Absent in Ohio
My sister recently returned home to Ohio from her campus in West Virginia for Winter Break. I teased her about how lucky she was to have the right to an absentee ballot as she wasn't forced in to a GOP "challenge", able to vote in privacy for the candidate of her choice.
Surprised by my comment, she informed me that as an absentee voter, she was in the most unfortunate situation of all. She received her ballot in the mail (along with every other Ohio voter at her university) the day that it was due back in Ohio. The out-of-state student vote from Ohio, (along with many out-of-state votes from Democratic counties in Ohio) simply did not count. A late day Ohio court ruling tried to fix the mistake on election-day by allowing out-of-state voters to come to their regular polling places in Ohio to vote standard before polls closed at 7:30. My sister, (and I imagine any Ohio voter more than 300 miles away) unfortunately didn't make it back to Cincinnati in time to be counted.
In addition 17,500 absentee ballots were simply discarded regardless of which candidate received the vote when Ralph Nader's name was discovered printed on them. (The Nader vote was not allowed in Ohio when fake names were discovered on his petition to be a candidate). Kerry's name was likewise omitted from Absentee Ballots for former Cincinnati residents.
Out-Of-State voters from the Cleveland area were stumped when their absentee ballots didn't quite line up candidate names on punch card systems causing many to actually vote for the wrong candidate.
These absentee errors along with many other suspicious mistakes in Ohio (an error in an electronic voting system that gave Bush 3,893 extra votes in a suburban Columbus precinct where only 638 people voted) has inspired Jesse Jackson to campaign for a "contest of election." The request requires a single Supreme Court justice to either let the election stand, declare another winner or throw the whole thing out.The seven-member Supreme Court is currently dominated by Republicans 5-2.Those Ohio Residents who had the courage to cross the Ohio River for something slightly less conservative were simply counted absent as opposed to absentee when it came time to vote.
Surprised by my comment, she informed me that as an absentee voter, she was in the most unfortunate situation of all. She received her ballot in the mail (along with every other Ohio voter at her university) the day that it was due back in Ohio. The out-of-state student vote from Ohio, (along with many out-of-state votes from Democratic counties in Ohio) simply did not count. A late day Ohio court ruling tried to fix the mistake on election-day by allowing out-of-state voters to come to their regular polling places in Ohio to vote standard before polls closed at 7:30. My sister, (and I imagine any Ohio voter more than 300 miles away) unfortunately didn't make it back to Cincinnati in time to be counted.
In addition 17,500 absentee ballots were simply discarded regardless of which candidate received the vote when Ralph Nader's name was discovered printed on them. (The Nader vote was not allowed in Ohio when fake names were discovered on his petition to be a candidate). Kerry's name was likewise omitted from Absentee Ballots for former Cincinnati residents.
Out-Of-State voters from the Cleveland area were stumped when their absentee ballots didn't quite line up candidate names on punch card systems causing many to actually vote for the wrong candidate.
These absentee errors along with many other suspicious mistakes in Ohio (an error in an electronic voting system that gave Bush 3,893 extra votes in a suburban Columbus precinct where only 638 people voted) has inspired Jesse Jackson to campaign for a "contest of election." The request requires a single Supreme Court justice to either let the election stand, declare another winner or throw the whole thing out.The seven-member Supreme Court is currently dominated by Republicans 5-2.Those Ohio Residents who had the courage to cross the Ohio River for something slightly less conservative were simply counted absent as opposed to absentee when it came time to vote.
posted by curfew at 5:07 PM
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