Ohio’s Ballot Woes Could Delay Election Results For Weeks

[TheWa...@here.now]

Ohio’s Ballot Woes Could Delay Election Results For Weeks

Pollsters and pundits have trained their eyes on Ohio, where President
Obama maintains a narrow lead over Mitt Romney just days before the
election. According to exit polls, Obama’s lead is even stronger among
early voters. But several recent developments threaten to
disenfranchise many of these voters and plunge Ohio into a
bureaucratic nightmare on election night.

The Columbus Dispatch reported on Thursday that a data-sharing glitch
and mistakes by election officials have caused thousands of absentee
ballot requests to be rejected. While Ohio Secretary of State Jon
Husted maintains that this was a computer error, the Northeast Ohio
Voter Advocates found an abnormally high rate of rejected absentee
ballot requests in Cuyahoga County, a Democratic stronghold that
includes Cleveland. The Cuyahoga Board of Elections determined that
865 ballot requests had been erroneously thrown out.

If these voters try to cast their vote in person, they will likely be
forced to use a provisional ballot, as the absentee ballot error has
thrown their registration status into question. At least 4,500
registered voters across the state will be left waiting for their
absentee ballots, while as many as 6,000 provisional ballots cast by
registered voters could be tossed out. The provisional ballots that do
not get thrown out won’t be counted until November 17, according to
state law, further dragging out the confusion.

This absentee ballot fiasco is just the latest in Ohio’s dysfunctional
election saga. On Wednesday, the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals
allowed Husted to discount ballots cast by people directed to the
wrong polling station by a pollworker — one of the most common errors
that led to thousands of votes getting thrown out in Ohio’s
dysfunctional 2004 presidential election.

Husted became a national symbol of voter suppression after he banned
early voting on nights and weekends, and attempted to defy a court
order that restored early voting on the last three days before the
election.

In his defense, Husted often touts his unprecedented initiative to
mail absentee ballot requests to every registered voter in the state.
But critics have pointed out that this measure will probably add to
the confusion that could delay the results of the election. Anyone who
chooses to return the absentee ballot application but later decides to
vote in person will be required to use a provisional ballot, as
election officials need to verify that they did not also send in their
absentee ballot. The absentee ballot initiative, then, could be a
bureaucratic nightmare in disguise. With innumerable legitimate votes
cast on provisional ballots, Ohio’s 2012 election could end up
mirroring 2004, when the state discarded thousands of votes and tipped
George W. Bush over the edge to victory by the narrowest margin.