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Wednesday, October 18, 2006

The Republican Voting Shenanigans Begin Early
Posted by Jill | 10:52 PM
Ohio Republican Secretary of State and gubernatorial candidate Kenneth Blackwell doesn't pull his punches when it comes to disenfranchisement. In the event he's not successful in trying to get his opponent, Ted Strickland, disqualified, it seems he's done a pretty comprehensive voter purge, and if this diary at Daily Kos is accurate, we are going to wake up and find that despite Strickland's 60% polling, Kenneth Blackwell will have won the election and that Mike DeWine has kept his seat, despite Sherrod Brown's 8-point polling lead:

My friend was present as a group of Moderate GOP members with Ohio ties lamented how far the party had strayed. There was consensus at the table there was no way they should retain control. The table conversation began with the assumption they party would lose control in this election. The moderates started planning how to take back control of the GOP from the extremists.

Then, one insider, probably an extremist, but certainly very close to Mr. Ken Mehlman abruptly stopped the conversation. He told table that it was impossible they would lose either house. He also predicts an Ohio GOP sweep.

He informed the group that over the last year, in four critical states the GOP needs to hold huge purges of the voter rolls have just been finished.

The insider did not say which four states, but did say Ohio was among them.

His claim was a new Diebold voter registry system had been installed over the last year. The last week of July and the first week of August a "test run" was made of the systems ability to purge ineligable voters. The purge generated names and test letters sent out to 1.2 million Ohio addresses with a focus on University's, Apartment addresses with high turnover. He claims they made the letters seem just functionary, but they have an action component to avoid being purged from the rolls.

The Insider warmed and said that Blackwell was brilliant in how he did this. The letter went on for a long time about changes in Ohio voting and security and suggested people who might have any concerns about their voting status could come by county offices and confirm their continued voting eligability before election day.

He further added, that since it was conducted as a "test" they only sent letters to a limited number of suspect addresses and "I suspect Blackwell chose criteria very very favorable for us."

Further the insider stated that Blackwell had only purged the lists after a full 60 days was given for people to respond. Which means even if a voter was on the "termination" list, they would still have been eligable to vote in the primary.

He told they table they believe the purge has probably caught up "hundreds of thousands of students, activists and wanderers with no real job" would show up at the polls and have to vote provisionally.

He predicted to the table that tens of thousands of voters will show up on election day, and once the provisionals are used up will simply not be able to at all.

He also said that this "operation" (The Insiders word, my friend was specific about this" had turned up a lot of additional fascinating information including a number of Democrats in elected office who are registered to vote in several places, and they may explore how to use this information against them.

I am going to assume, Mr. Blackwell's "test" purge went to no-one registered GOP. His criteria is something I am trying to get a copy of now.

Friday I called friends in Lorain County and Wayne County Ohio. I told them this DC tale. Neither of them had voted yet and I asked them if they could go on Monday to either early vote, or apply for an absentee ballot. And if possible sit for in the Elections Office for an hour and determine if anyone was expressiing surprise they were no longer registered.

If the sample of 11AM-1PM in Lorain County Ohio and 10AM-11AM in Wayne County Ohio are true. Then Ohio Democratic Voters had better go and Vote Early if they plan to vote at all.

At Lorain County, my friend arrived to find a line of over 15 people, many of whom had come back for a second time, all of them Democrats who had arrived to vote and been told that Drivers Liscence Information, or in one case Home Ownership Information had not matched the address provided for Voter Registration.

In one case a college student had been purged because he had changed dorms on campus.

In another case a local blue-collar worker had been purged because his voter registration had only his building address, but his drivers liscense included an apartment number. This tiny difference in information had led to his purging.

While everyone present seemed to have enough information to allow the records to be updated, my friend told me it was being done by one and only one clerk and was taking a very long time, about 5 minutes per person to resolve. Everyone in line confirmed that several voters had given up in frustration and left.

In Wayne County the sample is smaller, but during the one hour he stated 18 people arrived for absentee ballots or to vote early. Wayne County had 3 Diebold TSX Touch Screens set up for early voters. Of those who arrived two of them had been provisionally purged. The first was again a student from a local college, she was sent away and told she had to bring some ID beyond her student ID to prove she was resident at the College. She was wearing a Sherrod Brown button. The second was a local guy who owns two houses on the same block. His drivers liscence is to the one house where he keeps his cars, but his voter roll is in his house where he actually sleeps four houses away. This got resolved with a series of steps that included filling out two forms, and a clerk having to enter the corrected information into two seperate computers.

As an added bonus, My friend listened in and witnessed 8 retired ladies getting instructions on how to be poll workers on the new TSX machines. The instructor was a local elections board member. She was asked many questions by one of the retirees and her answer to almost all of them was "I don't know how it works, I just know how we are supposed to use it"

Get ready Ohio.

This story also may explain Mr. Blackwell's sudden discovery of the "two homes and is he really a qualifed Voter" now facing Strickland.

This Blackwell discovery of Mr. Strickland is actually "by-catch" of the much larger net thrown to eliminate hundred of thousands of democrats from the voting rolls.


I've been predicting for months that despite all the talk about a Democratic rout of Republicans, that this election is going to be 2002 all over again, where you go to bed with Democrats holding comfortable leads, and you're going to wake up the next day and in every one of those challenged races, the Republican will prevail.

And the media will attribute it to gasoline prices, or a surge by evangelical voters exhorted to stay with the Republicans by James Dobson, or the phase of the moon. But I have no faith whatsoever that the Democrats will finally wise up to the kind of mass disenfranchisement that is now an inherent part of Republican electoral strategy.

And that will be the final nail in the coffin of our nation. There will then be no deluding ourselves that we still live in a democracy, for we will now be trapped in a totalitarian dictatorship led by George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, and Donald Rumsfeld, and held in place by men like Kenneth Blackwell -- men who would all be viewed as traitors of the United States of America still existed.
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