I’m really pleased about this because it finally feels as if rank and file Democratic and liberal voters care as much about ensuring that every lawful voter has access to a first class ballot as rank and file Republicans and conservative voters care about setting up roadblocks to a first class ballot.
The enthusiasm gap on this is narrowing:
A referendum on House Bill 194, a sweeping reform of election laws, will appear on the November 2012 ballot, Secretary of State Jon Husted’s office announced Friday.
Opponents of the bill, largely Democrats and voting rights activists, collected 307,358 valid signatures, according to the secretary of state’s office. Petitioners needed 231,150 signatures to put the law on the ballot.
The successful petition drive comes on the heels of Democrats’ victory in overturning Senate Bill 5, a controversial collective bargaining law. That law, supported by Republican Gov. John Kasich and GOP legislative leaders, was overwhelmingly rejected in the November election.
Members and supporters of the Fair Elections Ohio coalition cheered the news Friday and predicted victory next November. By hanging a referendum on HB 194, Fair Elections Ohio preserved the existing elections law through at least next year’s presidential contest. That means a 35-day window for early voting and other practices seen as advantageous to Democrats in 2008 will remain in effect.
President Barack Obama carried Ohio by four points that year. His re-election campaign participated in the HB 194 petition drive. “Today’s news is also further proof that we have a solid and robust grassroots organization in the state, and we plan to carry this momentum into 2012 and look forward to getting the vote out early next year,” Greg Schultz, state director for Obama for America, said in an emailed news release sent by the Ohio Democratic Party.
Husted, a Republican, last month ruled that the petitioners came up about 10,000 signatures short of the requirement. Ohio law, however, provides an extra 10 days to collect supplemental signatures in such a case.
I really believe the petition drive took this issue front and center, and forced us to talk with one another about the nuts and bolts of voting process, a process that is, outside the fiction that is created in the studios of Fox News and the pages of the Wall Street Journal, a dull and ordinary set of specific rules. Take away the New Black Panther Party nonsense and other politically useful allegations and voting process, the real one, the one that exists, is boring. Boring but important.
Mickey Mouse doesn’t really vote, and dead people are removed (or not removed, yet) from the voter rolls when the state or county receives official notice of their death and gets around to removing them. Since people move from state to state and county to county, voters who register in one state or county sometimes die in another, hence the delay, but that’s a less interesting story than “dead people are voting!” so the first impression is the one that sticks.
Voting process wouldn’t merit much national coverage at all from the political press if it were presented honestly, because the news personalities would have to sort through the weeds of state law and explain it all. They’d end up reciting state-specific nitpicky regulations rather than excitedly narrating explosive video clips, which is why it’s a difficult issue to take to actual voters, if one intends to present it honestly.
Yutsano
YAY!!
Now can Kasich just fucking resign already?
Villago Delenda Est
More good news from Ohio, thanks Kay!
El Cid
But it’s always better to draw your general impressions about democracy and the voting process from a guy who seems to wear a pimp hat in front of black people. ACORN!
TheMightyTrowel
Your reporting out of Ohio is giving me hope. :) Thanks Kay!
Bitter Scribe
When one party consistently tries to deny ballot access, you have to wonder how well they actually represent anyone.
David in NY
Hey. I mean, if Ohio can have an actual Democratic Party, maybe the rest of the country can, too! In the very recent past, one could have sustained the position in a debate that Ohio didn’t have any such thing at all. Except maybe in the Will Rogers sense (“I’m not a member of an organized political party …”)
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
Somebody help me with the math here. If 307,358 signatures were collected vs 231,150 signatures needed, and if they were 10k+ signatures short prior to the extra 10 day period, then either they collected more than 86,000 signatures just during that extra 10 days, or Husted, a Republican, is a lying sack of shit.
kay
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ:
What actually happened was, they never stopped collecting. They submitted what they had as a sort of “placeholder” to comply with the statute, but they kept going, so they had (many) more than 10 days. They had the period between their “placeholder” filing and his announcing they were short, PLUS ten days.
JenJen
We had a terrific petition signing event at Northside Tavern here in Cincinnati a few months back. New and creative ways to get people informed and to get the signatures seem to be working!!
I am SO TIRED of having this Voter ID argument with wingnuts. The constant refrain of “but you need an ID to buy a beer” is getting quite boring.
debg
Great news, Kay!
El Cid
Why don’t we totally confuse everybody with a nationwide drive by ACORN (just use the name, it doesn’t matter to the media that they don’t exist anymore), the New Black Panther Party, and whatever other boogeymen to get photo ID’s to the poor and communities of color?
We can do fundraising for license / ID costs, and for requests for birth certificates, etc.
We could give the right the willies by doing what they say they want people to do.
Oooh — also, handgun permits too.
Zach
No one should make any argument against voting ID laws other than:
1. What’s the last instance you know of where voter fraud could’ve been prevented by an ID requirement?
And the follow-up question:
2. Can you describe a scenario in which an election could be stolen through a scheme that could be thwarted by an ID requirement to vote?
There is no answer to either of those questions. Yet there are uncountable instances of voters already losing their full vote because of post-2000 changes in how we vote. I lost my vote in a recent Baltimore election because poll volunteers aren’t always well educated, accidentally registered me for a provisional ballot in the wrong precinct, and didn’t know how to spoil the ballot to start over. I think I’m a pretty sophisticated voter (yes, I could have eventually sorted it out if I stuck around for hours I suppose).
So it’s not just ID requirements. Electronic voter verification systems in general reduce suffrage through inevitable malfunction. Spoiled votes are more common in precincts where poll workers are less well-educated, which are statistically more likely to lean Democratic.
We’ve gone from (mostly) a punchcard system that’s (1) cheap and (2) works well if ballots aren’t made by idiots and (3) can’t be cheated to something that (1) routinely results in citizens losing their votes and (2) is just as if not more prone to error or fraud in ballot design and vote counting.
ornery
Some good news! Thanks, Kay, another great post. Wish there was a way to make the (real) issue more interesting.
And the one about public financing of elections too.
rikyrah
good for you; glad to hear it, Kay!!!
kay
@Zach:
I think provisional balloting makes it worse, because it’s a ballot to hand a voter and the voter then doesn’t question why they’re being shunted to a second class ballot. It also introduces a whole element of subjective decision making by poll workers and others. We would have had a lot more urgency on voter ID laws from voters without the false fail-safe of provisional balloting. The issue would feel a lot different if all of those people who are handed a second class ballot that may or may not be counted were being turned away.
It’s a false promise, and one that led to voter apathy on this, which may have been the point. We shouldn’t be establishing two classes of ballots, one of the haves, and one for the have-nots. A provisional should be an occasional, rare emergency measure, not a godammned policy that is applied to whole class of people.
Chris
@El Cid:
This.
Paul W.
Great news, thanks for bringin ti up Kay.
gwangung
Keep at it, folks…
Zach
@kay: What’s crazy is that we’ve had elections that have hinged on counting provisional ballots yet no one’s made much of a stink about it yet.
I much prefer the old system in most states: campaigns have the option to have workers available at all polling places to challenge signatures. If a campaign wants to take a racist strategy to nullify as many votes as possible, they’re free to do it but at least they have to do it out in the open and can be accountable after-the-fact if it winds up that they disproportionately challenged voters in some area.
kideni
Great news, kay. It’s great that there’s pushback on some of these horrible voter ID laws – Ohio leads the way! I wish we had a mechanism in Wisconsin to recall legislation, so we have to depend on the courts (there are now three lawsuits against the Wisconsin version, as the NAACP and Voces de la Frontera filed late last week, after the ACLU suit; the League of Women Voters filed a state suit a couple of months ago).
jon
How about a Federal Fair Voting Law requiring that any state that changes its polling rules has to have all its citizens register again? Then the hassle created will be shared by all.
If it’s so fucking important, then it should be treated that way. If it’s not that big a deal, then it won’t be much of a problem.
I’m certain that a purging of the rolls is in order anyhow. I don’t trust vote-by-mail systems, electronic counting, or much else involving the system. And the best way to cheat would be to steal vote-by-mail ballots. Why that’s the new standard in so many places (and working fine) while there’s a ridiculous fear of illegal voting is one of those mysteries I’d probably have to be a Republican to
understandpromote.kay
Kideni, I’m following the Wisconsin suitts because ( I don’t know if you know this) conservatives have been alleging voter fraud in Milwaukee for years.
At least 10 years. Wisconsin was one of the 1st states where they made the claim.
I also love that the LWV is bringing a state law claim. I think we should always hit them in both state and federal because we got decisions that were polar opposites in Ohio, state v federal, with feds protecting rights and state court siding with the GOP.
We should sue anywhere and everywhere we can get in.
I’m hoping for an injunction to stay enforcement in Wisconsin. I think the ACLU plaintiff stories are strong, factually.