Quote:
Originally posted by sgtclub
That is ridiculous. Voting rules are there for a reason, and that is to prevent fraud. Please tell me how else we prevent voting fraud than with clearly defined rules and enforcement of those rules?
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Well, if it were that easy, then why is the GOP in my state imploding?
New Ohio election uproar
Blackwell tries to ban challengers at polls; Petro refuses order
Going against his own party, Republican Secretary of State Ken Blackwell sought Friday to pre- vent battalions of political party activists from challenging Ohio voters at polling places on Tuesday.
Blackwell's stunning announcement, intended to settle federal lawsuits in Cincinnati and Akron, brought him into immediate conflict with the Ohio Republican Party and one of his 2006 gubernatorial rivals, Republican Attorney General Jim Petro.
Blackwell gave a perfunctory notice to Petro, faxed his recommendation to the judges and then rocked the state GOP by publicly instructing Petro, his lawyer, to formally present the settlement offer in both courts.
Petro said he would not.
"Neither the secretary of state nor I can negotiate away the legal rights of Ohio's citizens," Petro said in a statement released by his office. "Thus, I cannot submit to the federal courts the secretary's unlawful proposal to ban all challengers for all parties, candidates or issues on Election Day."
The clash between the state's chief elections officer and its chief lawyer threatens to throw into further turmoil an election that is already quivering with partisan rage as President Bush, Sen. John Kerry and their surrogates crisscross this key battleground state.
Both the Akron and Cincinnati lawsuits remain unresolved.
Blackwell's announcement in Columbus briefly halted a hearing before U.S. District Judge Susan Dlott in Cincinnati, where civil rights activists are seeking to have the state law that allows polling place challengers overturned as unconstitutional. After Dlott read Blackwell's news release, the room quickly emptied as nearly a dozen lawyers some appearing perplexed huddled in the hallways or dialed their cell phones to find out what was happening.
Just days earlier, Blackwell had directed county elections boards to allow a challenger in each precinct.
When court resumed, Assistant Attorney General Richard Coglianese told the judge he represented Petro but would no longer represent Blackwell.
"We are defending the statute and the rights of Ohioans," he said.
Later, Dlott announced that she had received word that the Justice Department planned to file a friend-of-the-court brief in the case.
Eric Holland, a spokesman for the Justice Department in Washington, would not comment Friday evening on the possibility of interceding. The department does plan to send civil rights division attorneys and staff to monitor the election in dozens of jurisdictions, including Cuyahoga, Franklin and Hamilton counties in Ohio.
Outside the courtroom, Hamilton County Republican Chairman Mike Barrett said GOP officials would not back off plans to place challengers in 251 precincts in Cincinnati and its suburbs that voted for Al Gore in 2000.
Those precincts are in predominantly black neighborhoods. In some, Gore got up to 99 percent of the votes, he said.
He said up to 20 percent of the precincts in Cincinnati are staffed entirely by Democrats who work for the board of elections.
"We need to observe," Barrett said.
Legal wrangling over challenges in voting precincts dominated by poor and black voters has left some Ohioans unsure whether or where to vote. But David Sullivan, Democratic voter protection coordinator in Ohio, said the challenges have galvanized minority voters.
Steven Huefner, an associate professor of law at Ohio State University, said Blackwell would have difficulty keeping challengers out of polling areas, but he said legal arguments that the law "is a holdover from Jim Crow-era statutes" might be persuasive.
"We've never had challengers in every precinct, or if not in every precinct, in so many predominantly African-American precincts," he said. "It does raise the specter both of some constitutional rights being violated, as well as violations of the Voting Rights Act."
Blackwell and Petro, who are both involved in the Bush-Cheney campaign, clashed earlier this week when Petro, against Blackwell's wishes, appealed an order in another case before Dlott in Cincinnati. Petro lost his appeal of Dlott's decision to halt GOP voter challenges in six Ohio counties. On Friday, Dlott expanded her order to cover all 88 Ohio counties.
Blackwell proposed the ban on challengers, but not witnesses, from polling places after the Summit County Democratic Party sued in federal court in Akron, seeking to overturn the law that permits challengers, and the Cincinnati challenge was filed by activists Marian and Don Spencer, who claimed that the challengers could intimidate and harass voters.
"It has no sensible application in today's democratic process," said Andrew Padrutt, executive director of the Summit County party. He said challenges would create delays at the polls and discourage people from voting and would not give disqualified voters ample time to appeal.
Blackwell said he disagreed that the law was discriminatory, but said he proposed the settlement in the interest of promoting a smooth election.
"While I do not agree there is any discriminatory intent or result from these statutes, I do believe a full airing of the issues cannot be completed prior to Tuesday's election," he said.
Democrats cheered Blackwell's proposal.
"It is now abundantly clear that the entire Republican voter-suppression effort is backfiring," Sullivan said.
George Forbes, president of the Cleveland chapter of the NAACP, agreed.
"I think it's great," Forbes said. "The Republicans are the ones who want the challenges. . . . If they withdraw, we can abide by that."
Mark Weaver, legal counsel for the Ohio GOP, tempered his comments.
"We have challengers ready to go to the polls, but we're going to abide by whatever the law is and we're going to allow elections officials to resolve what the rules are," he said. "The state party's position is whatever the law permits should be allowed, and right now the law allows" challengers.
In the short term, the Blackwell-Petro clash will only "sow more confusion," said John Green, director of the University of Akron's Ray C. Bliss Institute of Applied Politics.
"It sounds like Secretary Blackwell's position would probably be fairly popular among a wide spectrum of voters let's set all this aside until after the election,' " Green said. "Of course, Petro is saying this shouldn't prevent him from doing his job, which is to represent the state of Ohio in court. . . . There seems to be a struggle for advantage going on."
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