I will try to summarize the current state of play in the Ohio voter challenges. If an attorney will read this summary and post about any errors in the comments, he would be doing me and any readers a real service. Thanks to the great commenters on my last post for some of these pointers.
There has been an impressive effort to register new voters here. My colleague Deena has been canvassing African-American neighborhoods for months. (By the way, she reports that many felons have the false belief that they cannot vote. In Ohio, however, felons can vote unless they are currently incarcerated. Given the statistics about the proportions of African-Americans who have felony convictions, there may be a substantial disenfranchisement right there.)
According to Mark Niquette of The Columbus Dispatch (see his fine article), the Republican counter was to send a letter to each new registrant. (Gotta wonder: the Republicans have also been registering voters and must have lists of those they registered. Were Republican new registrants sent letters?) If the letter was returned to the sender, the Republicans took that as evidence of possible voter fraud, and filed a challenge. This gambit was clever. It’s likely, however, that this method of finding fraud has a high rate of false negative errors (that is, it would miss cases of true but sophisticated voter fraud) and a high rate of false positive errors (it identifies valid voters as frauds, e.g., because of Post Office delivery errors, moves that lack forwarding addresses, or errors in recording voter addresses). If you have done mail survey research, you know that the cumulative rate of these false positive errors is significant.
Anyway, the Republicans generated an amazing 35,000 challenges this way, which suggests that the denominator of new registrations may be huge. A challenge apparently has to be made by another registered Ohio voter, not an organization, so lists of registrations to be challenged were parcelled out to Ohio Republicans.
A challenge ordinarily leads to a hearing. Summit County is in NE Ohio, and contains Akron (check the county website, which proclaims the region to be ‘The High Point of Ohio’ — you may have to drive through to appreciate their sly humor). The Summit County hearing quickly identified many false positive errors and led the Republicans to withdraw the challenges in embarrassment. Statewide, the Democrats sued (successfully, at least for the moment) to stop the hearings on the grounds that the challengers had insufficient evidence. After all, the individual Republicans were filing challenges about complete strangers based on what headquarters told them about a returned piece of mail.
One of the (many) things being litigated now is what will happen to the challenged voters on Tuesday. (“Challenged voter?” sez Kathi, “That’s you in a nutshell.” Me: “You’re changing the subject.”) The fact that the hearings were stopped didn’t make the challenges go away. We are still in the first inning of this one.
{ 18 comments }
rea 10.30.04 at 12:36 am
I was under the impression that the tactic was to send out registered letters, which are returned to the sender unless the recipient signs for them, and which require a trip to the post office to collect them unless the delivery person happesns to catch the recipient at home.
Joe O 10.30.04 at 12:46 am
good news
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Friday, October 29, 2004
STATEMENT BY OHIO SECRETARY OF STATE J. KENNETH BLACKWELL
COLUMBUS – Ohio Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell today issued the following statement regarding challengers at Ohio’s polling places.
“As Secretary of State, it is my responsibility to conduct Ohio’s elections in a manner as open and accessible as possible, consistent with the absolute requirements of integrity and fairness. Ohio’s bipartisan system of election administration has served us well over the years by conducting transparent and balanced elections. Unfortunately, some of our longstanding procedures have come under litigation in the last couple of days. Specifically, suits have been filed against the statutes that allow parties to place challengers in polling places. While I do not agree there is any discriminatory intent or result from these statutes, I do believe a full airing of the issues cannot be completed prior to Tuesday’s election.
“Therefore, I have instructed the Attorney General to offer the following recommendation to the federal courts in Hamilton and Summit counties for resolution of these matters now: All challengers of all parties shall be excluded from polling places throughout the state.
“Following the election, I will institute litigation bringing together all parties to resolve the statutory and constitutional issues so they may be fully litigated and determined once and for all.
“This action will allow Ohio’s dedicated, bipartisan election officials present in each polling place – Republicans and Democrats – to concentrate for the next four days on preparation for this important election without the distraction and uncertainties this litigation brings.”
jet 10.30.04 at 1:59 am
So all the Republicans who challeneged the “bad” addresses are excluded from polling places? That may effect the price of tea in China, but what the crap does it have to do with this issue? Were the challengers behaving in a way that interrupted polling places? Or is this crazy lawyer-eeze for something that might make sense?
I would be interested in how many false-positives it took to make the Republicans “withdraw the challenges in embarrassment”? Out of the 35,000 did the Democrats come up with 500 or 5,000 false positives?
Rob 10.30.04 at 2:10 am
Out of the 976 in Summit county, 976 were dismissed. But why follow links?
Danny Yee 10.30.04 at 4:07 am
“But why follow links?”
In this case the link requires registration – and if anyone thinks I’m going to register for local newspapers all over the US, they can think again. I haven’t even registered for my local Sydney paper.
Mary Kay 10.30.04 at 4:31 am
If you want to access a site which requires registration, got to http://www.bothermenot.com, enter the site and it will give you longon names and passwords to use.
MKK
KCinDC 10.30.04 at 11:10 am
Mary Kay: I think you mean bugmenot.com.
DavevH 10.30.04 at 11:10 am
Should that be http://www.bugmenot.com or is bothermenot an anglo version of the same thing?
tony 10.30.04 at 2:43 pm
There is no bothermenot.com. Mary had the name wrong, that’s all. Also, the description of the service somewhat undersells it: Danny should know that it doesn’t just give you registrations and passwords, but the program will automatically enter the form data for you. This is for any site requiring free registration, so it doesn’t give you access to anything you would otherwise have to pay for.
aphrael 10.30.04 at 4:59 pm
The most interesting – and bizarre – election story out of Ohio in the last couple of days has actually been the bit about the Kerry elector who is constitutionally ineligible to hold the office. :)
Mary Kay 10.30.04 at 6:45 pm
I did indeed have it wrong. That’s what I get for trying to do things from memory when I’m sleep deprived. I thank everyone for the corrections.
MKK
Matt Weiner 10.30.04 at 9:43 pm
Aphrael is referring to this story. Doesn’t seem to be that big a deal; electors have been substituted before and there’s going to be no challenge this time.
(In Wisconsin, the Democrats’ challenge to Nader was based in part on the fact that he hadn’t named an elector from every Congressional District, as required. I think it was the right thing to deny that challenge, though I wish Nader were not on the ballot.)
jet 10.31.04 at 4:53 am
Kind of off topic, but did Kerry ever mention what he would do different in the future with Iraq? Or was it just limited to general assurances that he wouldn’t screw up as much as Bush?
Because I’ll trade stupid economic damaging tax hikes for not screwing up in Iraq, but did he mention what “not screwing up” entailed. Or was that more fairy dust :P
Marcus Stanley 10.31.04 at 5:49 am
What I am hearing here is that the challenges are unlikely to be upheld in any case. Ohio law requires specific knowledge to support a challenge You must actually personally know the person not to be a resident, not have been informed by a party that they didn’t receive a piece of mail — it’s totally different. Furthermore, even if you are NOT resident at the address you registered at, you are STILL eligible to vote so long as you are still an Ohio resident. In other words, if you moved after you registered you can still vote. This further lowers the evidentiary value of the Republican method.
Based on my canvassing/calling experience, though, this particular dirty trick certainly has gotten the minority community pretty riled up here in Cuyahoga county. I think we are going to see pretty massive turnout.
Sebastian Holsclaw 10.31.04 at 4:47 pm
“If the letter was returned to the sender, the Republicans took that as evidence of possible voter fraud, and filed a challenge. This gambit was clever. It’s likely, however, that this method of finding fraud has a high rate of false negative errors (that is, it would miss cases of true but sophisticated voter fraud) and a high rate of false positive errors (it identifies valid voters as frauds, e.g., because of Post Office delivery errors, moves that lack forwarding addresses, or errors in recording voter addresses). If you have done mail survey research, you know that the cumulative rate of these false positive errors is significant.”
There may or may not be a high rate of false positives, we can’t know until we investigate. Which is the entire point of the challenge process. Which is the process you want to circumvent, correct?
As for “…After all, the individual Republicans were filing challenges about complete strangers based on what headquarters told them about a returned piece of mail.” this is a direct analogy of what Democrats are doing in Wisconsin with the ‘same-day’ registration rules. The rules require that a same-day voter be personally vouched for as eligible by someone who personally knows them. Democrats have compiled a list of people who are to be contacted to vouch for voters in each precinct. Having someone meet an ‘eligible voter’ at or near the polls so that you can ‘vouch’ for them is almost certainly outside the meaning of the statute, and very amenable to voter fraud wouldn’t you say?
jet 10.31.04 at 5:42 pm
I vote the folks at Crooked Timber for President. I’ve never seen a place online with more rational thought an analytical skill applied to the world’s problems.
Only thing that would make it better is if Sebastian was added to the line up of bloggers ;)
Zed 11.05.04 at 7:00 am
Congrats for your brand new president, lads!
Zed 11.05.04 at 7:01 am
Congrats for your brand new president, lads!
Comments on this entry are closed.