Guest Post by Senator Teresa Fedor on the recent lawsuits by ORP
The following post was written as a guest post for us by District 11 State Senator Teresa Fedor:
After months of partisan lawsuits and years of nasty attacks on Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner, the Ohio Republican Party has finally tipped their hand. Ohio Republicans are trying to destroy our election system just to win an election.
In fact, the Ohio Republican Party has declared war on Ohio’s bipartisan voting processes.
The latest assault involves a statewide voter registration database that has been used in every election since the 2006 general. Secretary Brunner has rightly said that the database was never intended to be used as a litmus test for voter eligibility. While there are errors in the database – just as there are in any file of 8.2 million people – our bipartisan elections officials have always used other tools to make sure voter registration fraud is identified and illegal voting is stopped.
So, what’s the big deal? After all, can’t boards just snap their fingers and fix all these errors if Secretary Brunner just gives them a list?
That isn’t the point. Never has been.
The Republican goal isn’t to clean up a database. If it was, they wouldn’t limit their lawsuits to just those people who registered this year – and are overwhelmingly pro-Obama. They would worry about errors with Joe the Plumber and House Speaker Jon Husted.
No, the Republican plan is to demand that boards of elections do something everyone knows they can’t, then force 200,000 new registrants to use provisional ballots on Election Day.
The goal is chaos. Force new voters to fight for their right to vote. Make the lines longer. Tie up poll workers with hundreds of thousands of unnecessary provisional ballots. And hope that lower income Ohioans will leave before they get to vote. Once the polls are closed and the voters go home, the Ohio Republican Party and their team of lawyers can pick off those provisional votes one by one.
Fortunately, the US Supreme Court ruled against the Ohio Republican Party. But they are already scrambling to find another way to winnow the voter rolls, limit eligible voters, and carry Ohio for McCain.
One avenue is a suit filed by a Republican fundraiser before the Ohio Supreme Court that he helped elect. The Republicans want boards of elections to disqualify absentee ballots if there is a database error – but only if the person registered this year. It’s a blatant violation of equal protection under the US Constitution.
The other avenue is a witch-hunt by Hamilton County Prosecutor and McCain co-chair Joe Deters. He wants to drag 40% of Hamilton County early voters before a grand jury. Even the Republican chair of the local board of elections admits he hasn’t heard a single allegation of fraud regarding these voters, who are overwhelmingly young and African-American.
I agree with Democratic Chairman Chris Redfern that enough is enough. It’s time for all of us – Republicans, Democrats and Independents – to support Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner in her efforts to prepare for a successful November election.
And it’s way past time for the Ohio Republican Party to stop attacking our bipartisan elections system just to win a single election.
There’s more mindless hyperbole and senseless bloviating than most politicians are capable of. How sad this woman holds elected office.
October 20th, 2008 at 12:03 amI guess this is ok with the good senator. . .
(Columbus) – The Columbus Dispatch reports today on a house that became the headquarters for a group of people who registered and in some cases voted in Ohio, but “none of them, however, seems to have ties to Ohio — no close relatives, no public-records trail, no obvious intention to stay in the state past the election.”
Based on background information using public records from the subscription service LexisNexis, the group’s Vote From Home Web site, their profiles on Linkedin and Facebook and interviews with some members of the group in August, here are the findings:
* Marc Gustafson, 31, registered to vote Aug. 18 and has requested an absentee ballot using the Brownlee Avenue address. Gustafson lived in New York City as recently as September. He is a registered voter in New York, where he last voted in June 2007. In the past 11 years, he has lived in several East Coast and Southern states; he has no apparent ties to Ohio. He currently is studying in England.
* Heather L. Halstead, 34, registered Sept. 4 and asked for an absentee ballot. It has not been returned. Halstead is married to Gustafson and shares his New York City address. She, too, voted in the New York primary in February, is a native of the state, and has no apparent family ties to Ohio.
* Daniel Jacob Hemel, 23, registered at Veterans Memorial and immediately voted. He is studying at the University of Oxford in England. He uses his parents’ Scarsdale, N.Y., home as his address. He is a native of New York, where he also is registered to vote.
* Catherine Elizabeth Jampel, 23, registered Sept. 22. Jampel requested, but has not yet returned, an absentee ballot. In September, she lived in Baltimore, Md. She doesn’t appear to be registered to vote there.
* Jennifer B. Kyle, 22, registered Sept. 27 and asked for a ballot. She works for a consulting firm in Chicago. Before that, she lived and worked in Washington, D.C. She appears to be related to MichaelAnne Kyle and Tania Brenna Kyle.
* MichaelAnne Kyle, 24, registered to vote Sept. 27 and has requested an absentee ballot. It has not been returned. No other information could be found.
* Tania Brenna Kyle, 21, registered Oct. 3 and asked for a ballot but has not returned it. Public information about her also is sketchy, but she is listed at a Connecticut address. She holds a Connecticut driver’s license.
* Gregory T. Nolan, 23, registered to vote Oct. 6. He has not requested a ballot. In September, he was listed as living in Pensacola, Fla. He is registered to vote in Florida and has a Florida driver’s license and Florida plates on his car.
* Roxanne Genevieve Quist, 24, registered Sept. 4 and asked for an absentee ballot. It has not been returned. Quist has lived in California since at least 2005. She has relatives in Vermont and Georgia, where she was born, and has no known ties to Ohio. She also is studying in England.
* Karim Smither, 23, who used a Maitland, Fla., address as his residence in September, registered to vote in Ohio on Sept. 28 but has not requested a ballot. Matthew Raymond Stone, 23, registered to vote Sept. 22. The Franklin County Board of Elections received Stone’s completed absentee ballot Tuesday. No other information about him could be found.
* Daniel Gregory Nolan, 24, registered Sept. 30 and has not requested a ballot. He graduated from Stetson University in Florida, works for a nonprofit organization that serves youths in the U.S. and several Latin America countries, and has been accepted into law school at Stanford University in California.
* Joel E. Speyer, 39, has been registered to vote in Ohio since 1996. He cast an absentee ballot. Since 2004, he has lived in New York, where he works at Bank of New York Mellon. He is registered to vote both in New York and Ohio. He voted in New York’s Democratic presidential primary in February. Until Speyer returned his absentee ballot to the Franklin County Board of Elections, he had not voted in Ohio since 2000.
October 20th, 2008 at 12:05 amMaybe the good senator is ok with this as well. . .
The Columbus Dispatch reports today:
About 200,000 newly registered Ohio voters have been flagged by the secretary of state because their names, addresses, driver’s-license numbers, and/or Social Security numbers don’t match other state or federal records.
Likely among them are the 12 people who have registered to vote since August using the address of the 1,175-square-foot Brownlee Avenue house.
Some of them already have voted. Others requested absentee ballots but have yet to return them to the Franklin County Board of Elections. None of them, however, seems to have ties to Ohio — no close relatives, no public-records trail, no obvious intention to stay in the state past the election.
The Cincinnati Enquirer reports today:
In Hamilton County, 17 people are registered to vote from riverfront addresses south of Mehring Way – places with street numbers that would put their homes somewhere in the Ohio River. Another 46 voters are registered at addresses that would put their homes in the middle of the Paul Brown Stadium parking lot, or at the riverfront project known as The Banks – which hasn’t been built.
An Enquirer analysis of more than 8 million Ohio voter registration records found a litany of quirks, inconsistencies, errors, duplicate registrations and other problems with little more than two weeks until Election Day.
Thousands of voters appear on registration lists twice – some as many as six times. At least 589 registered voters – mostly in Franklin and Cuyahoga counties – were born in 1991 or later, which puts them under the legal voting age.
Voters are registered at post office boxes, office buildings with no residences, police stations and even park benches.
The response from Ohio’s chief elections officer, Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner? Nothing.
“The massive cover-up being orchestrated by Ohio Democrats is finally being exposed, but the integrity of this election is in doubt before most Ohioans even go to the polls,” said Ohio Republican Party Deputy Chairman Kevin DeWine. “We’re asking again for Jennifer Brunner to do her job and provide Ohio’s election administrators with an adequate system of validating questionable registrations. She has stonewalled that process long enough.”
October 20th, 2008 at 12:07 amThose are valid questions Brian, I have a post in draft on the Brownlee situation but I didn’t get a chance to finish it today. The Franklin County Prosecutor is looking into that situation from what I understand but it is something that people should be aware of.
One of the points Senator Fedor is making that I do think should be focused on is that everyone, which means both parties should be concentrating on what we can do to make sure that Ohio does not become the attention that Florida did. For that to happen, people have to be able to have confidence and trust in our election system which means they need to work together.
October 20th, 2008 at 12:12 amLink to the Franklin County
October 20th, 2008 at 12:14 amprosecutor looking into this potential election fraud.
There were no good points in Sen. Fedor’s editorial. It was shrilly partisan hackery that should be beneath a state senator.
October 20th, 2008 at 12:52 amWell Brian, we’ll have to agree to disagree on that just as we do on several other issues. I also always take issue with the word “shrilly” being used directed at women.
Fedor is a Democrat, it is true that the rules in place were approved by a Republican majority. So if there are problems? Even if I don’t agree with all of what our current SOS has decided, this is no more partisan hackery than it was when a Republican held the SOS seat and the opposing party took issue with his rulings.
Which means if partisan hackery exists? It did not begin with the Democrats. If both sides are truly interested in honest elections, they’d work together, that does not appear to have changed, all that has changed is who is making the accusations.
October 20th, 2008 at 1:10 amI’d disagree. Jennifer Brunner has been the most inept statewide public official I’ve ever seen. Sure, there were shenanigans under previous SOS’s. However, none of them displayed the brazen (how’s that for a word directed at a woman) lack of decorum and complete disregard for fair play in the election as Brunner.
October 20th, 2008 at 1:23 amYou think that Brunner has been more “brazen” than a former SOS who stated he was going to disallow forms because the paper was not the proper weight?
If we could cut through the partisan chase for a moment, part of the problem is that both parties have given the voters the impression that whoever was in power has some impact on the elections. If the process worked as it was supposed to, and both parties actually demonstrated that? Then there would not exist the scenario where the main difference in the lawsuits filed in 2004 and 2008 differed from which party was filing and which one responded…
That’s part of the reason why some have no faith in the current electoral system, having been one who disagreed with both Blackwell and Brunner at times, it’s incumbent upon both sides to work together. That didn’t happen in 2004 so in 2008 the Republican Party faced a decision. They opted to act as the Democrats did in 2004 which is a bit more ironic since most of the laws Brunner is tasked with following were written by them.
Our general assembly, which is currently a Republican majority had the opportunity to address many of these concerns related to our voting process. Instead of doing that, they opted for what we currently have. Which clearly has some issues that still need to be addressed. This is the same general assembly that did not realize they created the 7 day window nor realized they messed up on the time line for deadlines in the primary.
I am not partisan enough to pretend Brunner is blameless, but I’m also not naive enough to ignore who created the laws she is interpreting.
October 20th, 2008 at 1:59 amGo back to sleep senator, you do your best work with your eyes closed.
October 20th, 2008 at 6:53 amI love how the democrats cry foul when the GOP asks for things like voter verification and people to have an I.D to prove some kind of residency…but dismiss ACORN’s blatant subversion of the election process as “unfounded and non-existant”.
October 20th, 2008 at 7:45 amThe senator, Ms. Brunner and most other interested parties realize that a 60,000 vote swing in Ohio in the last election and we would be talking about President John F. Kerry right now. It seems that the democrats are determined not to let Ohio’s coveted twenty electoral votes escape them again. Senator Fedor does not mention that when the lower courts ruled on the merits of the case, they agreed with the plaintiffs. SCOTUS only ruled on the legal standing of the parties and I think the new filing takes care of that argument.
October 20th, 2008 at 8:59 amThe GOP plan is to make as many people vote with provisional ballots as possible. As far as the merits of the case, there are two previous suits in which Federal courts (one in Washington state, and one in Florida) said the state was not required to use a database match as a precondition to registering and voting.
Washington Association of Churches v. Reed
Fla. NAACP v. Browning
October 20th, 2008 at 10:12 amVery little in politics makes me angry any more. Been around the game way too long and have seen political shenanigans by both sides to get worked up about it. However, this poorly written and poorly thought out attempt to further degrade the election system in Ohio really rankled me.
I’ve never had anything against Sen. Fedor. . .until now. This conduct is disgusting.
The Blackwell decision on the paper was foolish. But this SOS is actually fighting to keep what she knows are illegal voters on the voting rolls. She has spent taxpayer time and money to make sure that these illegal votes get counted. Then Sen. Fedor has the nerve to call it partisan to want a fair election.
October 20th, 2008 at 10:52 amThe good senator also failed to mention that the Cuhoga County Board of Elections (both Rs and Ds) has asked the FBI to investigate the alleged illegal voter registration in that county.
October 20th, 2008 at 11:19 amThe problems with Acorn were known about back in August in Cuyahoga County, something should have been done back then. I’m not going to pretend I was a fan of the voter registration and voting being done at the same time, but I’m not going to pretend that this is something Brunner created. The General Assembly did that.
None of us want our election results to be questionable. However, we’ve seen that politics does enter into this, with both parties claiming the other one is being partisan. There were lawsuits filed in 2004, by Democrats though it does appear that the Republicans have filed more in this election.
The reality is the election bill that the General Assembly passed was a bad one, if they wanted a better system that was their job to legislate it.
Which means Brian, that Republicans are just as responsible for the system the way it is and both sides have overplayed the claims of the other one trying to “steal” an election so are equally responsible for the lack of faith some have in the voting system.
I don’t disagree that the ruling by the US Supreme Court was not a victory per se since the court refused to hear the case on a technicality. The political rhetoric out there on this issue is not just limited to Democrats.
Frankly since Senator Fedor does know how this blog is, I give her a hell of a lot of credit for asking me if I would allow her to send this guest post in. None of her republican counterparts appear to be willing to take that kind of heat.
October 20th, 2008 at 12:40 pmLost in the conversation over which party is worst in the partisan politics game is the statement by Rep Fedor that the court ruled in Brunner’s favor. In fact, the Supreme Court merely stated that the Republican Party had no standing to bring the suit without commenting on it’s merit.
There does appear to be an organized attempt this year to subvert the voting process, and the examples that Brian lists are the tip of the iceberg. SOS Brunner is the representative of the people in seeing that a fair and honest election is carried out. With cries in the past of Republican election stealing, shouldn’t she be ahead of the parade in insuring the integrity of the vote and preventing such allegations from occurring this year.
October 20th, 2008 at 1:25 pmThank you for writing this guest piece, Senator Fedor!
I don’t believe in an across-the-board wipeout of new voters. Situations such as what Brian mentions at #2 should be investigated and those people should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law. I think that BOTH sides can (or at least should) agree on that.
October 20th, 2008 at 2:50 pmHad Sen. Fedor written a piece that defended Brunner’s actions or criticized Republican efforts to challenge the voting process, I would not have got so worked up. Like I said, I’ve been in politics for a long time (longer than Sen. Fedor). Partisan statements don’t upset me. It’s part of the game.
But statements that Republicans are trying to “destroy our election system just to win an election.” and that the “goal is chaos,” and that Republicans have “declared war” on the bipartisan election process are so far over the top for an elected official that they disgust me. They are unbecoming of a state senator.
It amounts to an accusation of treason when it comes from a state senator.
She also had the nerve to take a shot at “Joe the Plumber”. While I don’t condone the media’s attempt at discrediting him, it is within their purview, as it is with the Obama campaign. She is a state senator who launched an attack on a private citizen who did nothing more than ask questions of a presidential candidate. State senators should not attack private citizens.
My point is, I’m not sure that Theresa Fedor is fit to hold the office she does. Her conduct in this editorial is certainly beneath her office.
October 20th, 2008 at 3:56 pmThe point related to “Joe the Plumber” is that his name is spelled wrong in the voter data base and if he was a newly registered voter, which he wasn’t, it could have created problems, at least that is how that part was presented.
As to the accusation that the Republican party has a goal of chaos, the same thing is being stated about the Democratic party by Republicans out there on the blogs and in the media. Same with the whole “steal the election” mantra, both sides use it.
The “declaring war” comment was a bit of an exaggeration, but look how many times the whole “war on whatever” is over used.
I don’t think this piece makes her any less fit for office than it is for Kevin DeWine to be making Robocalls to Republicans stating that Democrats are trying to “rig the election” so they need to get out there and vote as well as stating this in public:
They are both using rhetoric…it’s election season…
October 20th, 2008 at 5:24 pmThe difference is Kevin DeWine is a party official. Bloggers are bloggers. Partisan hacks are partisan hacks. People expect them to say things like that.
Theresa Fedor is a senator. Her “rhetoric” should be on a higher plane. She debased herself and her office.
October 20th, 2008 at 5:30 pmBrian…In addition to his role as Deputy Chairman, DeWine is currently serving his fourth and final term representing the 70th District in the Ohio House of Representatives. He also serves as Speaker Pro Tempore of the House, the chamber’s second-highest ranking member.
October 20th, 2008 at 5:47 pmhttp://www.ohiogop.org/party_leadership#dewine – From your party’s website…
October 20th, 2008 at 5:48 pmBut DeWine is still a party guy. Notice that I give Chris Redfern a pass when he holds the two positions simultaneously.
October 20th, 2008 at 5:55 pmlol – so if Teresa Fedor were Redfern, she’d get a pass…I have two statements from Redfern that will be up in a minute. We’ll see if you have any thoughts on them.
October 20th, 2008 at 5:56 pmNope. I don’t agree with them, but I have no problem with Chris making those statements. He holds a partisan position and it is his job to battle on behalf of Democrats. I expect it of him.
October 20th, 2008 at 6:12 pmSo, if Chris Redfern would have written this guest piece instead of Senator Fedor, you would have been totally okay with it….
October 20th, 2008 at 6:21 pmNot totally OK. Sen. Fedor’s words are hyperbole that is irresponsible for anyone to use.
I would not have been shocked if Chris Redfern would have said it. I wouldn’t have been shocked if Kevin DeWine had said something similar. It’s what they do.
October 20th, 2008 at 7:11 pmOhio is one big banana republic for elections.
October 20th, 2008 at 9:36 pm[...] anyone’s definition of acceptable political tactics. As State Sen. Teresa Fedor wrote at Glass City Jungle yesterday, the Republicans are “trying to destroy our election system just to win an [...]
October 20th, 2008 at 10:33 pmSenator Fedor also wrote a editorial that was submitted to many media outlets on Friday. Maggie has it and it does go into more detail as to the concern related to Joe.
October 21st, 2008 at 9:51 am[...] State Senator Teresa Fedor posts a statement on this mess over at Glass City Jungle. [...]
October 21st, 2008 at 12:38 pmIf Sen. Fedor had submitted that editorial to this site instead of the mindless diatribe she posted here, I would not have even commented on the post.
I discussed this with Troy Neff this morning. She owes her Republican constituents (including me) an apology. I might be a Republican, but she’s still my Senator and I deserve to be treated with respect by her — not accused of declaring war on the bipartisan election process.
October 21st, 2008 at 3:32 pm