By Peter Bronson
Cincinnati Enquirer
December 18, 2008
Ohio dodged a ballot bullet this year. If the 2008 election had been a squeaker like 2004, we'd still be up to our knees in lawsuits and recounts. The whole nation would be inspecting Ohio's "irregularities" like Florida's bug-eyed chad inspector of 2000.
And there would be plenty of election laundry on the clothesline.
In Hamilton County, more than a dozen voters registered with addresses that were in the middle of the Ohio River, according to an Enquirer report. Another 46 lived in parking lots and empty land on the riverfront. Nearly 600 gave birthdates that made them too young to vote.
Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner was rebuked in the courts for stiff-arming absentee-voter applications for Republicans and blocking observers during early voting. Before the case was rejected by the U.S. Supreme Court on a technicality, two federal courts reversed her refusal to report 200,000 suspicious registrations to county boards of elections.
Brunner's five-day "golden week" allowed anyone to register and vote on the same day, offering a blank-check for voter fraud to groups such as ACORN, which registered one voter 73 times. A group of Obama activists in Columbus got absentee ballots, although none were Ohio residents.
In Hamilton County, "We made a very cursory look at 600 voters and a couple hundred were bad," said Prosecutor Joe Deters. Special prosecutor Mike O'Neill was appointed to go after voter fraud, and said he's still investigating.
And all over Ohio, boards of elections are sending letters to confirm the addresses given on new registrations. "Many are coming back like the Elvis Presley song," said Rep. Bill Seitz, R-Green Township. "Return to sender - address unknown."
Rehashing stale election acrimony is about as appealing as a do-over for the Dennis Kucinich campaign. But Ohio had big problems, and some of the worst were caused by Brunner, who is supposed to make sure elections are fair and clean.
"No election system is perfect," Seitz said. "We're not suggesting this election was marked by wholesale chicanery. But there were things we saw that need to be corrected and now is the time."
His bill that passed the Senate and House this week would: close the loophole on "golden week"; guarantee observers at early voting; standardize absentee ballot requests; and require the secretary of state to inform county elections officials when registrations don't match Social Security and driver's license data bases.
Seitz says Brunner has supported those changes, and has quotes to prove it. But now she calls it "another example of hastily written legislation that will create administrative problems for county elections boards and invite litigation."
It's hard to imagine a bigger administrative headache than the one Brunner caused by sitting on 200,000 suspect registrations. It's hard to picture a bigger lawsuit magnet than her efforts to favor Democrats and ignore fraud.
"She says there was not much fraud, but we'll never know because she managed to mask the very information that would allow us to ferret it out," Seitz said. "It was a calculated effort to maximize voter turnout among the constituents that support Democratic candidates."
Another example: Director of Jobs and Family Services Helen Jones-Kelley had her staff snoop into the private records of "Joe the Plumber" (Joseph Wurzelbacher of Toledo) after his question about taxes embarrassed Obama.
A bill by Rep. Shannon Jones, R-Springboro, was passed by the House to make that a firing offense.
Seitz says Gov. Ted Strickland's one-month, unpaid suspension of Jones-Kelley was enough. "For her, that's a $12,000 fine. I think that's a fairly strong deterrent."
I'd say firing is about right.
But Strickland might veto both bills, to stall until Democrats can take control of the House in January and block the reforms.
If that happens, fraud and dirty tricks will get worse, and Ohio will get another chance to be a national joke in the next election.
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