Voting in Ohio over the decades has generally been considered trustworthy. But that has all changed now as we navigate the debris field of Ohio elections left behind by Republican Ken Blackwell, who after eight years as Ohio's chief election officer is exiting the office and running to become governor.
Generally seen now as a seriously flawed system that even after six years of federal and state attention that funneled millions of dollars in Help America Vote Act funding to states to create a better system is still fraught with election malfunctions, voting in Ohio is in need of a paladin to right its wrongs and return trust and confidence to an act of civic participation that is central to American citizens and our form of democracy.
That paladin is Ohio Democratic candidate Jennifer Brunner, a former county judge and board of election member who is respected for her election law knowledge and who has won the endorsement of all five of Ohio's major newspapers this election cycle.
Whether it is a pipedream that is total fantasy given the state of elections left by the out-going Blackwell and defended by a Republican-controlled legislature or a noble goal to be fought for at all costs, Ms. Brunner has spoken often of her desire to make voting "as easy as drinking a glass of water."
The metaphor that translated the complicated act of voting into an act we understand totally and take for granted was first voiced by Congressman John Lewis (D-Georgia), a veteran of America's civil rights period. It sums up in a tight and simple way what Ohioans and all Americans should expect from their form of democracy. Brunner has repeated Lewis' simple metaphor as part of her discussion with Ohio voters this campaign season about what she wants to do to again make elections trustworthy.
To put the difficulties of her goal in proper perspective, consider the state of voting in our nation as framed by Mother Jones Magazine, which put it this way:
We used to think the voting system was something like the traffic laws -- a set of rules clear to everyone, enforced everywhere, with penalties for transgressions; we used to think, in other words, that we had a national election system. How wrong a notion this was has become painfully apparent since 2000: As it turns out, except for a rudimentary federal framework (which determines the voting age, channels money to states and counties, and enforces protections for minorities and the disabled), U.S. elections are shaped by a dizzying mélange of inconsistently enforced laws, conflicting court rulings, local traditions, various technology choices, and partisan trickery. In some places voters still fill in paper ballots or pull the levers of vintage machines; elsewhere, they touch screens or tap keys, with or without paper trails. Some states encourage voter registration; others go out of their way to limit it. Some allow prisoners to vote; others permanently bar ex-felons, no matter how long they've stayed clean. Who can vote, where people cast ballots, and how and whether their votes are counted all depends, to a large extent, on policies set in place by secretaries of state and county elections supervisors -- officials who can be as partisan, as dubiously qualified, and as nakedly ambitious as people anywhere else in politics. Here is a list -- partial, but emblematic -- of American democracy's more glaring weak spots. Read the full article here: http://www.motherjones.com/...
Standing in stark contrast to the feelings Brunner espouses about the great challenges confronting her and Ohio voters going forward in rectifying how Ohio elections are conducted and run is the statement by her opponent, Greg Hartmann, a first-time Republican candidate who has neither knowledge of election law nor any other skills, credentials or qualifications to hit the ground running in such an important although down-ticket office like Secretary of State.
Hartmann, a Texas political operative of the Bush/Cheney/Rove ilk who arrived in Ohio a few short years ago and who has curiously risen rapidly to become top dog of his Hamilton County GOP party and who is now launching a campaign for statewide office, says that Ohio electon system, despite evidence to the contrary, is a national model that just needs a little tweaking.
For those of us who have grown up with little worry that clean water was any further away than our kitchen tap, the notion that our drinking water could be compromised does not sit well, given our skills and expertise at building safe drinking water systems. For people who do not have the luxury of having clean drinking water at their fingertips, drinking a glass of clean water is a real treat.
Our voting systems, not dissimilar to our drinking water systems, are expected to produce clean elections. But that is no longer to be taken for granted, as the stories about voting in 2004 tell us and that the series of disquieting voting system reports this year portend for tomorrow, Electon Day.
In one poignant article about the sad difficulties surrounding voting in Ohio that Brunner hopes to change, a female voter expressed her great frustration with not being able to cast her absentee ballot in Cuyahoga County recently, as Ohio's new voter law prescribes. In being turned down for voting absentee, the woman, whose 18-year niece was in tow to see how it was done and to register to vote for the first time, lamented about the hassle of it all this way:
The hassle of it, I think, discourages people from voting when they think they are going to run into problems,'' she said, adding that "I just feel like there are thousands of tiny little things that try to make it more difficult to exercise our right to vote.''
The "thousands of tiny little things" probably bring smiles to Republicans like Blackwell and Taft and likely acolytes like Hartmann who are unperturbed by a voting system that does more to suppress the vote than to encourage it. In late-inning negotiations over whether new Ohio voter identity laws, deemed vague by some, will be used at the polls on Election Day, a compromise has been reached among the Ohio Attorney General, a coalition of plaintiff's who brought the lawsuit and a Federal judge.
Previous Federal Judges' rulings have already halted two of the bill's many controversial provisions: one regards registering new voters and the other regards requiring naturalized citizens to bring proof of citizenship to the polls.
What likely made it even more regrettable is that big dollars were allocated to encourage civic-minded citizens like this female voter to show up early and vote. An independent panel reviewing Cuyahoga County's botched May 2 primary recommended numerous changes, one of which the allocation by County commissioners of $100,000 to fund television and radio advertising campaign to encourage people to vote by absentee ballot, thereby bypassing the possible long lines at the polls due to electronic voting, according to information included in the Cuyahoga Election Review Panel's final report to the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections.
Bob Herbert's recent column in The New York Times fulminating about the extent to which our electoral system appears by many to be broken, made the following points:
The system is broken. Most politicians would rather sacrifice their first born than tell voters the honest truth about tough issues. Big money and gerrymandering have placed government out of the reach of most Americans.
Millions of thoughtful Americans have become so estranged from the political process that they've tuned out entirely. Voters hungry for a serious discussion of complex issues are fed a steady diet of ideological talking heads hurling insults in one- or two-minute television segments.
American-style democracy needs to be energized, revitalized. The people currently in charge are not up to the task. It's time to bring the intelligence, creativity and energy of the broader population into the quest for constructive change.
In another Herbert column on how far a field our American democracy has strayed from its once glorious perch, he said:
"With each new election comes a new round of voter horror stories...We need to recognize reality. The aging system of American-style democracy is beset in too many places by dry rot, cynicism, chicanery and fraud. It's due for an overhaul....The key task of any national effort to revitalize American-style democracy would be to bring the citizenry into closer touch with elected leaders in ways that hold the leaders to greater account and make them more responsive. The absolutely essential first step would be to ensure that all who are eligible to vote are actually allowed to vote, and that their ballots are properly counted.
Part of the problem of Ohio's confusing new voter identification bill rests at the feet of its Republican-controlled legislature, that last year passed a bill along party lines that many saw as an effort to make voting the farthest thing from drinking a glass of water, as Mr. Lewis and Ms. Brunner would like it to be.
Although Brunner's flashy but shallow Republican opponent Hartmann speaks about how his so-called business experience will improve elections, it is Brunner, an Ohioan whose personal and professional record is unblemished in contrast to that of Mr. Hartmann, who has the soundest, most time-tested business proposal to figure out what's wrong and how to correct it.
Her simple solution is to engage Ohio's 88 boards of election and state citizens to provide feedback to state policy makers about what needs to be changed to allow them to drink from the glass of democracy more often without fear that they will be forced to swallow pollutants and other undesirable qualities in the process.
Smart business people these days work with their clients and customers to improve their product and delivery systems, and Ms. Brunner believes the same process should be used with voters who know what it takes to eliminate the "thousand tiny little things" that stand between them and casting their vote and having their vote accurately tallied.
Hartmann, clearly a Potemkin candidate, flashes his 20-point program [his only talking point, given his slim and shady personal and professional past] as a panacea that will be a cure all for what is ailing Ohio's election system. In reality, it is nothing more than a platter of talking points handed down to him by his political handlers, who have battered Ms. Brunner and all other Democratic statewide candidates with commercials replete with false conclusions and allegations based on their now-tired strategy of smear and fear.
Hartmann has made no statements to Ohio voters that he will discontinue Blackwell's self-serving policy of outsourcing office services to private contractors, who have posted sensitive personal information on his state website. Hartmann, after years of being warned about the dangers of doing the same thing, which did result in 141 identity thefts from information he refused to take down, will ensure that the sad state of state elections will only continue.
But if Ohio voters perform as poll after poll shows them performing, Hartmann will be sent packing and Brunner, the runaway favorite who is a perfect match for the job, will be empowered to lead Ohio back into the light.
The time is here, the goal is clear for Ohio voters. Do the right and smart thing, and make Jennifer Brunner your next Secretary of State. I you don't know by now why she's the right candidate for the right job at the right time, visit her website here: http://www.jenniferbrunner.com