<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
I’m really not sure what to think about this issue<\/a>. Here’s what happened:<\/p>\n In Ohio, anyone can design and print a request for an absentee ballot, and as long as it meets the list of legal requirements, the ballot is legal. The requirements, very much influenced by the GOP’s fear of unqualified people voting, require the forms to include “a statement that the person requesting the ballots is a qualified elector.”<\/p>\n Ohio lawyer Scott Piepho writes<\/a>:<\/p>\n …the required statement of eligibility to vote serves two purposes. One is to put the applicant on notice that he should only be getting an absentee ballot; the other is to make it easier to prosecute Rampant Voter Fraud.\u00ae When applicants don’t check the box in the form as constructed, neither purpose is served. We don’t know that applicants have gotten their notice because they may well have blown past the header. And as a prosecutor, I wouldn’t be very confident that I could prosecute someone for falsely claiming that he was an eligible voter when he doesn’t check the box saying that he is an eligible voter.<\/p>\n And no, the signature doesn’t cut it. Generally when a form requires a signature to certify something, the statement appears directly over the signature line and explicitly states the effect of the signature: “By signing below I certify that . . . etc.” Without that, a prosecutor can’t prove that a defendant knowingly made false statements, which is the standard for prosecuting fraud.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n So the McCain campaign printed up and distributed the card at the top of this post. ((I created the card image by cleaning up this messy pdf<\/a> someone posted.)) And not everyone who turned in the card, checked the checkbox. And now the secretary of state — Jennifer Brunner, a Democrat — says Ohio can’t accept these cards<\/a> if the box isn’t checked. Republicans are angrily accusing her of making a partisan decision and disenfranchising voters.<\/p>\n I’m not completely sure what I think.<\/p>\n On the pro side:<\/p>\n 1) Brunner is right about the law. It was the McCain campaign’s mistake to design this form so that it had a checkbox, rather than a signature, for the statement — but the principle is the same. Just as a signature statement isn’t valid if there’s no signature, the checkbox statement isn’t valid if there’s no checked box.<\/p>\n I really don’t see a lot of leeway. Saying that this form should be accepted without the checked box, is saying that the Secretary of State should ignore both the intent and the letter of the law. (Remember, this law was intended <\/em>to emphasize preventing voter fraud, not getting as many voters to vote as possible.)<\/p>\n 2) If the Obama campaign had sent out this card to its supporters, and the SoS was considering accepting these cards without the box checked, Republicans would be screaming bloody murder.<\/p>\n 3) Looking at the form, neither the statement nor the checkbox are hidden, and the layout isn’t confusing. This isn’t a butterfly ballot situation.<\/p>\n 4) Brunner is offering a compromise:<\/p>\n Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner on Friday offered to contact thousands of voters who filled out an absentee application mailed to them by Republican presidential candidate Sen. John McCain’s campaign but forgot to check a box stating they are a “qualified elector.”<\/p>\n Brunner said the voters would be given a chance to correct the mistake by visiting her office’s Web site. Or county boards of elections could choose to handle the problem locally. Details would come by mail.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n The Republicans are refusing this compromise<\/a>.<\/p>\n 5) Can Democrats afford to play nice and fair forever, when Republicans cheat every chance they get? Isn’t refusing to bring a gun to a knife fight, when you know the other person always brings a gun, a form of suicide?<\/p>\n On the con side:<\/p>\n 1) Why would someone who didn’t think they were a qualified voter send this card in? It seems likely that the overwhelming <\/em>majority of voters who sent this in with the box unchecked, merely forgot to check the box.<\/p>\n 2) The Secretary of State isn’t going to be thrown out of office if she ignores the legislature’s intent, and instead interprets the law liberally, to allow as many people to vote as possible.<\/p>\n 3) There is no substantial threat of voter fraud. It’s bullshit made up by Republicans trying to keep legitimate voters from voting.<\/p>\n 4) If Democrats act like Republicans, that’s no guarantee that they’ll win elections. But it is a guarantee that they’ll have acted like Republicans. Why take the chance of selling out and still losing?<\/p>\n 5) Actually, the layout is possibly a little <\/em>confusing. The checkbox at the top of the form is to the left of all the other content, giving the feeling that it’s outside the “content” area of the form. They should have indented the first line, so that the checkbox was within the same margins as the rest of the form.<\/p>\n On the whole, I think Brunner should reverse herself, and accept these applications for absentee ballots even if the box isn’t checked — but the legislature should revise the law to prevent this specific conflict from coming up again, preferably by adding a directive that in cases where voter intent seems unambiguous, the Secretary of State should weigh her decision to avoid disenfranchising legitimate voters.<\/p>\n Failing that, she should go ahead with her proposed compromise as best she can, whether the Republicans accept it or not.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I’m really not sure what to think about this issue. Here’s what happened: In Ohio, anyone can design and print a request for an absentee ballot, and as long as it meets the list of legal requirements, the ballot is … Continue reading Although some individual Republicans are decent, Republicans as a party have no sense of honor at all, and have only contempt for democracy.<\/strike> Republicans are devoted to trying to keep Democrats from voting, either out of a sincere but nonsensical fear of vote fraud, ((Although if this is how Ohio Republicans really feel, then they should be praising Brunner for not accepting unchecked cards, rather than urging her to accept them.)) or out of a desire to win elections by any means. For example, in this election, Republicans in Ohio planned to challenge the voting rights of people who have had their homes foreclosed (they’ve now recanted<\/a> — but they still plan to use vote caging<\/a> and other vote suppression<\/a> techniques).<\/p>\n