An Ohio GOP election official who voted against the weekend voting rules that enabled thousands to cast ballots in the 2008 election said Sunday that he did not think that the state's early voting procedures should accommodate African-Americans.

"I guess I really actually feel we shouldn’t contort the voting process to accommodate the urban -- read African-American -- voter-turnout machine," Doug Priesse said in an email to the Columbus Dispatch Sunday. "Let's be fair and reasonable."

Priesse is a member of the board of elections for Franklin County, which includes Columbus, and chairman of the Franklin County Republican Party.

Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted, a Republican, on Wednesday ordered all 88 counties in Ohio to allow early voting Monday through Friday, until 7 p.m., during the final two weeks before the election. Weekend voting, however, will not be allowed.

Weekend voting helped 93,000 Ohioans cast ballots in the final three days before the 2008 election. Black churches promoted taking "your souls to the polls" events on the Sunday preceding the election, an option that will be unavailable if Husted's ruling stands.

Labels: disenfranchisement, election shenanigans, election theft, institutionalized racism, Republican brownshirts

Maureen Russo was born in Akron, Ohio. For the last 40 years she’s operated a dog boarding and grooming business — Bobbi’s World Kennels — with her husband in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida. Maureen is 60 years old and has been a registered voter in the state for the last four decades. She regularly votes at the church around the corner from her home.

Two weeks ago she received a letter from the State of Florida informing her that they had received information that she was not born in this country and, therefore, was ineligible to vote.

She was given an option to request “an administrative hearing to present evidence” disputing the determination of the State of Florida that she was ineligible to vote. Unless Maureen returned a form requesting such a hearing within 30 days, she was told, it would result in “the removal of your name from the voter registration rolls.”

She immediately sent off a registered letter to the State with a copy of her passport. She hasn’t heard anything back.

Labels: 2012 election, dirty tricks, election shenanigans, election theft, vote suppression

In a decision that broke with every other judge to consider the issue, including at least one judge who effectively fined birther queen Orly Taiz $20,000 for pressing the absurd claim that President Obama is not a citizen eligible to serve as president, a Georgia administrative law judge sided Taitz and several of her clients’ in an effort to force President Obama to testify in a birther case:

In a surprising ruling Friday, a Georgia state administrative judge declined to quash a subpoena directing Obama to attend a hearing Thursday at the Fulton County courthouse on a challenge to strike him from the Georgia ballot this fall on claims he is not a U.S. citizen. [...]

Lawyers for those pursuing the challenges recently issued a subpoena for Obama to attend the upcoming hearing. Obama’s legal team filed a motion to quash the subpoena, but [Deputy Chief Judge Michael] Malihi declined. In his order, Malihi noted that Obama’s legal team had argued that no president should be compelled to attend a court hearing.

“This may be correct,” Malihi wrote. “But [Obama] has failed to enlighten the court with any legal authority.”

Obama’s court filings fail to show why his attendance would be “unreasonable or oppressive” or why his testimony would be “irrelevant, immaterial or cumulative,” the judge wrote.

The arrogance of Malihi’s decision is astounding. If he needs legal authority showing that the president cannot be simply commanded to present himself in court on a very specific date, he might start with the Supreme Court of the United States, which strongly implied in Clinton v. Jones that a court cannot “compel the attendance of the President at any specific time or place.” Likewise, if he needs proof that summoning the president of the United States to testify on a frivolous issue would be “cumulative” of existing evidence, he might consider discovering something called “Google.”

Labels: "birthers", 2012 election, election shenanigans

Thanks to the transparent, open counting process at Tuesday's night's Iowa GOP Caucuses, and a Ron Paul supporter who was paying close attention to the results, we may now be learning that Rick Santorum, not Mitt Romney, actually won the "First-in-the-Nation" Iowa Caucuses this week.

According to a report tonight from television station KCCI NewsChannel 8 in Des Moines, Edward True, a supporter of Paul's says he participated in the counting at the Washington Wells caucus in Appanoose County and wrote down the results he witnessed there on a piece of paper which he posted to Facebook that night. Later, in comparing his totals to the precinct results made available on the Iowa GOP website [CSV version here], he noticed that Romney is shown as receiving 22 votes at that precinct, rather than the 2 that True recorded him as receiving that night at the caucus.

If True is correct, and if no other anomalies are discovered in the coming days, it would mean that Santorum will have won the Iowa Caucuses by 12 votes, rather than lost it to Romney by 8, as reported by the GOP in the early morning hours on Wednesday...

According to KCCI:

Edward True, 28, of Moulton, said he helped count the votes and jotted the results down on a piece of paper to post to his Facebook page. He said when he checked to make sure the Republican Party of Iowa got the count right, he said he was shocked to find they hadn't.

True said at his 53-person caucus at the Garrett Memorial Library, Romney received two votes. According to the Iowa Republican Party's website, True's precinct cast 22 votes for Romney.

"This is huge," True said. "It essentially changes who won."

...

True --- who said he's a Ron Paul supporter --- hopes it was a simple mistake.

"I imagine it's a good possibility that somebody instead of hitting 2 might have hit 22 by accident," True said. "I hope so."

But he said he won't stop talking about it until the state --- by his count --- gets the numbers right.

"Numbers that I personally witnessed being counted and assisted in counting and am certain are right," he said.

"The story on Romney getting extra votes as a result of a typo looks credible IMO," tweeted The New York Times' statistical wunderkind Nate Silver tonight. "Romney did very badly in other precincts in that county."

Indeed, according to the Iowa GOP's posted results, out of 13 caucuses in Appanoose County, Romney received double-digits at only one other caucus beside Washington Wells. He is said to have received 20 votes at Vermillion Douglas Sharon, but other than those two sites, Romney received just 45 at the other 11 caucus sites combined...

In this case, we have what appears to be a misreported tally. The public hand-count of the paper ballots was done exceedingly transparently and, apparently, accurately at the polling place (or caucus site in this case).

The caucus site reported Romney's 2 votes to the GOP, as far as I can tell, but that 2 became 22 when it was put into the main GOP database. Also, from the same precinct, Buddy Roemer received 6 votes for some reason (odd, since he only received a total of 31 across the entire state, and the folks at the caucus site in question seem to confirm that he received NO VOTES at that site.

So -- until we find a broader pattern of this happening elsewhere -- this smells very much like a book-keeping error rather than either a counting error or an attempt to "fix" the results for Romney. At least at this time.

Rachel Maddow, by the way, got it similarly wrong (though much more so!) last night on her show, and I'm likely gonna have take time to take her to task today as well, as much as I hate doing that, since she's usually right on the money. In her case, she slammed the GOP for their inability to count. But that's neither accurate nor even productive here.

In this case, it was the most transparent type of election that we can have! And the fact that citizens have stepped forward to demonstrate minor book-keeping errors and those errors have been almost instantly confirmed by others who were also able to oversee the transparent public process, is a tribute to that process!

In other words, even if the GOP wants to fix the results for anybody, it will be next to impossible for them to do so, because we've got thousands of witnesses to what the real count really is, and any error (or, worse, attempt to manipulate) can and will be noticed by the public, and independently confirmed by many others who are able to verify that error. That's a great counting process! Not a bad one, or a failure, as Maddow painted it last night, unfortunately. It's the process that we should be fighting for EVERYWHERE in nation! And in favor of appears to be a fairly lazy partisan shot last night, that's the way more important picture that Rachel missed in her analysis.

Similarly, you may have misread my own in coming to your framing of it. Where that may have been my fault -- where I was unclear or misleading -- I certainly apologize! And, if you decide to clarify, please feel free to use, quote from, any of the above as helpful -- and/or let me know if you have any questions on any of this.

Republicans keep screaming how the voting process is inherently corrupt if it ever produces a Democrat as the winner because they always steal elections, therefore we must have strict voting laws in every state for every election that makes it as difficult as possible for people to vote in order to protect the integrity of the election system. We have to pass laws to immediately protect the sacred process from the evils of those people who may try to vote 4812 times. It’s the only way one of them could end up President you know, and if you don’t agree you’re evil vote-stealing scum anyway.

But that election system apparently doesn’t matter when it comes to the coronation of Mitt Romney as nominee as fast as possible. Strange how that works. Democrats aren’t even American as far as most Republicans are concerned, but it’s all good if Republicans fiddle with the election system. It’s just a caucus, right? Besides, ACORN ACORN ACORN BLAH BLOOGITY BLAH CHICAGO WAY.

Labels: 2012 election, election shenanigans, Mitt Romney

Republican state legislators in Pennsylvania are pushing a scheme that, if GOPers in other states follow their lead, could cause President Barack Obama to lose the 2012 election—not because of the vote count, but because of new rules. That's not all: There's no legal way for Democrats to stop them.

The problem for Obama, and the opportunity for Republicans, is the electoral college. Every political junkie knows that the presidential election isn't a truly national contest; it's a state-by-state fight, and each state is worth a number of electoral votes equal to the size of the state's congressional delegation. (The District of Columbia also gets three votes.) There are 538 electoral votes up for grabs; win 270, and you're the president.

Here's the rub, though: Each state gets to determine how its electoral votes are allocated. Currently, 48 states and DC use a winner-take-all system in which the candidate who wins the popular vote in the state gets all of its electoral votes. Under the Republican plan—which has been endorsed by top GOPers in both houses of the state Legislature, as well as the governor, Tom Corbett—Pennsylvania would change from this system to one where each congressional district gets its own electoral vote. (Two electoral votes—one for each of the state's two senators—would go to the statewide winner.)

This could cost Obama dearly. The GOP controls both houses of the state Legislature plus the governor's mansion—the so-called "redistricting trifecta"—in Pennsylvania. Congressional district maps are adjusted after every census, and the last one just finished up. That means Pennsylvania Republicans get to draw the boundaries of the state's congressional districts without any input from Democrats. Some of the early maps have leaked to the press, and Democrats expect that the Pennsylvania congressional map for the 2012 elections will have 12 safe GOP seats compared to just 6 safe Democratic seats.

Under the Republican plan, if the GOP presidential nominee carries the GOP-leaning districts but Obama carries the state, the GOP nominee would get 12 electoral votes out of Pennsylvania, but Obama would only get eight—six for winning the blue districts, and two (representing the state's two senators) for winning the state. Since Obama would lose 12 electoral votes relative to the winner-take-all baseline, this would have an effect equivalent to flipping a medium-size winner-take-all state—say, Washington, which has 12 electoral votes—from blue to red.* And Republicans wouldn't even have to do any extra campaigning or spend any extra advertising dollars to do it.

Labels: 2012 election, election shenanigans, vote suppression