I heard a rumor the 6th Circuit overturned, but I seem to have been wrong.
Here is the latest:
<a href='http://www.cleveland.com/newsflash/cleveland/index.ssf?/base/politics-0/109935686841810.xml&storylist=cleveland' target='_blank'>http://www.cleveland.com/newsflash/clevela...ylist=cleveland</a>
This was a column from Sunday's Dayton Daily News on the subject.
COMMENTARY
Ellen Belcher: Ohio GOP's ugly goals obvious
They think they can get by with anything
By Ellen Belcher
Dayton Daily News
In trying to make sure that it doesn't get blamed if George W. Bush isn't re-elected, the Ohio Republican Party has done destructive things to this state and shown a reprehensible side of itself. Do not be confused or misled.
As the president himself says when he talks about Iraq, this is not complicated.
When the state's Republicans decided to question the registrations of thousands of Ohio's voters and to put people at the polls who could challenge people's right to be there, the goal was to spike the votes of many whom they fear favor John Kerry.
This effort is not about stopping fraud. It is about naked political aggression. It is about winning at any cost. It is about scorched-earth tactics.
Ohio's Republicans, so long unchecked by Democrats, have become so arrogant and so full of themselves that it doesn't occur to them that there are just some things they can't do. Messing with people's right to vote — even if they're Democratic voters — is one of them.
The backlash has set it. How else to say it: People are appalled, disgusted, mad. They may not understand in detail who's suing whom for what, or exactly how voting could be different from every other year, but they get the big picture.
Republicans can back down, but it's going to take a long time to live down the damage they've done. Even some in the party are ashamed of the depths to which their leaders have gone. The actions say something about the party's core, about what the people running it will do when they're worried about losing. Showing honor and good judgment is easy when your back isn't against the wall; the real measure of people is how they behave when things aren't going the way they want.
When the history of Ohio's part in this historic election is written, somebody needs to note that Montgomery County's Republican Chairman John White understood the stakes in this decision to make voting harder. When the word came down from state party headquarters that local parties were to have people at the polling places who could challenge whether certain voters were legal, White said he wouldn't do it. He listened to the Republican (and Democratic) staff at the local board of elections who said they have no evidence of fraud that needs ferreting out in this draconian way.
And he recognized the ruse for what it was: The goal is to slow down the voting process, to discourage the single mom who is trying to vote, but needs to pick up her kids. He understood that some people would be intimidated or insulted by the very idea that they could be questioned based on so little.
And race relations figure in in a big way. Republican challengers in Ohio and elsewhere across the country are targeting black and poor neighborhoods. John White lives in this community. The state Republican Party chairman, Bob Bennett, does not.
Bennett wouldn't have to pick up the pieces from dozens of white people, many from the suburbs, going to West Dayton, spending an entire day leaning back in their chairs and asking blacks to prove that they're entitled to vote. That picture — that experience — will be indelible for many people.
It would be one thing if Republicans had cause. But the fact that a piece of mail was returned to the Republican Party or the board of elections does not constitute what ordinary people consider "evidence" of voter fraud. There are just too many other innocent explanations, ranging from typos by the board of elections personnel to mistakes by the post office.
Both in Franklin and Summit counties, Republican election officials are now saying they're embarrassed by the lack of standards their leaders would use to potentially disenfranchise thousands of people.
Locally, Montgomery County Democratic Party Chairman Dennis Lieberman pitched the idea that Republicans at the polls should only be allowed to challenge those voters whose mail had come back to the board of elections — not just anyone a Republican challenger picked out of line.
Never mind how reasonable the idea was and how generous — because it effectively conceded that there might be a problem if someone's mail had been sent back; it never went anywhere.
There are good people in the Republican Party who don't deserve to be accused of trying to steal people's right to vote. They, sadly, are not in charge.
Ellen Belcher is the editor of the Dayton Daily News editorial pages. Her telephone number is 225-2286; her e-mail address is ebelcher@DaytonDailyNews.com
