“Election falsification” and other voting issues in Ohio (updated)

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16 responses to ““Election falsification” and other voting issues in Ohio (updated)”

1. 

   jon

   March 7, 2008

   Here’s an excerpt of the comment I posted on Scott’s blog, with suggestions on getting the word out:

   2. It’s very important to link this up with the work of other voting rights activists. A good first step is to try to get it into Daily Voting News. Also, Courage Campaign was (somewhat) successful in challenging results in LA County; they might have suggestions and contacts.

   3. As well as getting it to the mainstream media (try emailing this link with a one-paragraph summary and one paragraph about why you and their readers/viewers will care), it’s also worth trying to get blogosphere pickup for this story. I mentioned it in a comment on Jack and Jill Politics’ Voter Suppression in Ohio thread and will look for other places.

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2. 

   jon

   March 7, 2008

   Here’s the digg link for Scott’s story.

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3. 

   jon

   March 10, 2008

   Scott’s story got a brief mention and link from Brad Friedman’s voting rights blog — not sure what it has to do with the rest of the thread, but any publicity is good publicity!

   And there’s a thread on Bloggers for Obama about this post and art house queen’s.

   Oh, and Cuyahoga County is demanding a refund for the decertified Diebold machines (the reason they used paper ballots). $21M. Hopefully to be applied to future, cleaner, elections. Props to the election officials there, and for Secretary of State Brunner for backing them.

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4. 

   jon

   March 10, 2008

   A friend whose mom worked the election in Ohio, and said she saw life-long die-hard republicans filling out democratic ballots — a noticeable percentage of the vote in her small rural town.

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5. 

   jon

   March 10, 2008

   Steven Rosenfeld’s Alternet story, while skeptical that the Limbaugh effect influenced the overall voting total, does have some interesting tidbits, especially

   The Cincinnati Enquirer reported on March 5th that in several Ohio counties, Republicans apparently did cross over to vote for Clinton. In Clermont County, a conservative rural area southwest of Cincinnati, 11,783 more people voted in the Democratic Primary than there were registered Democrats in the county. In nearby Warren County, there were 15,415 more people voting in the Democratic Primary than registered Democrats in the county.

   Susan Davis, in the Wall Street Journal’s WSJ.com, looks at exit polls for Texas (where crossover voting is legal) to estimate Limbaugh’s influence: only 53% of Republicans who voted in the Democratic primary supported Obama, as opposed to 72% in Virginia and Wisconsin. With Republicans making up 9% of the electorate, this is about a 1.7% difference. The Clermont and Warren County numbers imply that it may be even higher in Ohio.

   Update on March 11: I should point out that this is the maximum impact, and doesn’t take into account that these states may well have more conservative voters who are crossing over legitimately, and tending to favor Clinton as her rhetoric shifts in that direction … or people who would have done this anyhow, Rush or no. If I were to guess, maybe .5% on a statewide level. It’s likely to be higher in certain areas, though, so it still could shift some delegates.

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6. 

   jon

   March 12, 2008

   Gregory Korte’s pre-election Crossover voting has baggage: Prosecution possible for mischief has more:

   But a registered Republican who wants to vote a Democratic ballot must swear – under threat of criminal prosecution – that he “desires to be affiliated with” and “supports the principles” of the Democratic party. The same goes for registered Democrats who want to vote Republican ballots.

   Prosecutors and election lawyers say indictments of fraudulent crossover voters are extremely unlikely, and perhaps unfathomable – absent some organized effort by one party to tamper with the other party’s result.

   “I don’t know whether anyone’s ever been prosecuted for it,” said David Stevenson, who handles election matters for the Hamilton County Prosecutor’s Office (and a registered Republican). “But if the Board of Elections referred something to us, we’d have to take a look at it.”

   and …

   A voter’s primary voting history is a matter of public record.

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7. 

   jon

   March 12, 2008

   A link on Moms who think led me to Amanda Garrett’s story in the Cleveland Plain Dealer. They interviewed several local voters, including five who acknowledged lying. Also:

   Those who crossed lines were supposed to sign a pledge card vowing allegiance to their new party.

   In Cuyahoga County, dozens and dozens of Republicans scribbled addendums onto their pledges as new Democrats:

   “For one day only.”

   And it sounds like local politicians are taking this seriously — in a commendably non-partisan way:

   Sandy McNair, a Democratic member of the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections, said Friday that the manipulation of the system was troublesome.

   “It’s something that concerns me, that I think needs to be looked at further,” McNair said. “This is not a structural thing by the Republican Party. If it’s a problem at all, it’s on an individual level.”

   …

   Cuyahoga County Republican Chairman Rob Frost tried to tamp down the temptation. He contacted Republican voters and appeared on the Frantz show urging Republicans “not to heed the siren call of Rush Limbaugh and others.”

   “Elections are not something you should be playing games with,” Frost said last week during a telephone interview.

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8. 

   jon

   March 12, 2008

   My comment in a couple of threads on Kos(1, 2)

   Lying on your pledge is a fifth-degree felony: “election falsification”. Amanda Garrett had a great story in the Cleveland Plain Dealer on Monday; Kim Zetter’s Did Limbaugh’s Crossover Voters Break Ohio Law? today on Wired’s THREAT LEVEL blog today is good reading as well.

   Limbaugh appears to have encouraged his listeners to do something illegal by pimping their vote — the the Republican party chair of Cuyahoga County seems to think so (and props to him for going on TV before the election to warn people not to follow the “siren song”).

   The Cuyahoga County Board of Elections is looking at it … this definitely seems like a good time to get the word out in the blogosphere and get more coverage of this.

   jon

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9. 

   jon

   March 13, 2008

   In response to one of my comments on Kos, somebody posted a screed with a title “Obama supporters panic, throw hissy fits”, with something along the lines of how Obama had broken ranks with the rainbow coalition and now that the nomination is slipping away, the sky is falling.

   Yeah. Right.

   For some reason a lot of “progressives” are threatened by attention to voting rights issues; Kossack DHinMI’s nasty attack on voting rights advocate Brad Friedman was another good example. It’s rare to see it coupled with such unawareness of the strategic situation, though: Obama’s position has gotten steadily stronger and stronger over the last month — including on March 4, as Clinton failed to make a significant dent in his lead as time continues to run out for her.

   And, um, shouldn’t Jesse Jackson have something to say about whether or not Obama’s splitting the rainbow coalition?

   Sheesh.

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10. 

    jon

    March 13, 2008

    Kim Zetter’s Did Limbaugh’s Crossover Voters Break Ohio Law? on Wired’s THREAT LEVEL blog looks the details of the election falsification law.

    Kim quotes Dan Tokaji, a law professor at Ohio State University’s Moritz College of Law who specializes in election law, as saying it’s debatable whether Ohio’s law is enforceable and says that even if it is enforceable the likelihood that anyone would be prosecuted under it is “infinitesimally small.” He notes that many poll workers didn’t have voters sign an affidavit. [Interestingly, the presiding judge I quoted above bemoaned the lack of an affidavit — inconsistent instructions to poll workers?] And

    even those who did sign a statement and did so disingenuously would likely not face prosecution, Tokaji says, unless they were blatant about what they did, such as bragging online about it, and could be identified.

    “If after doing this the person gets online and says ‘Ha, ha ha. I tricked them and signed this statement,’ maybe then we could imagine someone being prosecuted,” he says.

    But even then, he thinks the likelihood that they would be prosecuted is close to nil.

    We shall see … it’s not clear whether Dan had read the the Cincinatti Enquirer pre-election article with the Republican prosecutor saying that if the Board of Elections referred an issue to them, prosecution was substantially more likely if it like it was a part of an organized effort to tamper with the election — or the Cleveland Plain Dealer article with multiple voters admitting to lying and a Board of Elections member saying he wanted to look into it more.

    Here was my comment:

    Excellent article, Kim; this really helps to clarify the situation. The Ohio Department of Elections was really scrambling to make this election work (plus in a $21M hole thanks to Diebold) and so it’s not surprising they weren’t able to ensure that all the poll workers received adequate training.

    One thing I’m still confused about: are the affidavit rules different in different counties? A presiding judge posted on one of the threads that he challenged voters, telling them that it would be a felony, and bemoaned the lack of affidavit for those who seemed clearly uncomfortable as they insisted that they intended to vote Democratic in the fall. It would be interesting to know what the law and statewide policies are here.

    Dan makes a good point that this is the kind of thing where the likelihood of prosecution is usually infinitessimal. We shall see.

    In any case, if there’s major buzz about this in the blogosphere, social networks, and (eventually) the mainstream media, who knows: it’s even possible that Rush Limbaugh might face some serious consequences for his encouraging his Ohio listeners to “pimp their vote” and commit the felony of election falsification. Just because they won’t get prosecuted unless they confess (and probably not even then) doesn’t make it legal.

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11. 

    jon

    March 13, 2008

    Actually, that comment of mine on the Wired blog had some very unfair snark directed at the mainstream media, which has in fact taken the lead on this story. This thread gives a pretty clear history: the Cincinnati Enquirer and TV stations were on this before the election, and the Cleveland Plain Dealer did a major investigative piece after.

    Social networks have also been discussing this, with threads in the One Million Strong for Obama group on Facebook (which is where I saw Scott’s piece after he posted it — and where some of the key links have come from); and it’s now starting to hit the discussion boards.

    By contrast, the blogosphere has been virtually silent. As of today, a Google blog search for Ohio election falsification reports only 185 hits. The Unapologetic Mexican’s Chattering Felons for Clinton covered this on March 9; other than that, Kim’s, on Wired THREAT LEVEL, is the only high-profile mention I could find (the Jed Report and poblano on Kos threads only discuss the impact, not the legality).

    Even voting-related blogs like John Gideon’s Voters Unite!, Dan Tokaji’s Equal Vote Blog, and Rick Hasen’s Election Law Blog, have all been silent; Brad Friedman’s BRAD BLOG had one brief link to Scott’s Newsvine column in a story on voting machines in Illinois, but that’s it. What’s with that?

    Disappointing.

    Thank heavens for social networks and the much-maligned MSM. Alas, I can’t edit my post on Wired’s blog, but I did remove the “(eventually)” from my update at the top of the story here.

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12. 

    jon

    March 13, 2008

    The Cleveland Plain Dealer editorializes in favor of dropping the pledges (“loyalty oaths”) in future elections:

    Ohio needs to drop the Election Day loyalty oath. If nothing else, it would speed things at the polls and free election workers from what can be an awkward task.

    If the state’s parties want a closed system, then change the law to create one. Otherwise, understand that open means open to anyone, for any reason – and even for a day.

    Meanwhile, in Mississippi, crossover voting (some of which may also be illegal) may have cost Obama many as five delegates. No projections yet on the effect of Republicans re-registering as Democrats for the upcoming Pennsylvania primary — registration closes on March 24.

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13. 

    jon

    March 25, 2008

    The story continues to get coverage, with Joe Gullen’s Cuyahoga County Board of Elections begins investigation of primary crossover voters in the Cleveland Plain Dealer and Steven Rosenberg’s Will Rush Limbaugh Be Indicted for Voter Fraud?. A report is expected on March 31; prosecutions are considered unlikely.

    Ari Melber’s Limbaugh’s Lying Voters Under Investigation on The Nation’s Campaign Matters blog is a pretty definitive update, with the best set of links I’ve seen yet. It also describes Limbaugh’s outrage after Fox’s Julie Banderas said “Republican shock jocks” were possibly “anti-American” for urging people to break the law — and his respsone after Ari discussed this on CSPAN: “Stuff it, pal, stuff it!” There’s also some valuable context:

    And after a Republican Justice Department spent years hyping voter fraud charges, now some of the most blatant election law violations are being stoked, repeatedly and unrepentantly, by one of the most prominent figures in Republican politics.

    We shall see.

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14. 

    jon

    March 26, 2008

    The thread on The Nation now has 481 comments. There’s also a 100+-comment thread on Facebook, although a lot of it wanders into different subjects.

    In the rather disappointing thread in the Politics tribe, where only a couple people other than me posted, I commented:

    For those who dismisss poiltical discussions here (or on other social networks) as irrelevant, or lament the fact that it’s so hard for any of us to have influence: this is a great counter-example.

    Here’s some more details, cut-and-paste (with a few minor edits) from an email I sent some friends:

    A great example of the not-so-hidden power of social networks: Scott Isaacs, a 26-year-old from Butler County Ohio posted a story on Newsvines and then a link in a thread in the One Million Strong for Barack Facebook group. I did some research with the aid of a couple other Facebookers (including a college student in Florida whose Mom lived in Ohio) and wrote up a blog entry, updating it for a few days as new information came up. After I sent it to Kim Zetter, she did some more research and blogged about it on a Wired blog.

    Ari Melber picked it up, talked about it on CSPAN, and after Rush attacked him did a nice piece on The Nation’s blog: Limbaugh’s Lying Voters Under Investigation. [The funny thing is, I actually know Ari via email — he did a long piece about Facebook for The Nation’s print edition in January that I saw on TPM; he quoted my response in his followup post and we’ve stayed in touch — but hadn’t thought of sending this to him.]

    Ohio newspapers and TV stations had reported before the election that lying on crossover pledges was illegal; discussions all over the political blogosphere had discussed the effect of Limbaugh-inspired crossover votes. Nobody (outside of Ohio) put the two of them together.

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15. 

    jon

    March 28, 2008

    The Columbus Dispatch reports statewide officials say prosecution for Limbaugh is very unlikely: “lying through your teeth and being stupid isn’t a crime.”

    What’s strange to me is that people keep talking about how hard it is to prove intent. I certainly agree in general, but I’ve seen reports of at least a dozen admissions of guilt — on the internet, in newspaper interviews, notes on pledge cards. Investigative boards have subpena powers. Why are they choosing not to look at the crimes that people have confessed to? And why are they using “difficulty of proving voter intent” as a reason not to look at the bigger picture?

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16. 

    Chris Hutcherson

    October 3, 2008

    What happens if two candidates get the same number of votes?

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