JaBbA's Hut

Does the idea of 200,000 provisional ballots in Ohio make you break out in a cold sweat? It should. Bush "won" Ohio by 91,000 ballots, and Kerry gave up.

So Brunner is fighting to allow newly registered voters to vote:

On Thursday, Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner told the Huffington Post she is ready to fight not only the state's current election law battle in front of the Supreme Court, but is also willing to wage a new fight, if necessary, to make sure hundreds of thousands of new voters are not "forced" onto provisional ballots on election day. She asserts that Republican demands are meant to create confusion at the polls and keep all the ballots from being counted.

Spurred by revelations that the community organizing group ACORN has submitted many thousands of ineligible voter registration cards in battleground states, Ohio Republicans have been calling for a wholesale comparison of the state's nearly 666,000 new active voters against data collected by the local DMV.

Brunner says that, according to the League of Women Voters, there were only four instances of "illegal voting," or the actual casting of an illegitimate ballot, between 2002 and 2006 -- when just under 8 million ballots were cast. As such, she said, ACORN's registration problems are being improperly lumped in with the casting of bad ballots, something she says is not likely to occur no matter how many fraudulent registrations are turned in. "Unfortunately, despite the messaging of certain political parties ... when they bring ACORN into it, they're talking about false voter registration. Seldom does that lead to illegal voting. Mickey Mouse and Jive Turkey don't vote."

Brunner revealed this week that state data for approximately 200,000 of the new voters shows at least one discrepancy out of nearly two dozen categories that can be compared between the Secretary of State's office and the DMV.

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The New York Times reported Wednesday that "once the local officials have the names, they may require these voters to cast provisional ballots rather than regular ones, and they may ask partisan poll workers to challenge these voters on Election Day."

But Brunner says she won't order a process of provisional balloting unless she is forced to do so, preferring instead that these individuals vote normally like everyone else. "I find nothing in HAVA [the Help America Vote Act] that says if there's a mismatch on this limited data that that's enough to push a voter onto a provisional ballot," she told the Huffington Post. "A court would have to order me to do that. ... And I'd fight it all the way back up [to the Supreme Court]."

"The [circuit] court said the Secretary of State has to provide information to the Boards of Election on which names [have] discrepancies," Brunner said, adding that the federal judge admitted he could not order the Boards of Election to use provisional balloting for those voters.

So would the individual boards make the call as to whether or not to use provisional ballots on a site-by-site basis?

Brunner asserted it would be her decision. "It would be the Secretary of State that could order the boards to do that," she said. Asked if she intended to do any such thing, she said, simply, "no."

"If we have to follow the [circuit] court's order, we will do everything we have to do to resolve those discrepancies by contacting voters," Brunner said, suggesting this is the extent of the impact of the 6th circuit's decision. As for whether or not her office is drawing up the lists for the 88 different election boards, Brunner replied: "We're gonna wait and see what the Supreme Court orders us to do."

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The secretary also expressed some muted displeasure with ACORN for helping cause alarm over potential voter fraud due to the apparent registration fraud in its ranks. "I think non-profit organizations like ACORN are specifically fighting the fight for middle to low income people," she said. "In carrying out that kind of responsibility, they need to do it in such a way [so that] low income people won't be further ostracized by the community. I think they have to do a better job, yes. From a pure election law standpoint, [this all] makes a lot of unnecessary work."

Note what she says about ACORN. When I'm debating Republicans, they almost universally bring up ACORN as if they are the absolute enemies of democracy. This has been whipped up by Faux News and the GOP, with McCain making statements like:

We need to know the full extent of Senator Obama's relationship with ACORN, who is now on the verge of maybe perpetrating one of the greatest frauds in voter history in this country, maybe destroying the fabric of democracy.

(From last night's debate. Side Note: Note that McCain gets a free negative attack in, while pretending he's just raising a question. Very Faux News of him)

So what did ACORN actually do? They hired unemployed people to register voters. Unfortunately, some of those people they hired perpetrated a fraud on ACORN by registering "Tony Romo" and "Mickey Mouse" and "Jive Turkey". Even if those registrations went through, THERE IS NO VOTER FRAUD. Mickey Mouse isn't going to cast a ballot.

But the pillorying of ACORN gets even worse. ACORN dutifully checks the registrations, and pulls these false registrations out. However, they are required by law to TURN IN EVERY REGISTRATION, even if it is invalid. So they attach a cover sheet to each bad ballot, noting that they believe it to be invalid, and send it in. The Nevada Secretary of State then uses the excuse that ACORN turned in invalid registrations to PUBLICLY RAID ACORN OFFICES - after calling in the news crews to make sure that the entire country sees flak-jacketed lawmen rushing in and taking everything out of the ACORN offices.

So when debating Repubs, get the facts and use them - ACORN has never caused a single fraudulent ballot to be cast. A (very) few ACORN field directors were bad apples and weren't doing the right thing, and there was some number of contractors that ripped off ACORN by putting in bad registrations to up their pay. But what ACORN does is register low and moderate-income voters, and the powers-that-be don't like the idea of the unwashed masses actually voting, so they are targeted for both legal and reputation attacks by GOP officials and Faux News.

JaBbA says check out the full article, get educated, and keep fighting for your rights!