Ohio GOP poised to gut election protection on way to permanent national

[ecoalex]

>
>
>Ohio GOP poised to gut election protection on way to permanent national
>domination
> by Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman
> January 30, 2006
>
> Ohio's GOP-controlled legislature is poised to pass---probably
>today (Tuesday, January 31) ---a repressive new law that will gut free
>elections here and is already surfacing around the US. The bill is designed
>to help end free elections and continue the process of installing the GOP as
>America's permanent ruling party.
>
> Called HB3, the bill demands discriminatory voter ID, severely
>cripples the possibility of statewide recounts and actually ends the process
>of state-based challenges to federal elections---most importantly for
>president---held within the state.
>
> In other words, the type of legal challenge mounted to the theft
>of Ohio's electoral votes in the 2004 election will now be all but
>impossible in the future.
>
> Section 35-05.18 of HB3 requires restrictive identification
>requirements for anyone trying to vote in an Ohio election. Photo ID, a
>utility bill, a bank statement, a government check or other government
>document showing the name and current address of the voter will be required.
>This requirement is perfectly designed to slow down the voting process in
>inner city precincts. It's meant to allow Republican "challengers" to
>intimidate anyone who turns up to vote in heavily Democratic precincts. It
>will also virtually eliminate the homeless, elderly and impoverished from
>the voting rolls. Election protection advocates estimate this requirement
>will erase 100,000 to 200,000 voters in a typical statewide election. By
>way of reference, George W. Bush allegedly carried Ohio---and the
>presidency---by less than 119,000 votes in 2004.
>
> The ID requirement is the direct result of intervention by two
>high-powered Republican attorneys with ties to the White House and Senate
>Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.). Congressman Bob Ney allowed the
>Bush-Cheney re-election national counsel Mark "Thor" Hearne to testify last
>March as a so-called "voting rights advocate." Hearne, whose resume shows no
>connection to voting rights organizations, was responsible for advising the
>Bush-Cheney campaign on national litigation and election law strategy during
>the 2004 election. See:
>
> http://www.lathropgage.com/people/bio.aspx?bioid=8185 and
>http://www.lathropgage.com/ files/tbl_s47Details %5CFileUpload265%5C351
>%5CTHOR_Insert.pdf.
>
> Hearne, with the help of Republican attorney Alex Vogel,
>concocted a story that the problem with the 2004 elections in Ohio was the
>NAACP paying people with crack cocaine to register voters. Vogel's front
>group, the Free Enterprise Coalition, even indemnified a local Republican
>operative, Mark Rubrick, to file an Ohio corrupt practices act suit against
>the NAACP, the AFL-CIO, ACT-Ohio and ACORN, The suit was later quietly
>withdrawn after discovery showed that the operatives behind it were linked
>to the top levels of the Republican Party.
>
> Ironically, the Republican Party engaged in racist and massive
>voter repression in Ohio and are now institutionalizing that very Jim
>Crow-style repression and selling it as an election reform bill.
>
> HB3 will also delete the ability of the public to conduct
>meaningful audits of voting machines. Election protection activists
>recently forced the adoption of an auditable paper trail into the Ohio
>election process. In a state where virtually all ballots are cast and/or
>counted on electronic equipment, this cuts to the core of the ability to
>monitor an election's outcome. The new provision in HB3 will make the paper
>trail virtually meaningless.
>
> HB3 further imposes a huge jump in the cost of forcing a
>recount. In 2004, the charge was $100 per precinct, with some 11,366
>precincts in the state. Thus the Green and Libertarian Parties, which
>paid for it, had to pay somewhat more than $113,000. Now the charge will
>be $500 per precinct, jumping the charge to some $568,000.
>
> Finally, and perhaps most astonishingly, HB3 eliminates the
>state statutes that allowed citizens to challenge the outcome of federal
>elections within the state. After the 2004 election, election protection
>advocates filed a challenge to Bush's victory. They were attacked with an
>official attempt to levy sanctions, and then were thwarted from an effective
>suit when GOP Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell locked up the state's
>voter records.
>
> But HB3 would now entirely eliminate any possibility of a
>state-based legal challenge. The only alleged recourse for those wishing to
>officially question the vote count in a presidential, senatorial or US
>Congressional race in Ohio would have to go to the United States Congress.
>There will be no recourse whatsoever on the state level.
>
> HB3 is virtually certain to pass today. Despite grassroots
>protests and bitter opposition from Common Cause, the League of Women Voters
>and other pro-democracy groups, the Ohio GOP is clearly bound and determined
>to end the possibility of any other party ever taking power in the Buckeye
>State. When combined with campaign finance laws allowing huge chunks of
>private and corporate money to flow virtually unregulated into GOP coffers,
>HB3 will all but end free elections in Ohio.
>
> Only one presidential candidate---John F. Kennedy in 1960---has
>won the White House without carrying Ohio. This and the other repressive
>legislation passed by the Ohio GOP will make it virtually impossible for
>anyone but a Republican to carry the Buckeye State in future statewide and
>federal elections.
>
> Bills like HB3 are also being lined up to flow through
>Republican-controlled legislatures throughout the US. "This comes straight
>from Karl Rove," says Cliff Arnebeck, one of Ohio's leading election
>protection attorneys. "This legislation originates with a demand that
>one-party rule by made permanent throughout the United States."
>
> Anybody wishing to try to stop HB3 at the last minute might try
>calling the Republican leadership of the Ohio House and Senate.
>
> --
> Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman are co-authors of HOW THE GOP
>STOLE AMERICA'S 2004 ELECTION & IS RIGGING 2008, available at
>http://www.freepress.org/. They are co-editors, with Steve Rosenfeld, of
>WHAT HAPPENED IN OHIO? forthcoming from the New Press.

[JeffR]

1. Tin soldiers and Nixon coming

We're finally on our own.

As I posted elsewhere today, Ohio is the new Florida.

[Acebass]

2. the plan all along

I often wondered what would have happened if Kerry would have been declaired the winner...
We're not assured that we'll be rid of him in 3 years...

[John Grevstad]

3. Red State

Glad I live in a Blue State. That would never happen where I live. Also, just because it is introduced doesn't mean it will pass. Hopefully, in November there will be a cumulation of enough of these kinds of shenanigans that will result in a backlash.

Dems have a goldmine to play with, lets hope they do it, and do it well

[ladjf]

4. "Jim Crow" laws returning. Just like after the American civil war.

This time instead of whites excluding blacks from the political process, it's white Republicans excluding all the rest of us, i.e. blacks, Democratic whites, and hispanics. News flash, there are more of us. Gonna have to win in 2006 by such a large margin that it swamps the rigged voting machines.