine. What’s wrong with Diebold? This, this, and this, for starters.
I checked Bob Fitrakis’ website/blog, scoured Google search results, etc. and couldn’t find much in the way of the pro’s and con’s of absentee voting in Ohio. This was pretty surprising to me given all the corruption and fraud in the 2004 election. So I emailed a contact of mine at the Columbus League of Young Voters (aka League of Pissed Off Voters), her response was just what I was looking for, a little bit long but definitely worth sharing and reading:
OK, so here’s the deal: before House Bill 3 passed, Ohio didn’t count absentee ballots until at least 10 days after the election, and then only if the election results were super close.
The new policy regarding absentee ballots is one of the few good things to be found in House Bill 3. It made it so:
- a) any Ohio registered voter can vote absentee (which is why we now like to call it “vote by mail,” or “early voting,” etc.)
- b) they are now required by law to count the absentee ballots regardless of whether it’s a close election.
- c) absentee ballots they receive BEFORE Saturday November 4 are counted on election day and WILL be included in the preliminary, “unofficial” election results that are announced late at night on November 7. This is really (in my opinion) the total that matters because it is what candidates use as the basis for their decision on whether or not to concede etc. So, this is good news.
- d) absentee ballots they receive between Nov 4 and Nov 7 will be counted 10 days after the election. During those 10 days they (BOE) will verify that none of those ballots came from a person who also voted at a polling place on election day. These ballots will be included in the final, official election results (which traditionally are announced a few weeks after the election), but NOT included in the “unofficial,” preliminary results that are announced late at night on Nov. 7.
So, one of the things we are going to emphasize is that people should send in their absentee ballots well before Nov. 4!
Why it’s safer than voting on a machine:
Well, of course we (the League) are skeptical of pretty much everything having to do with Ohio’s elections - whether machines, absentee ballots, or provisional voting.However, the advantage of the absentee ballots is that they provide a paper trail. The machines are a game of roulette, because they are so hackable. I am fond of saying “the one way to make SURE you voice isn’t heard is by not voting at all.” — my point being: any voting, even on a machine that is under the control of Ken Blackwell, is better than not voting at all. However, at least the absentee ballots are made of paper and so if nothing else, there will be hard evidence later when (not if!) there is a dispute.
Now, if I were Ken Blackwell, I would have taken all the paper ballots and absentee ballots from ‘04 and set them on fire and claimed arson or something. However, apparently he’s not that smart. Right now the Fitrakis folks are painstakingly, physically going through all of those from ‘04 and they’re finding all kinds of evidence of the election being stolen. So, that actually is kind of good news because it hints that perhaps we can trust that absentee ballots we cast in ‘06 will not be destroyed, that regardless of what happens as far as what Blackwell & Co. claim with the election results, etc., we _will_ be able to call him out on it later.
The other advantage of voting by mail is that you don’t have to show ID - you only have to write down the last 4 digits of your social security number. People who vote at the polls will be at the mercy of often poorly trained pollworkers who will have the task of deciding which IDs are ok and which are not. This is going to cause a lot of people to be turned away, to vote a provisional ballot, and even under the best of circumstances (i.e. every pollworker follows the letter of the law and accepts the IDs that the law says are acceptable) this may cause long lines at the polls because it’s an extra step… and as you know, long lines = people having to go back to work, etc. without voting.
Also, people really can’t vote (except provisionally) at the polls at all if they are “off the grid,” i.e. if they don’t have a driver’s license, don’t have a bank statement or a utility bill, etc. Almost everyone has a social security number assigned to them, even if they have destroyed their social security card in an effort to be off the grid or whatever. As long as you know those last 4 digits and can put it on the absentee ballot, you’re golden.
And then, of course, there’s the fact that in states where anyone can vote absentee, voter participation rates are sky high. Higher participation = the right wing always loses.
Personally I think your instinct is right about USPS versus the Ohio election system. We all know the USPS screws up sometimes, but not nearly as much as the BOE…. But yeah, overall, it’s a pretty reliable system and as far as I know they are not conspiratorial. I am sure there will be a certain number of ballots lost in the mail, or which will arrive at the BOE too late to be counted, etc., but it won’t be discriminatory based on how many dems live in that precinct, etc. Of course once those ballots are in the BOE’s hands, anything can happen, but again, at least there is hard evidence.
Re: which counties in Ohio have paper balloting. I hate looking at Blackwell’s face too… ok here’s the link to an Ohio map showing which counties have paper, which have electronic. Don’t worry, Blackwell’s not on this page:
http://www.sos.state.oh.us/sos/yvc/index.htmAlong the same lines, I am recommending that EVERYONE uses the “check your registration” online tool, particularly if you’ve moved any time in the last few years, because you never know if the BOE has tried to send you something at your former address and the new tenants there have sent it back to the BOE. Heck, even if you haven’t moved… As I mentioned before, sometimes things are marked undeliverable for no apparent reason whatsoever, and if that happens the BOE will flag your name in the pollbooks as someone who MUST show an ID with an address that matches their registration address. And as far as we know, some idiot pollworker will think that flag means the person isn’t allowed to vote. Or something crazy like that.
Overall our (the League) goal is to make it so there is no room for error, like, on the part of the pollworkers etc. misinterpreting the law on election day. Because we know that very few voters are prepared to stand there and argue with a pollworker about what their rights are. And even if they do argue, it’s still up to the pollworkers to decide and pollworkers generally see a provisional ballot as equal in status to a regular ballot…. so it’s like, “when in doubt, make them vote provisionally - it will all get sorted out later.” And meanwhile, while we argue about our rights, people are getting held up in line behind us and that means people might leave without voting.
Lorraine E. Bieber
Columbus Coordinator, League of Young Voters
Also worth noting, there’s a new website up called AvoidTheLine.org. The site was made by the Jennifer Brunner Committee and the goal is to promote early voting for the 2006 Ohio elections. Hopefully you already know Brunner is the Democratic candidate for Ohio Secretary of State, and from all accounts, she rocks. This website is a perfect example of why: because she is actually doing one of the jobs of the Secretary of State, promoting the act of voting, vs. Blackwell’s method of discouraging and disenfranchising voters.
So vote EARLY. Skip the getting up extra early to vote before work. Skip the line. Skip the ID checks. Skip the chances of a Diebold machine eating your vote and pooping it out on Blackwell’s, Pryce’s, or DeWine’s side. It’ll cost you 39 63 cents (or 2 stamps) to mail it in, and you won’t get that fun “I voted today” sticker, but it’s so worth it. There are no excuses anymore!!
It’s posts like this that make me wish I was still an Ohio resident so I could vote in a contested election again.
I wish you were still an Ohioan still too!! :-(