Protect your vote: How to make your ballot lawyer-proof

Four days until the election, and both sides are preparing for overtime.

The Democrats and Republicans have their legal teams on standby, just in case a swing state's vote falls inside the margin of litigation.  An NPR report this morning speculated that if Ohio is too close to call, the parties could wage a post-election battle here as fierce as Florida's in 2000.

The stakes are high, but you can protect your vote with a few simple steps.  Here's how to lawyer-proof your ballot and make sure it gets counted. (The links are for Cuyahoga County, but most of the advice applies anywhere in Ohio.)

If you voted by mail: track your ballot online.  Use the UPS-like Track Your Ballot page on the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections website to make sure your ballot made it in.  If it says "Returned," it's in and accepted. 

If it says "Challenged," you're one of the less than 1 percent of mail-in voters who left some info off your ballot identification envelope.  You'll get a letter in the mail asking you to correct it by mail or in person at the Board of Elections office. You'll have until Nov. 16 to do it.

If you haven't sent in your mail-in ballot yet: Double-check that you followed all the directions. Be sure to include your name, signature, address, and ID number (driver's license, last four digits of SSN) on your ballot identification envelope. If not, your ballot will be challenged (see above).

Put your ballot in the identification envelope, seal it, and put the identification envelope in the larger mailing envelope. Then mail the ballot soon.  It has to be postmarked by Monday -- or dropped off at the Board of Elections by Tuesday.

If you're voting in person: Know your voting location and precinct number. They’re on your voter-registration card and other mailings from the Board of Elections. Or you can look them up here if you're in Cuyahoga County or here if you're anywhere in the state.

The precinct number tells you which line to get in. (Ballots cast in the right polling location but the wrong precinct line -- "right church, wrong pew" votes -- are hotly contested in election litigation.)

Bring photo ID -- a driver’s license, state ID or military ID. Or use a utility bill, bank statement, paycheck or government check with your name and current address.

Avoid the provisional ballot envelope, if you can. If a poll worker pulls out a yellow provisional ballot envelope, ask a lot of questions to be sure you need to use it. 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, and call the Board of Elections afterward to find out if your vote counted or if you need to follow up by visiting the office.

Mark your ballot carefully. Reread your ballot before you turn it in. Make sure you didn’t double-vote in any races, that you didn’t make stray marks, and that you filled in your choices completely. If you make a mistake, ask for a new ballot.

Update, 4 pm: The New York Times reports that the Democrats will have 600 lawyers in Greater Cleveland on Election Day, while the Republicans will have 70. "If it’s close, you will see both sides running to court," says Jeff Hastings, chair of the board of elections.

Stuart Garson and Rob Frost, the local Democratic and Republican chairs, are trading suspicions that the other side might be perpetrate some Election Day impropriety or deliberately spread misinformation or sow confusion.  They both sound alarmist, but who knows?  Another reason to follow the advice above -- and give yourself plenty of time to vote on Election Day.

Will Ohio reject half of health care reform? Or will voters reject all of it?

Well, that was a wild ride.  For politics junkies, yesterday was a huge fix -- the most anticipated, most important, most surprising Supreme Court decision since Bush vs. Gore, complete with a no-wait-yes reveal.

I was sitting in my doctor's office at 10:09 when CNN.com misfired and posted, "The Supreme Court has struck down the individual mandate for health care." I pulled it up on my phone. My doctor was mostly rooting for the health care law (he's from Canada), but even he got the breaking-news junkie gleam on his face when I told him.

I left and walked into the least boring waiting room experience ever, 20 Cleveland Clinic patients looking expectantly at a TV, reading the CNN captions.  Wait, CNN was saying by 10:16... some reporter was finally reading past page 2... not under the commerce clause, but under the power to tax... 

Thanks to Walter Dellinger, who should've earned thousands on InTrade for his prediction, I knew what that meant.

"Dewey Defeats Truman -- LIVE!" the Atlantic's Megan Garber called CNN's flub. 

The network flipped at 10:19. "Supreme Court upholds entirety of health care law," it announced.

That was pretty close.  But still not right.

The Court snipped one line out of the Affordable Care Act, but it's a big one.  It ruled the states can choose not to go along with the law's expansion of Medicaid. That could lead to a weird split in the country -- liberal states going along with all of health care reform, conservative states going along with half of it.

When I say half, I mean half.  You've heard that the new law will give 30 million people health insurance, right?  Well, today the New York Times ran a chart, based on Congressional Budget Office estimates, that says 22 million people will get health care coverage through new insurance exchanges, while 17 million will get it from the Medicaid expansion.  Now, that means 17 million would get it if their state goes along.

The Medicaid expansion will be 100 percent funded by the federal government -- for a few years.  Then 95 percent. Then 90 percent.  Even though it's a generous subsidy, conservative states that feel extra-cautious about their financial future (or, not as concerned about the uninsured as others) might decide to turn it down.  See this Washington Post story for more.

Gov. John Kasich and Lt. Gov Mary Taylor have strongly resisted the health care law. Yesterday they issued a statement saying they're "very concerned" about "a sudden, dramatic increase in Medicaid spending."

They're hinting that they might decide to turn down the federal money and not expand Medicaid to cover everyone in or near poverty in Ohio.  That could become a huge issue in state politics by next year.

But I'm a step ahead.  For now, the real question isn't, will Ohio's government say no to half of health care reform?  It's, will Ohio voters say no to all of it?

What I mean is, everyone says this election is about the economy and jobs.  But what if it's really about health care? 

The economy may decide the election, but the election will decide whether the health-care law stays or goes. Romney promises to repeal it.

Republicans in Congress think they only need 51 senators, not 60, to repeal parts of it. They need to pick up four Senate seats, and they have a shot.

Ohio's looking a lot like the ultimate swing state again.  It could clinch the presidency for Obama, or put Romney very close to winning.  So the future of the health care law may have passed from the Supreme Court's hands to Ohio voters'.

Ohio envy

Gail Collins, one of the funniest political writers around, reminds us how good we've got it this election:

"If I still lived in Ohio, I would go all the way and embark on a career as an undecided voter. Nothing could force me to make up my mind. Every day, cable TV shows would call me up to take my political temperature. If I had a cranky, anti-Obama day, it would make the CNN map turn pinker. Wolf Blitzer would have my phone number on auto-dial."

How to win Ohio

Two good articles on the race for president in Ohio. George Packer's New Yorker article about working-class Ohio voters is titled "The Hardest Vote." He talks to a lot of voters in Columbus and southeast Ohio, and he tries to explain why the Democrats have lost working-class support since the '70s. It has a gray, sad tone to it. You can tell Packer wants these voters to support Obama, but fears they won't. You can also tell it was reported in September, when Obama's campaign was struggling.

David Broder, the Washington Post columnist, regularly visits swing regions of the country to find out which way an election is going. In yesterday's column, "Blue Sparks in Red Ohio," Broder visits normally Republican Wooster, and he finds Obama's campaign office filled with volunteers and humming with excitement. It sounds like Broder thinks Obama will win the state.

Which vision is more likely? Take a look at Pollster.com's chart of Ohio polls.



That blue line shows Obama pulling out to a four-point average lead. Those blue dots on the top right show that a couple of recent polls show him 10 to 12 points ahead.

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.)