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Oct

21

How to take voter fraud seriously in Ohio


Brian Rothenberg, Executive Director of ProgressOhio.org sent out a plea for Ohioans to support equal prosecution of out-of-state campaign workers when it comes to voter registration irregularities.  This request comes as evidence about how out-of-state campaign workers for both the Obama campaign and the McCain campaign may be violating Ohio voting law has been developing.

Rotherberg’s letter:

Partisan Games Should Lead To Bi-Partisan Prosecution or Be Dropped

COLUMBUS - ProgressOhio.org today called on the Franklin County Board of Elections to investigate and refer to the Franklin County Prosecutor evidence that out-of-state McCain/Palin campaign workers have registered to vote in Ohio with no intent to stay in-state.

The Complaint here:

http://pnohio.3cdn.net/dc3e5231706a69e17d_bom6i24bl.pdf

Research by ProgressOhio confirms what has appeared in numerous Ohio blogs, including Blue Bexley.

Ryan Meerstein is currently the State Director for McCain’s campaign in Ohio. Online biographies indicate he has worked for political campaigns or parties in four different states during the past two years (for the RNC in Virginia, for Sen. Corker’s campaign in Tennessee, for Rudy Giuliani in South Carolina1 and McCain in Ohio). He attended college in a fifth state2, and his given hometown is in a sixth state3.

The Franklin County Board of Elections reports receiving his completed absentee ballot on October 14th.

Record that indicates Mr. Meerstein is also currently registered to vote in South Carolina:

http://www.progressohio.org/page/-/Documents/South%20Carolina%20State%20Electi…pdf

Other high-level McCain Ohio staffers like Paul Lindsay and Jason Levine also appear to have recently moved to the state and registered to vote, while displaying no greater or lesser likelihood to remain a resident than some of the Vote From Home volunteers.

“The Franklin County Board of Elections made national news last week by referring 13 volunteers from the Vote From Home project to the Franklin County Prosecutor alleging they are not eligible to vote because they are not from Ohio and have no intent to stay in Ohio,” said Brian Rothenberg, Executive Director of the non-partisan ProgressOhio.org. “If this is how they interpret the law, it should be applied equally, without regard to political affiliation or belief, or not at all.

“We call on the Franklin County Board of Elections to investigate this accusation, and any similar accusations that may arise and to forward the information in similar fashion to the Franklin County Prosecutor,” said Rothenberg.

“We don’t believe the Vote From Home volunteers are any more or less guilty than these McCain/Palin campaign workers,” said Rothenberg. “You can’t selectively prosecute. Either drop the investigation to all concerned or expand it to all concerned. Otherwise this smacks of a partisan game.”

Rothenberg said given past practice in Ohio the best thing for Prosecutors and the Franklin County Board of Elections to do would be to drop the whole issue. “The state of Ohio has been around for 205 years and campaign workers have probably done this riding in from horseback, stagecoach, steam locomotive and airplanes. This is partisan hype singling out 13 kids for simply trying to help people exercise their rights to vote. If you are going to investigate them, then all ‘out-of-state’ campaign workers, should be subjected to the same standards.”

1 http://shotpolitics.com/the-crew-giuliani-campaign-announces-south-carolina-staff.htm

2 http://www.allegheny.edu/athletics/menbb/menbb_history.php

3 http://otb.huffingtonpost.com/wiki/index.php/Rudolph_Giuliani_Staff_Y2007Q2

Glass City Jungle’s post on the letter contains an active comment thread about the proposal.

As I wrote in my comment there, the Ohio Revised Code does not appear to contain any working definition of “temporary” or “resident” that could easily resolve this situation.  As a person with a legal education, this kind of vagueness is often intentional, for a variety of reasons but causes enormous tzuras in situations like this election.  Only a review of case law can really help, in addition to identifying some specific standards that everyone would apply and would apply uniformly.

Ha.

Yeah, I know.

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By Jill Miller Zimon at 2:58 pm October 21st, 2008 in Elections, Ohio, Politics, Voting, WH2008 

Comments

One Response to “How to take voter fraud seriously in Ohio”

  1. 1 Tim Higgins on October 21st, 2008 4:43 pm

    You have to wonder about both parties, and their supporting organizations. I know that some form of shenanigans has been going on since the first democratic vote, but it seems to be getting worse every election cycle.

    Perhaps the only way to stem the tide is to perform some thorough investigations, where called for – prosecutions, and upon convictions – some stiff sentences. Maybe fear of getting caught (as it is with small children) is the only thing that might work.

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