Democrats sweep county offices again

Cuyahoga County's corruption and patronage scandals had very little effect on this week's election. The three county Democrats with Republican challengers beat them as soundly as ever.

Incumbent county commissioner Peter Lawson Jones (pictured) defeated Bay Village Mayor Debbie Sutherland, even though she made the scandals her top issue.

Compare Barack Obama's vote totals in Cuyahoga County to the local races:

President
Barack Obama (D) 441,836 68%
John McCain (R) 196,369 30%
Total 646,994

County Commissioner
Peter Lawson Jones (D) 341,976 62%
Deborah Sutherland (R) 206,319 38%
Total 549,125

County Recorder
Lillian J. Greene (D) 351,454 70%
Cathy Luks (R) 151,438 30%
Total 502,892

Prosecuting Attorney
Bill Mason (D) 402,366 74%
Annette Butler (R) 142,227 26%
Total 544,593

How many people who voted for Obama split their tickets to vote for Sutherland? About 6 percent of the electorate. Sutherland got more votes in Cuyahoga County than McCain, a sign her arguments made some impact, but not nearly enough to break up Democrats' one-party rule.

It's also a sign of Jones' popularity and reputation. Voters knew he is not implicated in the FBI probe. Sutherland's best argument against him was that he had not done enough to curb patronage hiring.

What could ever cause Cuyahoga County voters to elect a Republican to county office again? I think the Democratic candidate would have to be facing a felony charge. (A misdemeanor charge isn't enough, we learned in 2004.)

This doesn't end the debate over the problems in county government. It just shifts it away from the ballot box. The Cuyahoga reform commission's recommendation is due tomorrow. And the FBI probe continues. Indictments of elected officials would cause big change fast.

Fraudulent "fraud" ad

Yesterday the Ohio GOP debuted a deeply misleading web site and a radio ad that asks "Could Ohio's election be stolen?" They directly accuse Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner of concealing voter fraud. They claim that in Cleveland, ACORN paid for "illegal registrations in exchange for cash and cigarettes." The web site asks for people to vote early, contribute to a legal fund, and volunteer to be poll observers.

Let's sort through the claims:

-There is no evidence that anyone is trying to steal the election.

-The Cleveland example sounds scary, but won't lead to anyone voting illegally. Freddie Johnson, the 19-year-old who filled out 70 to 80 identical registrations in exchange for cigarettes and dollar bills, will only vote once. He filled out the same address every time. No one actually trying to stuff a ballot box would do this. They would almost certainly get caught. Even if their multiple registrations slipped past the data-entry clerks, poll workers would either recognize the same person coming to the voting table twice, or they'd notice the duplicate listings next to each other in the poll book.

-ACORN is not scamming elections officials. Lazy ACORN employees scammed ACORN. Their system is vulnerable to hourly workers who'd rather convince registered people to fill out a duplicate card than do their jobs right.

-Brunner is not concealing voter fraud. This is about the GOP's lost lawsuit trying to force her to compile lists of mismatches between the state's voting and driver's license databases. But Brunner is providing the mismatch information to counties in another format. The mismatch info is one tool for verifying registrations, but on its own it's several times more likely to accidentally flag valid voters because of typos and other clerical errors.

Republicans are not only trying to make ACORN and Brunner a campaign issue -- they're getting ready to try to force overtime if Obama wins Ohio.

Here are some questions to ask when you hear scary claims about voting scandals from the right or the left:
-How many votes is the problem affecting? Do you have solid numbers, or just scary anecdotes?
-If you say votes are "at risk," or that there's a "risk" of fraud, how likely is the risk?
-What's the cause of the problem? Are there other possible explanations besides the most sinister theory?

Just like the left-wing conspiracy theories about Ohio in 2004, this right-wing conspiracy theory falls apart when you ask these questions.

Annette Butler debates Bill Mason

Annette Butler, the Republican candidate for prosecutor, debated Bill Mason today, trying to convince a City Club audience that the Democratic incumbent ought to go. The debate put Mason under the sort of cross-examination you don't see often in our one-party town.

Butler held up the Sunday and Monday Plain Dealer and read the headlines from the paper's exposé of racial disparities in drug case sentences. The paper found statistics and damning anecdotes that showed black drug defendants in Cuyahoga County getting felony convictions while white drug defendants -- including the sheriff's son -- were convicted of the same or worse offenses but got drug treatment or plea deals and no felony record. (See the stories here and here.)

Mason called the reports "troubling" and "disconcerting" and said he'd find funding to study the issue. The articles placed much of the responsibility on his office, but he said several parts of the justice system influence sentences, including police, the courts, and the probation department. Butler said she'd create standard practices and policies to make sure prosecutors treat defendants equally.

Butler also criticized Mason for his partial resistance to open discovery -- allowing defense attorneys open access to prosecutors' files. She said she'd guarantee open discovery for all defendants. A worker for Cleveland's rape crisis center gave Mason a big assist on this issue, saying she was concerned open discovery wouldn't protect victims and witnesses enough. Mason agreed, while saying he was open to some changes in the rules.

Mason also got grilled about the FBI's county corruption investigation. An audience member asked why the FBI hadn't informed him in advance about the July raid of county offices, and she asked where citizens could go to report corruption in the county, clearly implying she felt they couldn't go to Mason. He said his office has prosecuted 140 "public officials," including policemen and teachers. He said the feds don't always include local law enforcement in raids, and that they understand Mason has an inherent conflict of interest because the prosecutor's office represents county government in civil cases.

The audience also found a few weak spots in Butler's case for herself. A policeman asked Butler if she was going to go easier on defendants charged with possessing crack pipes. She said yes: "It's costing a fortune to prosecute them as felonies," she said. "I'll spend a lot of energy on the bad guys, not a whole lot of it on crack pipe cases." Mason replied he wouldn't choose which laws to prosecute.

Another questioner asked Butler how she would make up for a near-lack of criminal-case experience. She spent 24 years with the U.S. Attorney's office, handling civil matters. Butler said she would draw on her management, trial, and appellate experience and her three years of teaching criminal law. Mason, who suggested last week that Butler wasn't worthy of debating him, avoided criticizing her today, except to say: "I think experience in this office matters a lot."

Supreme Court strikes down voting order

The U.S. Supreme Court has struck down the federal judge's order that would have thrown 200,000 Ohio voters' registrations into limbo. See this Columbus Dispatch story.

It's a huge victory for Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner, and it appears to stop cold the Ohio Republican Party's sweeping effort to question new voter registrations. The unanimous, unsigned opinion suggests the Republicans didn't have standing to sue over the issue.

Get ready for stolen election theories from the right if Obama wins Ohio by anything less than a landslide. Ohio Republicans are charging that Brunner is "actively working to conceal fraudulent activity in this election." They're blowing the ACORN controversy way out of proportion. They're arguing that registration fraud involving 50 to 60 voters -- and corrected by election officials -- justified making it harder for 200,000 people to vote.

Republicans are understandably upset that federal law is vague about what to do when the state's voter database and driver's license database don't match. But critics -- such as Dahlia Lithwick, writing in Slate today -- argue that the Republicans' cries of "voter fraud" are really meant to build support for disenfranchising voters.

Update, Sat. 10/18: A Republican activist has taken the legal battle over new registrations to the Ohio Supreme Court. See the Columbus Dispatch story here.

Massive voting fight appealed to Supreme Court

Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to step into a high-stakes fight over 200,000 Ohio voters' registrations, the AP and the New York Times report.

This battle, building for the past week, has become the ominous sequel to Ohio's 2004 voting controversies. Brunner says thousands of people could lose their votes. Republicans say she hasn't done her part to test the registrations for fraud. (See Brunner's press release on the case and the GOP's statement.)

Here's the problem. A 2002 federal law says states have to match new voter registrations and changes of address with state driver's license records. But what happens when there's no match? The law doesn't say. Neither has Brunner or her predecessor. Some Ohio counties double-check registrations that do not match up, some don't.

Republicans sued, and got the federal courts to order Brunner to give the counties an easier-to-use list of mismatches. They point to small numbers of duplicate registrations filed by ACORN to say the 200,000 mismatches need serious vetting. But they concede there are lots of reasons the records might not match, such as voters or data-entry workers messing up one digit in a license number.

What happens next, we don't know. Brunner says she doesn't want these voters to have to use provisional ballots -- which get scrutinized after Election Day and fought over if the election is close. (About one in five provisional votes are usually rejected.) A top Republican suggests that having all 200,000 people vote provisionally isn't a bad idea. But that's a number so big, it could throw any half-way close election result into the courts. (Bush won Ohio by 120,000 votes in 2004; 150,000 provisional ballots were cast then.)

Brunner will issue a directive soon, and the Republicans may well take that to court too. The Republicans will shout "voter fraud," the Democrats "vote suppression," and we're in for a battle as intense as 2004's over who gets to have their vote counted.

That year, Republicans filed mass challenges to voters' eligibility in several counties (they were struck down by a judge). But this year's deadline for filing direct challenges passed yesterday. Instead, we have this lawsuit, which makes the county boards' jobs much more complicated less than three weeks before Election Day.

This may make voting harder for many people who've either registered to vote or changed their registration this year. If it does, I'll write about what you can to do protect your vote.

Update, Fri. 10/17: Dahlia Lithwick of Slate argues that the Republican attacks on ACORN are intended to build support for efforts to disenfranchise voters.

(Caption: Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner at the City Club of Cleveland on Oct. 8.)