Posted on 01/31/2006 12:24:17 PM PST by Uncledave
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 $10 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 $113,660. Now the charge will be $50 per precinct, jumping the charge to some $568,300.
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.
Yeah, it discriminates against illegal aliens. How RUDE!
-Eric
Boy, these guys are just not having a good day...
"It will also virtually eliminate the homeless, elderly and impoverished from the voting rolls..."
because, you know, none of them ever have "a photo ID, a utility bill, a bank statement, a government check or other government document." Uh huh.
The real reason the libs are scared is that this will crimp the dead and illegal votes, core Democrap voting blocks.
very discriminatory indeed.
against illegals, dead people, and those who want to vote outside their district.
geez.
This is the identical requirement used by UPS to pick up a package. Seems reasonable to me.
Yeah, everybody knows that "those people" don't carry ID. Oh, wait a minute; don't they have to show something to cash their relief checks? < /sarcasm >
Would they like a litte cheese with that whine?
Dead people and illegal aliens can't vote? I'm Shocked!!!
Fitrakis is a raving nutjob. He wants the heads of the Rat Senators who voted for cloture.
Looks like it restricts people to voting only once per election, in their proper district, and only while still alive.
It's tyranny, I tell you!
Don't know how much of this story is true, but a driver's license or state issued ID should be enough. Requireing a bank statement and utility bill does seem ridiculous. What if your apartment fee includes utilities, or you simply don't have a bank account?
My summary: "We should be allowed to cheat as much as we want!"
Yeah, and the dead, too.
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