Ballot war ends; all Ohio voters to get vote by mail application in 2012

Turns out Ed FitzGerald is a shrewd negotiator, and Jon Husted meant what he said about treating all voters the same. They've ended their battle over voting-by-mail with a dramatic compromise announced this morning.

FitzGerald extracted a major promise from the secretary of state and Republican leaders in the legislature: Husted will send every Ohioan an application for a mail-in ballot for the 2012 presidential election. The legislature will agree to let Husted use federal money from the Help America Vote Act to pay for it. That'll help prevent long lines at the polls from returning in 2012.

The deal satisfies the Republican goal of treating voters in all 88 counties the same. They're doing something I thought they wouldn't do, the opposite of the thrust of their newly passed election law. They're taking urban counties' best solution for overcrowded voting locations and expanding it to everyone, instead of banning it.

FitzGerald had to make a major concession to get a deal with Husted. He had to drop Cuyahoga County's plan to send out ballot applications for the 2011 election. No other county was going to do it, which defied Husted's insistence on creating uniform statewide standards.

Jill Miller Zimon, over at Writes Like She Talks, sounds disappointed, skeptical about the details. But I think the compromise is shrewd. This year's Senate Bill 5 referendum is big, but the presidential election is much bigger.

By using his leverage to make voting easier for people across Ohio, FitzGerald becomes more of a force in state politics -- note how the Columbus Dispatch report calls him "perhaps Cleveland's most powerful Democrat." And Husted gets to reclaim his image as a moderate in ballot controversies. It won't stop the fight over HB 194, but it's the sort of bipartisan compromise on voting issues that has become all too rare.

The biggest question left is, will the statewide mailing only happen once, in 2012? Or will the deal create a precedent that Ohio will follow from then on?

FitzGerald vs. Republicans: the new voting war

So another ballot battle has broken out in town, another partisan fight about how Greater Clevelanders vote. This time it’s between Ed FitzGerald and Jon Husted, the Cuyahoga County executive and the secretary of state, and it’s about the absentee ballot applications all county residents get in the mail.

I get why FitzGerald and the county council decided to have county workers mass-mail those applications to everyone, now that a new election law says boards of elections can’t do it anymore.

The county has been sending absentee applications to all voters since 2006, and it’s helped prevent a repeat of the terrible polling-place traffic jams that marred the 2004 presidential election. I wrote a lot about the voting problems we struggled with a few years ago, and I don’t want to see them come back.

Still, I’m finding the whole fight disappointing. One reason is I don’t think it’ll end well. Republicans in the legislature, enraged that FitzGerald found a way around their new election law, may simply ban counties from doing it again, making FitzGerald’s clever move a mere one-time victory.

Also, it’s tiring to see FitzGerald fall in with the partisan troops. “All the usual suspects are lining up,” he complains of the Republicans, but by saying that, isn’t he lining up on the other side? His use of the fight as ammo in a Democratic Party fundraising letter escalates the conflict. It’s another chapter in a sorry story: At least since the 2000 Florida recount, we’ve been stuck fighting over dueling Democratic and Republican ways of conducting elections.

FitzGerald didn’t start this particular battle. Republicans in the legislature did when they passed HB 194, which banned the mass mailing of absentee applications by election boards. Secretary of state Jon Husted followed up last week with a directive that did the same, before the law takes effect.

(Democrats are circulating petitions to repeal HB 194, which also cuts early voting at election offices from five weeks to two. They say the law is aimed at their voters. Early and absentee voting helped President Obama get out the vote in Ohio in 2008.)

Republicans’ argument for stopping the mass mailings is that if some counties send them out and others can’t afford it, then the state is tolerating “unequal treatment of voters in different counties,” as Republican state auditor David Yost wrote.

The argument does have a certain logic to it – it’s not “deceitful,” as state Rep. Mike Foley said yesterday. But it ignores the fact that long lines to vote are a more serious problem in urban counties and college towns than in small rural precincts. And it throws out a helpful solution rather than expanding it. Even if you give Republicans the benefit of the doubt about their motivation, they’re still so worried about consistency, they’re insisting on a system that’s less helpful to voters than it could be.

Yost may come out of this looking worse than anyone. He knows that HB 194 doesn’t stop counties from mass-mailing ballots, just county election boards. So his warning that he may punish Cuyahoga County with a “finding of recovery” in its next audit is a misuse of his authority. And his blog post, “The Wreck of Edward FitzGerald,” which slyly connects the county executive with the old county government’s scandals, shows he’s more interested in fighting with a Democrat than watching the books.

Husted’s arguments with FitzGerald are especially disappointing because, until last week, it looked like he was a moderate in the ballot wars, the Republican who discouraged his fellow Republicans from passing a new voter ID law. But his awful reaction to FitzGerald’s move – he said he might block boards of elections from processing mass-mailed ballot applications -- would’ve really caused a vote-suppression scandal.

Connie Schultz got Husted to back off that idea (he said he’d been “thinking out loud”). Her column yesterday encouraged his independent instincts. We’ll need to see a lot more of that side of Husted, if Ohio is going to have any hope of avoiding another partisan blood feud around our voting rules in 2012.

Voter fraud indictments: one guy

Looks like this is the end result of last fall's Cuyahoga County "voter fraud" scare -- the one that got Fox News, out-of-town Republicans and ACORN-haters frothing with a conspiracy theory about election-stealing.

One voter got indicted.

Not quite a vast left-wing conspiracy.

By the way, the guy was caught trying to double-vote.

Here's the press release from the county prosecutor's office:

==
Darnell Nash Indicted for Voter Fraud

CLEVELAND-Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Bill Mason announced that Darnell Nash was indicted on charges of Tampering with Records, False Registration and Illegal Voting. County Sheriff's Office conducted the investigation.

Between May 31, 2008 and September 30, 2008, Nash registered to vote via ACORN nine times using fraudulent names and addresses in Shaker Heights and Cleveland. On September 30, 2008, Nash registered and voted at the Board of Elections using a false address on Lee Road in Shaker Heights.

Nash is indicted on 19 counts: nine (9) counts of Tampering with Records, third degree felonies; nine (9) counts of False Registration, fifth degree felonies; one (1) count of Illegal Voting, a fourth degree felony.

Farewell to the voting beat

Today I'm going to purge a bunch of documents from my office. Six and a half years of writing, story-telling, document-digging, watchdogging, and pack-ratting have left me with a room full of paper: banker's boxes and accordion files bulging with old public records and notebooks, the raw materials for narratives and investigative pieces.

One box I'm purging is the elections box. After two years of making the board of elections one of my beats (an unusual beat for a magazine writer, in most times and places), I hope not to write about Cuyahoga County's voting system again.

That's because our once-sad voting agency has gotten its act together. Cleveland and Ohio shed their reputations for election buffoonery this November with a stress-free, snafu-proof Election Day. No more national horror at our lame mistakes. No more conspiracy theories convincing our friends in other states that we're at fault for an election result they didn't like.

What I saw on Election Day -- no lines at once-clogged voting locations, the elections office calling in to check on poll workers instead of leaving them stranded by busy signals -- showed how far Cuyahoga's elections office has come. Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner's decision to release the agency from her supervision this November was the final thumbs-up that confirmed our civic crisis over voting is over.

Credit goes to the leaders who took over our voting agency in 2007, from director Jane Platten to the four elections board members. I made some light fun of them in our September issue pieces on voting -- but I sat through a lot of meetings held by the old board and the new board, and saw old guard offer a perfect example of how a public agency should not act, while the new leaders showed how a troubled office can reform itself. And Brunner, who I was pretty tough on in September, held firm this fall against state Republicans' attempt to throw our system into a new round of chaos.

Yes, the board fought too much and spent too much money, straining the county budget. And a careful post-mortem look at the election results still shows ways voters can lose their vote through their own mistakes. But Platten has set up a system for noting problems and addressing them next time.

Ohio probably benefited from the fact that Obama won here by 4 percentage points. That's a margin too big to contest, so no one bothered to prod our weak spots. Any big city in a swing state or recount state will have its election flaws exposed. But some flaws are worse than others. Minnesota's Senate recount is exposing some mistakes, but way fewer than in Florida eight years ago. How will we hold up if we're the swing town in the swing state again? Much better, I think, with the officials and system we have now.

Voting advice

Here's my advice for everyone going to the polls tomorrow. Some of it is adapted from my article in the September issue about how to protect your vote, "In Case of Election Emergency, Break Glass." Some of it is new.

1. Research how you'll vote before you go. Write down your choices --- you can take notes with you to the polling place. You can follow the links in my earlier post to do your research. Read the ballot proposals beforehand, and if you live in Cuyahoga County, view a sample ballot for your precinct and check out the bar association's judicial endorsements.

2. Know your precinct number. That way you know which line to get in at your polling place. People can lose their vote by getting in the wrong line (3J instead of 3K, for instance). Your precinct number is on your voter registration card and other mailings from the Board of Elections. If you live in Cuyahoga County, you can check it online here.

3. Bring ID. Take a current photo ID (driver’s license, state ID or military ID), or a utility bill, bank statement, paycheck or government check with your name and current address.

4. Don't wear anything that favors one side. You can't go into a polling place wearing an Obama T-shirt or McCain hat or Yes on 5 pin. It's considered "election campaigning" under this law.

5. Choose your time to vote wisely. The polls are open 6:30 a.m. to 7:30 p.m. (If you're in line at 7:30 p.m., you can stay to vote.) The first and last hour are often the busiest. So vote in mid-morning or mid-afternoon if you can. Around 8 a.m. is next best.

6. Be prepared to wait in line. Elections officials predict huge turnout and long lines tomorrow. Bring something to read.

7. Fill out your ballot carefully. Cuyahoga County switched to paper ballots this year. You can ask for a new ballot if you make a mistake on the first one (or second one). Reread your ballot before you turn it in, looking for double-votes in a race, any races you left blank by accident, and stray marks. Fill in your choices completely. Don't fill in the write-in area if your candidate is already on the ballot -- that's a double vote, and the scanner will kick it back.

8. Feed your ballot through the scanner. Grab a cardboard privacy sleeve if you’re nervous about someone seeing your completed ballot. Then take your ballot to the scanner and run it through. If you double-voted, it’ll warn you and ask if you want the ballot back.

If something goes wrong:
9. Try cast a regular vote, not a provisional ballot. If a poll worker pulls out a yellow provisional envelope, ask a lot of questions to be sure you need to use it. About one in four are rejected later. Try to solve the problem first: If you forgot to bring your ID, go home to get it; if you’re not in the poll book, check your registration card or the wall maps to confirm you’re in the right precinct.

If you do vote provisionally, fill out the envelope carefully. You should be given a hotline number to call to find out if your vote counted.

10. Call these numbers to report a problem. If you or someone else has serious difficulty voting, call the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections at (216) 443-3298, the Secretary of State’s Office at 1-877-VOTE-VRI, or the Election Protection hotline maintained by voting-rights groups, 1-866-OUR-VOTE.

Vote by mail

If you won't have time to stand in line to vote on Election Day, you should vote by mail, and send in an application right away. Elections officials say we should expect very high turnout and be prepared to wait in line next Tuesday.

Here are the vote by mail rules, straight from a Cuyahoga County Board of Elections release:

-Vote by Mail applications must arrive by mail, or be hand delivered to the Board of Elections by Saturday, November 1, 2008 at noon.
-Voters who already have their ballots but have not returned them are encouraged to mail their voted ballots to the Board of Elections as soon as possible, and not take the chance of missing the deadline.
-Voted ballots mailed in the United States must be postmarked by November 3, 2008.
-Voted ballots may be delivered in person to the Board of Elections by 7:30 P.M. on November 4, 2008.

I'd add one more thing: be very sure you fill out your application and ballot envelope correctly, to be sure your vote counts.

The ACORN hearing

Christopher Barkley walks to the microphone, wearing a Domino's Pizza uniform and a doo-rag. He's sworn in, and tells the board of elections why he registered to vote 12 times.

"I'd be sitting down in Public Square, reading my book," says Barkley, who was homeless this summer. "People asked me, 'Can you sign these papers?' I said, 'No, I'm already registered.'" They asked him to sign anyway: "I'm trying to hold onto a job," they said. Being a "kind-hearted person," Barkley says, he signed.

Freddie Johnson leaves his black Indians cap on his chair and goes to the mike. He's 19, tiny in a huge sweatshirt. He sells cell phones from a kiosk in Tower City. When he'd wait for the bus in Public Square after work this summer, he says, ACORN workers would approach him. When he said he was registered, they'd "come up with a sob story" and say "it's cool to sign again, because I need a signature, because they get paid by signature." He filled out 48 cards with the same address. Sometimes the workers gave him a cigarette or a dollar.

Luren Dickinson of Shaker Heights, a bespecatcled guy in a suit, testifies he keeps getting board of elections mailings at his house, sent to people who don't live at his address. They're using his house number for false registrations. One guy, Darnell Nash, registered at Dickinson's address and had his registration cancelled when Dickinson complained. But then, Nash came into the elections office, registered again at Dickinson's address, and cast an early ballot. The board votes to void his new registration and ballot. The sheriff will be looking for Nash soon. {*See update below.}

The board of elections votes to ask the county sheriff and prosecutor to investigate the duplicate registration cases. It's going to be a national story. Fox News is covering the meeting. Republicans, including the McCain campaign, are portraying ACORN as a criminal organization.

Let's hope the national reporters keep the story in perspective.

"It's not voter fraud -- people are not multiply voting," said Jane Platten, Cuyahoga County's elections director. "We have safety nets in place that do not allow a person to vote multiple times." Her staff flagged Barkley and Johnson's names during their weekly searches for duplicate registrations.

This year, the elections staff has found 50 to 60 duplicate names out of 71,000 cards submitted by ACORN. Also, they send a mailing to every newly registered (or registration-changing) voter. Of those 71,000 registrations, 3,550 people couldn't be located. They'll have to vote on provisional ballots, which get scrutinized after Election Day to see if the voter is eligible. That's a 5 percent bad-card rate. I asked Platten how that compares to the rate of bad cards among non-ACORN registrations. She said she'd find out and get back to me.

After the meeting, ACORN staffers passed out a folder full of defenses, but their argument that they have a good quality control system was laughably weak. They said they called Freddie Johnson multiple times to verify his information was accurate. Sure, they called him a lot -- because they had 48 cards from him to verify!

The Republican caricatures of ACORN are unfair -- the group has registered hundreds of thousands to vote, and they sounded alarms about the foreclosure crisis long before it wounded the entire economy. But they've got to figure out how to motivate their low-income workers without accidentally giving them reason to cheat, and they've got to check their cards better for problems. They could learn from groups like the Greater Cleveland Voter Coalition, which kept such a thorough database of who they registered in 2004, they used it to prove the county's voter rolls were flawed.

The real effect of ACORN's mistakes on the voting rolls will probably be small. But if Obama wins Ohio in anything less than a landslide, I'm afraid these stories will lead to lots of right-wing stolen-election conspiracy theories -- reverse images of the left's allegations about 2004. I could also see the Republican Party using ACORN mistakes to justify mass challenges to new voters' eligibility. The deadline for challenges is this week.

(Caption: Christopher Barkley testifies at the board of elections meeting.)

Update, Tue. 10/14: An ACORN staffer defends the group's system here, saying they don't pay by the signature. Fox News ran this extremely misleading report claiming there are 4,700 "phony" registrations in Greater Cleveland. For a better sense of proportion, see the Plain Dealer report and editorial.

*Update, Thu., 6/4/09: Darnell Nash was indicted on voting fraud charges. See this new post.

(The original version of this post said Nash's case apparently didn't involve ACORN -- but the prosecutor's office now says it did.)

ACORN investigated in Cleveland

Republicans' allegations about voter fraud by the group ACORN are spreading fast, and Cleveland is going to become ground zero in the controversy next week.

Authorities in Las Vegas raided ACORN's office there on Tuesday. They alleged that ACORN, a community organizing group that registers voters nationwide, was filing false registration cards. In Cleveland, the board of elections is looking into problems with some registrations ACORN collected: see the Plain Dealer's stories from Wednesday and from August.

The New York Post ran this story today about Freddie Johnson, a cell-phone kiosk vendor in downtown Cleveland who filled out 72 identical registration cards in exchange for cigarettes and dollar bills.

I just got two e-mails about ACORN within two minutes. Jim Trakas, Republican challenger to U.S. Rep. Dennis Kucinich, sent out a press release calling for federal funds for ACORN to be cut off and asking why Kucinich hasn't spoken out on the issue. And the John McCain campaign just released a Web-only ad attacking Barack Obama for having allied himself with ACORN, "a group now accused of widespread voter fraud across the country." The ad is a sequel to the Web ad about former Weatherman Bill Ayers -- part of a strategy of painting Obama as radical. Meanwhile, in Columbus yesterday, a federal judge, siding with the Republican Party in its suit against the Secretary of State, cited the Las Vegas raid and Plain Dealer article as examples of why registrations have to be checked.

Before Cleveland becomes infamous again for voting troubles, let's ask a couple of questions.

When I debunked left-wing claims that Republicans stole the 2004 election in Ohio, and wrote my own articles about what really went wrong with Cleveland's elections, I decided any careful, skeptical look at voting controversies has to ask a few key questions:

-How many votes is the problem affecting? Do you have solid numbers, or just scary anecdotes?
-If you say votes are "at risk" because of the problem, how big is the risk?
-What's the cause of the problem? Are there other possible explanations besides the most sinister theory?

Voting problems scare people, for good reason. But these stories also excite partisans, feeding into their worst suspicions: The other side is evil. They will stop at nothing. They can't possibly win an election fairly, so they must cheat.

The allegations against ACORN are serious, and it's obvious they need to be investigated. From what I've read so far, though, they look a tad less ominous when you ask the questions I suggest. Wednesday's PD says elections officials have flagged "about 50 names on suspicious cards" out of 65,000 cards ACORN has submitted in Cuyahoga County. The problem seems to lie with paid canvassers, who are expected to register a certain number of people. Some of them would rather register the same person more than once or make up bum cards than do their jobs right. "Supervisors sometimes fail to prevent different canvassers from attempting to register the same person," the PD story says.

If this could lead to people voting more than once, it's very serious. If it just means the board of elections has to throw out a bunch of cards because its database catches the names as already registered, it's more of a nuisance.

I'll be writing about this again. Johnson and two other people whose names appear on multiple cards have been subpoenaed to appear at the board of elections meeting on Monday. The questions are, how many bad cards are there, why was this happening, and how big was the risk that the problem would lead to fraudulent voting?

Update, Sat. a.m.: Good skeptical story in the Plain Dealer today. The print edition headline is, "Registration fraud won't affect vote, officials say."

Fight brewing over voter registration

Don't get too alarmed about this New York Times story today ("States' Actions to Block Voters Appear Illegal"). For news about voter rolls in Ohio, read this Columbus Dispatch piece instead ("GOP, Brunner spar over voter data").

The Times story sounds scary, but is very confusing. The story tries to cover two very different concerns about voting rolls: how to verify brand-new registrations, and when to delete really old, inactive registrations. In Ohio, the fight is about the new voters.

Republicans have sued Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner, claiming she isn't matching new registrations with the state driver's license database or, if that info doesn't match, social security info. Brunner says she is doing it.

In fact, the Social Security Administration, nudged by the New York Times, is concerned that Ohio and other states are checking registrations against social security info too often. The NYT suggests this could mean the states aren't looking their records first and using only social security info, which could incorrectly identify some registrations as suspect. Not so, Brunner says: the state's voting and driving databases are hooked up electronically.

Brunner says she's worried the Republicans are really suing to use mismatched registrations to challenge voters' eligibility. This could become a big issue, or a non-issue, in the next week.

Update, Fri. 10/10: The judge ruled that Brunner has to turn over lists of the new registrations that don't match state and federal records to county election officials. See the Dispatch story here and the Plain Dealer story here.

Secretary of State Brunner speaks at City Club

Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner spoke at the City Club of Cleveland today, telling the audience what she's done to improve the state's voting system and make sure Ohio isn't a "pariah" among states after the election is over.

She's banned "sleepovers," some poll workers' old habit of taking voting machines home with them the weekend before the election. She'd learned 23 Ohio counties were still allowing it, as a way to help transport the machines to the polls. "Yeah. You can close your jaws now," Brunner told the shocked audience. Sleepovers earned Ohio a lot of mockery this year, including a mention on the NPR comedy game show "Whad'Ya Know?"

She rolled out the sleepover ban as part of the state's new "best practices" for voting security, from ways to keep vote-counting computer servers secure to how to safely transport ballots, voting machines, poll books and memory cards.

Brunner, an opponent of touchscreen voting systems, still has to help 53 Ohio counties use them in November. She promised rigorous testing of the systems.

(Hopefully it will be enough to relieve fans of The Simpsons, who'll be treated to a voting joke in an upcoming episode: Homer tries to vote for Obama, then makes a crack about Ohio as the voting machine eats him. Tragically, this clip is no longer on YouTube.)

In December, Brunner cast the tie-breaking vote to replace Cuyahoga County's touchscreens with paper ballots. "I'm sorry to say I was not able to fight hard enough or long enough to pay for your change in Cuyahoga County," she said (meaning she couldn't get the Republican legislature to fund it). She thanked the county commissioners for footing the $13.4 million bill.

Brunner did a Sarah Palin imitation as part of a joke about her successful fight to preserve a week, Sept. 30 to Oct. 6, when Ohioans could register to vote and cast an early ballot at the same time. Can Ohioans do that? she asked rhetorically. "I can answer it two ways: 'You betcha!'" -- and she winked, like Palin in last week's debate -- "and 'Yes We Can!'" -- imitating Obama and his favorite slogan.

After the talk, I asked if she's seen any early signs of whether there will be mass voter challenges in Ohio, as there were in 2004. She mentioned a new lawsuit by the state Republican Party over people registered with incorrect driver's license numbers or social security numbers. She suggested it might be a prelude to challenges, which can be filed up until Oct. 16.

Protect your vote: check your registration

Here is the best way you can protect your vote between now and Monday: check your voter registration with your county Board of Elections and correct any errors. Here's the web page where Cuyahoga County voters can check their info.

Definitely check if you didn't get a mailing from the Board of Elections in September, if you've moved recently, or if you haven't voted in several years.

If you see a mistake or an outdated address, download a registration form here and mail it today or drive it down to the Board of Elections by Monday. (Registration cards must be received by Monday, so if you fill one out this weekend or Monday, I suggest delivering it rather than mailing it.) Cuyahoga's elections office, at E. 30th and Euclid, is open this weekend. Hours and parking info are here.

Doing this protects you from having to vote on a provisional ballot on Election Day and from the possibility that someone could challenge your eligibility to vote before the election.

Early voting has started. Between now and Nov. 4, you can vote on an absentee ballot by mail or at your county Board of Elections. Until Monday, you can register and vote at the same time. Local elections officials are recommending people vote by mail, to avoid possible lines on Election Day -- just be sure to fill out the forms exactly, so your mail-in ballot can't be challenged.