GOP Preparing for Ohio Poll Challenges

Looks like the Ohio GOP is getting ready to be a royal pain in the ass on election day.  We've talked about this before, I realize, but today the Dayton Daily News ran a front page story on the crap going on.

The Ohio GOP on Friday filed 35,000 pre-election challenges in 65 of the 88 counties to combat what they call widespread voter registration fraud. Since then, about 15,000 in six counties have been withdrawn by the party or thrown out by county boards of elections because of filing errors by the Republicans.

The challenges are based on mail to new voters returned by the U.S. Postal Service as undeliverable.

I love their technique for determining if you're a fraudulent voter or not. I wonder what the thought process was like for coming up with this plan.

Repub 1:  "The Dems have too many new voters, how do we stop them?"
Repub 2:  "They can't all vote for Kerry"
Repub 1:  "But how do we know that?"
Repub 2:  "We'll send them some propoganda in the mail that'll show them who the true leader is"

A week later...

Repub 1:  "Hey, 35,000 of these mailings came back"
Repub 2:  "They must be terrorists.  We can't let them vote"
Repub 3:  "Yes, we'll challenge their votes and stuff up the lines at the polling places.  Great plan Dr. Evil"

The Republicans tried hard to disenfranchise these 35,000 voters before election day, but that plan backfired when over 15,000 of the challenges were thrown out.

By declaring the GOP's challenges invalid, Bennett said, "all they (election boards) are doing is pushing it back on the polls, where the challenges are going to take place. Theoretically, these people should never show up (to vote), but if they do, they're likely to be challenged."

Yep, that sounds like a Republican to me.  These registered voters should never show up to vote, and I'll be damned if I'm going to let them.

Fortunately we're well prepared for the Republican tricks here in Montgomery County.  I hope the rest of the state is as well.

•  Mailing was probably

  too large for most mailboxes, or some bullshit like that.

  One party wantf Americans to vote, the other doesn't. It's that simple.

  by HeavyJ on Wed Oct 27, 2004 at 07:02:33 AM PDT

  •  Actually

    I don't have a link handy, but the report I heard was that they had corrupted their database (the GOP that is).  So that when they tried to mail all these new registrations, they weren't mailing to real addresses.

    ex
    Joe Q Public      Jane R Adem
    123 Main St.      123 High St
    Anytown, USA      Americantown, USA
    11111             11211

    Were getting mingled and was printing things like

    Joe Q Public
    123 High St
    Anytown, USA
    11211

    So the addresses and zips were failing and the post office sent them back.  This was the report on what I heard about why the one court had thrown so many of their challenges out.

    by DanD on Wed Oct 27, 2004 at 07:37:44 AM PDT

•  IF ANYONE IN OHIO READS THIS PASS IT ON

  I live in NC but HUMAN ERROR at the board of elections office can often account for returned mail..

  In my case the people in the county board of elections

  left off ONE letter from my absentee ballot and when I never got it they said oops they misentered the address
  and left off one letter from the mailing address so it was returned..

  also I can imagine human error from the elections people leaving out a number from the mailining address or writing the wrong one down causing the same problem..

  I hope someone realizes there is a lot of room for human error between the board of elections and post office that people should know about...

  by EdwardsRaysOfSunshine on Wed Oct 27, 2004 at 07:07:42 AM PDT

•  I think

  the Republicans are being a little too aggressive with this.  It's getting too much publicity.

  by Rally Burger on Wed Oct 27, 2004 at 07:08:10 AM PDT

  •  Agreed

    No one is talking about the massive leeway ohio law gives poll workers to tell challengers to STFU if they think they're acting in bad faith. Also they can actually expell them from the polling place if need be.

    I think all this coverage is just giving poll workers more time and notice to prepare and deal with it.

    by Windowdog on Wed Oct 27, 2004 at 08:53:06 AM PDT