GOP Guts Ohio Election Protection
Ohio's GOP-controlled legislature has passed a repressive new law that will
gut free elections here and is already surfacing elsewhere around the US.
The bill will continue the process of installing the GOP as America's
permanent ruling party.
Coming with the swearing in of right-wing extremist Supreme Court Justice
Samuel Alito, it marks another dark day for what remains of American
democracy.
Called HB3, the law now 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 allows Republican "challengers" to intimidate
anyone who turns up to vote in heavily Democratic precincts. It virtually
eliminates 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 here and here.
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 also ends 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 have 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. Their attorneys 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, US Senate or US Congressional
race in Ohio would be at the United States Congress. There is now no
recourse whatsoever on the state level.
Despite grassroots protests and bitter opposition from Common Cause, the
League of Women Voters and other pro-democracy groups, HB3 passed with only
one Republican vote against it (all Ohio Democratic Senators and
Representatives voted against).
So the Ohio GOP has taken another giant step toward ending the possibility
of any other party ever taking power in the Buckeye State. When combined
with new campaign finance laws that allow huge chunks of private and
corporate money to flow virtually unregulated into GOP coffers, HB3 may have
all but ended free elections in Ohio---at least until election protection
forces can somehow reverse the trend. .
Since the Civil War, 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, including a very similar one in Georgia.
"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."
With today's passage of Ohio HB3, along with the seating of Justice Alito,
the GOP grip on the American throat has very significantly tightened.
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.
© 2006 The Columbus Free Press
Source: The Columbus Free Press
www.freepress.org/departments/display/19/2006/1754
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