Ohio Abandons Two-Year Battle Over Voter Disenfranchisement (VOTERS WIN!)

[Bozita]

I haven't read anything about this in the MSM. The following is a press release from Jenner & Block.

http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/060926/cgtu072.html?.v=38

Ohio Abandons Two-Year Battle Over Voter Disenfranchisement
Tuesday September 26, 5:26 pm ET

WASHINGTON, Sept. 26 /PRNewswire/ -- The state of Ohio this week abandoned a two-year-long defense of efforts to disenfranchise 35,000 registered voters in the days leading up to the 2004 presidential election. In a victory for several Jenner & Block pro bono clients, a federal appeals court agreed to dismiss the lawsuit after Ohio conceded that it could no longer defend the 2004 actions.

The lawsuit arose just days before the November 2004 presidential election, when Republican Party leaders challenged 35,000 Ohio residents' right to vote, based solely on the return of non-forwardable, registered postcards that the party had sent to newly registered voters. The challengers claimed that the returned postcards showed that the voters were potentially trying to commit fraud by voting in precincts where they did not live. Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell ordered Ohio's 88 county boards of elections to conduct hearings on all 35,000 challenges in a three-day period.

Jenner & Block represented a group of voters who challenged the partisan officials' move on due-process grounds and sought a temporary restraining order (TRO) allowing all 35,000 voters to participate in the election. The plaintiffs represented by the Firm noted that many postcards were returned for legitimate reasons. For example, plaintiff Brian Albright had refused to accept registered mail from the Republican Party, and class member Lisa Potts was registered to vote from her mother's address in Westerville, Ohio, while she served in the United States Marine Corps at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina. Ohio Republican Party chair Bob Bennett eventually conceded that data- management errors had caused thousands of postcards to be returned from otherwise eligible voters, including all 5,000 challenges in Franklin County, Ohio.

The plaintiffs also pointed out that the State failed to notify the challenged voters of their hearings, and that their right to vote would thus be stripped without them even receiving notice.

more...

[SharonAnn]

1. Ohio Abandons Two-Year Battle to Disenfranchise Voters - True Title

The headline was misleading to me, so I have restated it here.

The issue was that Ohio was trying to defend why it tried to disenfranchise 35,000 voters in some shady procedures right before the 2004 elections. They dropped their defense. I guess it was "indefensible".

The voters won! This lawsuit forced awareness of what the Ohio GOP was trying to do and brought visibility to the sneaky methods they use to suppress the vote.

It's a big victory for our side.

We need even more of these!

[corkhead]

2. "Voters Win". Now can I have my President back?

[mongo]

8. Yeah. I'm not sure exactly what we won.

[rrasile]

17. What we won

smells like you know what. Those voters lost their right to cast a ballot plain and simple and because the state of Ohio has high priced lawyers they managed to keep it out of court long enough that the case didn't matter.
It's to dam bad that the Ohio Republican Party didn't have a few of those lawyers watching the Workmen's Compensation Fund and saved the state a huge chunk of change.
Hell maybe they were. So far Taft, Montgomery, Blackwell, and Pietro all claim that they had nothing to do with the fraud, well who did.

[slaveplanet]

20. these repugs

Well who did?


Bureau of Workers' Compensation oversight committee members, from left, William Burga, William Sopko, Mary Beth Carroll and Thomas Bainbridge, Jr.


Were the ones with their hands on the lever. They had the oversight.

Especially the rabid repug Sopko recently reappointed by Taft.
Fall 2004: Jim Conrad, then-administrator of BWC, tells Bill Sopko, a Euclid businessman who serves as chairman of the Workers' Compensation Oversight Commission, about the MDL losses in a phone conversation. "He said it was $30 to 40 million and he said it could be more than that," Sopko said. Sopko opts not to share the information with other members of the oversight board.


One man funneled 2 bad deals for bureau
Taft, chief aide knew of investment losses with MDL early on
Monday, July 18, 2005
Alan Johnson
THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH

Faced with the bleak option of resigning or being fired, Terrence W. Gasper, chief financial officer at the Ohio Bureau of Workers’ Compensation, hurriedly made two pleas for help.

One call went to William E. Sopko, chairman of the bureau’s oversight commission.

The other was to Thomas W. Noe, the Maumee coin dealer whom Gasper helped land a $50 million investment deal with the agency.

Gasper wound up quitting anyway on Oct. 7, 2004. But the revelation of Noe’s role in trying to save Gasper’s job links for the first time two major scandals in the bureau: Noe’s Capital Coin fund, which might have a shortfall of up to $13 million, and MDL Capital Management, whose $215 million in losses cost Gasper his post.

Further, new information obtained by The Dispatch indicates that Jon Allison, Gov. Bob Taft’s chief of staff, was fully informed early on about the bad MDL investments, despite recent statements to the contrary.

Likewise, Taft also knew about MDL’s problems months ago, lacking only the exact amount of the shortfall.

Based on interviews with people close to the situation, along with documents, e-mails and published comments, The Dispatch reconstructed the chain of events that exploded into one of the biggest state government scandals in recent Ohio history.

(...)
http://www.dispatch.com/news-story.php?story=dispatch/2005/07/18/20050718-A1-02.html&chck=t

[pberq]

3. Kick & Nominated - let's have more like this

[aquart]

4. I'll believe it when their votes are counted in November.

[Straight Shooter]

5. Big smile on my face.

Kind of late in the game, but a victory is an acknowledgement of the suppression of the vote.

This is what's really malicious about the State: "The plaintiffs also pointed out that the State failed to notify the challenged voters of their hearings, and that their right to vote would thus be stripped without them even receiving notice."

I would also like to have President Kerry restored to his rightful position.

[samsingh]

6. what will this mean?

[farmbo]

9. No more "caging" (GOP voter suppression tatic) in Ohio...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caging_list

Caging has also been used as a form of voter suppression. A political party challenges the validity of a voter's registration; for the voter's ballot to be counted, the voter must prove that their registration is valid.

Voters targeted by caging are often the most vulnerable: those who are unfamiliar with their rights under the law, and those who cannot spare the time, effort, and expense of proving that their registration is valid. Ultimately, caging works by dissuading a voter from casting a ballot, or by ensuring that they cast a provisional ballot, which is less likely to be counted.

With one type of caging, a political party sends registered mail to addresses of registered voters. If the mail is returned as undeliverable - because, for example, the voter refuses to sign for it, the voter isn't present for delivery, or the voter is homeless - the party uses that fact to challenge the registration, arguing that because the voter could not be reached at the address, the registration is fraudulent. It is this use of direct mail caging techniques to target voters which probaby resulted in the application of the name to the political tactic.

On the day of the election, when the voter arrives at the poll and requests a ballot, an operative of the party challenges the validity of their registration. If the voter insists, the voter may cast a provisional ballot. However, the state will count the provisional ballot only if the voter can prove that their registration is valid.

[xxqqqzme]

14. in California, if you vote by provisional ballot,

you are given a receipt w/ the ballot number on it and a telephone number to call to check if your vote was accepted or not.

[samsingh]

21. thanks .

[pnorman]

7. I keep getting "Server Not Found" at that URL.

But apparently it's working okay for others here. :wtf: :wtf:

pnorman

[underpants]

10. Good lord

that's amazing. They were supposed to do all that just so they could prove and doubleprove that they could vote?

Oh I am sure it was just a coincidence :sarcasm:

[roseBudd]

11. Any DUer who try to argue for photo ID needs to wake up and smell

the suppression. The GOP does not want people voting. High turnout favors the dems and they know it. The rich have always had extremely high turnout.

[Sapere aude]

12. Repukes, the upholders and defenders of our rights do more to strip them

away than any party in the history of the country. Take the loss of rights under the patriot act, the voter disenfranchisement, the loss of habeas corpus and on and on.

Freeps, I'm sure you are proud to belong to the party that limits the freedoms you say our troops are fighting for aren't you?

[EnviroBat]

13. I received one too...

Maybe they realize that if they attempt to pull that shit this time, some people could get hurt. The "challenger" to my right to vote by law had to include his name and address on the challenge letter. Some puke republican attorney here in Powell Ohio. Not a good idea... I considered many times stopping by his place to discuss it with him, but the challenges were dropped at my local precinct so I was able to vote anyway. At least I think I did. I think the state has made a wise decision. Oh, and FUCK YOU BLACKWELL!

[Vidar]

15. Yeehah!

[Judi Lynn]

16. Great line from the article, if Republicans can't find a way around it:

Jenner & Block attorney Sam Hirsch, who represented the plaintiffs, said, "Our victory today is a warning shot to partisan operatives in Ohio and across the Nation: The right to vote and the right to due process prohibit last- minute maneuvers that would result in mass disenfranchisement."

[texpatriot2004]

18. K & R for Transparent Democracy nm

[Bozita]

19. big kick for the morning crowd