>
>
>Ohio GOP poised to gut election protection on way to permanent national
>domination
> by Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman
> January 30, 2006
>
> Ohio's GOP-controlled legislature is poised to pass---probably
>today (Tuesday, January 31) ---a repressive new law that will gut free
>elections here and is already surfacing around the US. The bill is designed
>to help end free elections and continue the process of installing the GOP as
>America's permanent ruling party.
>
> Called HB3, the bill demands discriminatory voter ID, severely
>cripples the possibility of statewide recounts and actually ends the process
>of state-based challenges to federal elections---most importantly for
>president---held within the state.
>
> In other words, the type of legal challenge mounted to the theft
>of Ohio's electoral votes in the 2004 election will now be all but
>impossible in the future.
>
> Section 35-05.18 of HB3 requires restrictive identification
>requirements for anyone trying to vote in an Ohio election. Photo ID, a
>utility bill, a bank statement, a government check or other government
>document showing the name and current address of the voter will be required.
>This requirement is perfectly designed to slow down the voting process in
>inner city precincts. It's meant to allow Republican "challengers" to
>intimidate anyone who turns up to vote in heavily Democratic precincts. It
>will also virtually eliminate the homeless, elderly and impoverished from
>the voting rolls. Election protection advocates estimate this requirement
>will erase 100,000 to 200,000 voters in a typical statewide election. By
>way of reference, George W. Bush allegedly carried Ohio---and the
>presidency---by less than 119,000 votes in 2004.
>
> The ID requirement is the direct result of intervention by two
>high-powered Republican attorneys with ties to the White House and Senate
>Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.). Congressman Bob Ney allowed the
>Bush-Cheney re-election national counsel Mark "Thor" Hearne to testify last
>March as a so-called "voting rights advocate." Hearne, whose resume shows no
>connection to voting rights organizations, was responsible for advising the
>Bush-Cheney campaign on national litigation and election law strategy during
>the 2004 election. See:
>
>
http://www.lathropgage.com/people/bio.aspx?bioid=8185 and
>
http://www.lathropgage.com/ files/tbl_s47Details %5CFileUpload265%5C351
>%5CTHOR_Insert.pdf.
>
> Hearne, with the help of Republican attorney Alex Vogel,
>concocted a story that the problem with the 2004 elections in Ohio was the
>NAACP paying people with crack cocaine to register voters. Vogel's front
>group, the Free Enterprise Coalition, even indemnified a local Republican
>operative, Mark Rubrick, to file an Ohio corrupt practices act suit against
>the NAACP, the AFL-CIO, ACT-Ohio and ACORN, The suit was later quietly
>withdrawn after discovery showed that the operatives behind it were linked
>to the top levels of the Republican Party.
>
> Ironically, the Republican Party engaged in racist and massive
>voter repression in Ohio and are now institutionalizing that very Jim
>Crow-style repression and selling it as an election reform bill.
>
> HB3 will also delete the ability of the public to conduct
>meaningful audits of voting machines. Election protection activists
>recently forced the adoption of an auditable paper trail into the Ohio
>election process. In a state where virtually all ballots are cast and/or
>counted on electronic equipment, this cuts to the core of the ability to
>monitor an election's outcome. The new provision in HB3 will make the paper
>trail virtually meaningless.
>
> HB3 further imposes a huge jump in the cost of forcing a
>recount. In 2004, the charge was $100 per precinct, with some 11,366
>precincts in the state. Thus the Green and Libertarian Parties, which
>paid for it, had to pay somewhat more than $113,000. Now the charge will
>be $500 per precinct, jumping the charge to some $568,000.
>
> Finally, and perhaps most astonishingly, HB3 eliminates the
>state statutes that allowed citizens to challenge the outcome of federal
>elections within the state. After the 2004 election, election protection
>advocates filed a challenge to Bush's victory. They were attacked with an
>official attempt to levy sanctions, and then were thwarted from an effective
>suit when GOP Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell locked up the state's
>voter records.
>
> But HB3 would now entirely eliminate any possibility of a
>state-based legal challenge. The only alleged recourse for those wishing to
>officially question the vote count in a presidential, senatorial or US
>Congressional race in Ohio would have to go to the United States Congress.
>There will be no recourse whatsoever on the state level.
>
> HB3 is virtually certain to pass today. Despite grassroots
>protests and bitter opposition from Common Cause, the League of Women Voters
>and other pro-democracy groups, the Ohio GOP is clearly bound and determined
>to end the possibility of any other party ever taking power in the Buckeye
>State. When combined with campaign finance laws allowing huge chunks of
>private and corporate money to flow virtually unregulated into GOP coffers,
>HB3 will all but end free elections in Ohio.
>
> Only one presidential candidate---John F. Kennedy in 1960---has
>won the White House without carrying Ohio. This and the other repressive
>legislation passed by the Ohio GOP will make it virtually impossible for
>anyone but a Republican to carry the Buckeye State in future statewide and
>federal elections.
>
> Bills like HB3 are also being lined up to flow through
>Republican-controlled legislatures throughout the US. "This comes straight
>from Karl Rove," says Cliff Arnebeck, one of Ohio's leading election
>protection attorneys. "This legislation originates with a demand that
>one-party rule by made permanent throughout the United States."
>
> Anybody wishing to try to stop HB3 at the last minute might try
>calling the Republican leadership of the Ohio House and Senate.
>
> --
> Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman are co-authors of HOW THE GOP
>STOLE AMERICA'S 2004 ELECTION & IS RIGGING 2008, available at
>
http://www.freepress.org/. They are co-editors, with Steve Rosenfeld, of
>WHAT HAPPENED IN OHIO? forthcoming from the New Press.