Posted on 01/31/2006 12:24:17 PM PST by Uncledave
Ohio GOP poised to gut election protection on way to permanent national domination by Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman January 30, 2006
Ohio's GOP-controlled legislature is poised to pass---probably today (Tuesday, January 31) ---a repressive new law that will gut free elections here and is already surfacing around the US. The bill is designed to help end free elections and continue the process of installing the GOP as America's permanent ruling party.
Called HB3, the bill demands discriminatory voter ID, severely cripples the possibility of statewide recounts and actually ends the process of state-based challenges to federal elections---most importantly for president---held within the state.
In other words, the type of legal challenge mounted to the theft of Ohio's electoral votes in the 2004 election will now be all but impossible in the future.
Section 35-05.18 of HB3 requires restrictive identification requirements for anyone trying to vote in an Ohio election. Photo ID, a utility bill, a bank statement, a government check or other government document showing the name and current address of the voter will be required. This requirement is perfectly designed to slow down the voting process in inner city precincts. It's meant to allow Republican "challengers" to intimidate anyone who turns up to vote in heavily Democratic precincts. It will also virtually eliminate the homeless, elderly and impoverished from the voting rolls. Election protection advocates estimate this requirement will erase 100,000 to 200,000 voters in a typical statewide election. By way of reference, George W. Bush allegedly carried Ohio---and the presidency---by less than 119,000 votes in 2004.
The ID requirement is the direct result of intervention by two high-powered Republican attorneys with ties to the White House and Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.). Congressman Bob Ney allowed the Bush-Cheney re-election national counsel Mark "Thor" Hearne to testify last March as a so-called "voting rights advocate." Hearne, whose resume shows no connection to voting rights organizations, was responsible for advising the Bush-Cheney campaign on national litigation and election law strategy during the 2004 election. See:
http://www.lathropgage.com/people/bio.aspx?bioid=8185 and http://www.lathropgage.com/ files/tbl_s47Details %5CFileUpload265%5C351 %5CTHOR_Insert.pdf.
Hearne, with the help of Republican attorney Alex Vogel, concocted a story that the problem with the 2004 elections in Ohio was the NAACP paying people with crack cocaine to register voters. Vogel's front group, the Free Enterprise Coalition, even indemnified a local Republican operative, Mark Rubrick, to file an Ohio corrupt practices act suit against the NAACP, the AFL-CIO, ACT-Ohio and ACORN, The suit was later quietly withdrawn after discovery showed that the operatives behind it were linked to the top levels of the Republican Party.
Ironically, the Republican Party engaged in racist and massive voter repression in Ohio and are now institutionalizing that very Jim Crow-style repression and selling it as an election reform bill.
HB3 will also delete the ability of the public to conduct meaningful audits of voting machines. Election protection activists recently forced the adoption of an auditable paper trail into the Ohio election process. In a state where virtually all ballots are cast and/or counted on electronic equipment, this cuts to the core of the ability to monitor an election's outcome. The new provision in HB3 will make the paper trail virtually meaningless.
HB3 further imposes a huge jump in the cost of forcing a recount. In 2004, the charge was $10 per precinct, with some 11,366 precincts in the state. Thus the Green and Libertarian Parties, which paid for it, had to pay somewhat more than $113,660. Now the charge will be $50 per precinct, jumping the charge to some $568,300.
Finally, and perhaps most astonishingly, HB3 eliminates the state statutes that allowed citizens to challenge the outcome of federal elections within the state. After the 2004 election, election protection advocates filed a challenge to Bush's victory. They were attacked with an official attempt to levy sanctions, and then were thwarted from an effective suit when GOP Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell locked up the state's voter records.
But HB3 would now entirely eliminate any possibility of a state-based legal challenge. The only alleged recourse for those wishing to officially question the vote count in a presidential, senatorial or US Congressional race in Ohio would have to go to the United States Congress. There will be no recourse whatsoever on the state level.
HB3 is virtually certain to pass today. Despite grassroots protests and bitter opposition from Common Cause, the League of Women Voters and other pro-democracy groups, the Ohio GOP is clearly bound and determined to end the possibility of any other party ever taking power in the Buckeye State. When combined with campaign finance laws allowing huge chunks of private and corporate money to flow virtually unregulated into GOP coffers, HB3 will all but end free elections in Ohio.
Only one presidential candidate---John F. Kennedy in 1960---has won the White House without carrying Ohio. This and the other repressive legislation passed by the Ohio GOP will make it virtually impossible for anyone but a Republican to carry the Buckeye State in future statewide and federal elections.
Bills like HB3 are also being lined up to flow through Republican-controlled legislatures throughout the US. "This comes straight from Karl Rove," says Cliff Arnebeck, one of Ohio's leading election protection attorneys. "This legislation originates with a demand that one-party rule by made permanent throughout the United States."
Anybody wishing to try to stop HB3 at the last minute might try calling the Republican leadership of the Ohio House and Senate.
-- Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman are co-authors of HOW THE GOP STOLE AMERICA'S 2004 ELECTION & IS RIGGING 2008, available at http://www.freepress.org/. They are co-editors, with Steve Rosenfeld, of WHAT HAPPENED IN OHIO? forthcoming from the New Press.
I don't know about Ohio, but in PA, people who don't have a driver's license can get a photo ID, I think from the agencies that issue drivers licenses. My MIL has never driven, but she votes every election. She has also found over the years that she needs to have a photo ID, so she got one. I would think that if this law is passed, then info needs to be given to people arrested of DUIs on how to get a photo ID.
If Democrats aren't allowed to cheat, they think election are not fair.
If Democrats aren't allowed to cheat, they think election are not fair.
Excellent news. I'd prefer a photo ID requirement, but it's a start.
Translation: This will intimidate anyone who shows up with false identity and attempts to cast an illegal vote, because it will now be a felony to do so.
Uh..I believe that it was either a Photo ID or ....
This article is amazing!
The word "disenfranchise" was not used even once.
Yep - nothing more discriminatory about a free democracy than insisting only those eligible to vote actually get to vote, and only once! The nerve of the Ohio GOP...
They say that like it's a bad thing.
It discriminates against Illegal-Americans and Dead-Americans and those who excercise a multiple franchise. This discrimination is because these groups vote preponderantly (99.994%)for Democrats.this political ethnicism and groupism at its worst.
Mickey Mouse is just one example of the disenfranchisement of Fictive-Americans.
That is the truly sneaky and malicious intent of the drive for honest elections.
It's simply amazing how people spin can facts to support their neuroses. Trying to end voter fraud = rigging elections?
They're right about one thing though, this measure would probably ensure GOP domination. Demographics are trending increasingly Republican, and if the limited democrat base's fraud (felons voting, snow birds voting in both Ohio and Florida, etc...) is eliminated, republicand should sew up the state.
Thanks for posting this. I was wondering earlier today what these commie nutjobs were doing. Assumed they would be busy participating in some sort of organized protest against Alito, but I guess they have their hands full in Ohio.
What is the problem with showing ID?
I like knowing ACTUAL people who are registered are voting.
Then stay after school and read it again. It says:
Section 35-05.18 of HB3 requires restrictive identification requirements for anyone trying to vote in an Ohio election. Photo ID, a utility bill, a bank statement, a government check or other government document showing the name and current address of the voter will be required."
It lists four documents without using the word "or". The fourth document is a 'government check'. The word "or" does not appear until after 'government check', then it goes on to say that another form of government document will suffice to substitute for the 'government check'.
Also please note that utility bills and bank statements are not 'government documents', therefore in this structural content it can ONLY mean that the first three requirements are seperate from the 'government document' requirement. So excuse me for paying attention to grammar, sentence structure and content.
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