{news} As Alito joins the Supremes, Ohio GOP guts election protection (Fitrakis & Wasserman, Free Press)

[John Battista]

> As Alito Takes Supreme Court Seat, Ohio GOP Guts
> Election Protection
>
> by Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman
> The Free Press, February 1, 2006
> http://www.freepress.org/departments/display/19/2006/1754
> http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0202-20.htm
>
>
> Ohio's GOP-controlled legislature has passed a
> repressive new law that will gut free elections
> here and is already surfacing elsewhere around
> the US. The bill will continue the process of
> installing the GOP as America's permanent ruling
> party.
>
> Coming with the swearing in of right-wing
> extremist Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito, it
> marks another dark day for what remains of
> American democracy.
>
> Called HB3, the law now demands discriminatory
> voter ID, severely cripples the possibility of
> statewide recounts and actually ends the process
> of state-based challenges to federal
> elections---most importantly for president---held
> within the state.
>
> In other words, the type of legal challenge
> mounted to the theft of Ohio's electoral votes in
> the 2004 election will now be all but impossible
> in the future.
>
> Section 35-05.18 of HB3 requires restrictive
> identification requirements for anyone trying to
> vote in an Ohio election. Photo ID, a utility
> bill, a bank statement, a government check or
> other government document showing the name and
> current address of the voter will be required.
>
> This requirement is perfectly designed to slow
> down the voting process in inner city precincts.
> It allows Republican "challengers" to intimidate
> anyone who turns up to vote in heavily Democratic
> precincts. It virtually eliminates the homeless,
> elderly and impoverished from the voting rolls.
> Election protection advocates estimate this
> requirement will erase 100,000 to 200,000 voters
> in a typical statewide election. By way of
> reference, George W. Bush allegedly carried
> Ohio---and the presidency---by less than 119,000
> votes in 2004.
>
> The ID requirement is the direct result of
> intervention by two high-powered Republican
> attorneys with ties to the White House and Senate
> Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.). Congressman
> Bob Ney allowed the Bush-Cheney re-election
> national counsel Mark "Thor" Hearne to testify
> last March as a so-called "voting rights
> advocate." Hearne, whose resume shows no
> connection to voting rights organizations, was
> responsible for advising the Bush-Cheney campaign
> on national litigation and election law strategy
> during the 2004 election.
>
> Hearne, with the help of Republican attorney Alex
> Vogel, concocted a story that the problem with
> the 2004 elections in Ohio was the NAACP paying
> people with crack cocaine to register voters.
> Vogel's front group, the Free Enterprise
> Coalition, even indemnified a local Republican
> operative, Mark Rubrick, to file an Ohio corrupt
> practices act suit against the NAACP, the
> AFL-CIO, ACT-Ohio and ACORN, The suit was later
> quietly withdrawn after discovery showed that the
> operatives behind it were linked to the top
> levels of the Republican Party.
>
> Ironically, the Republican Party engaged in
> racist and massive voter repression in Ohio and
> are now institutionalizing that very Jim
> Crow-style repression and selling it as an
> election reform bill.
>
> HB3 also ends the ability of the public to
> conduct meaningful audits of voting machines.
> Election protection activists recently forced the
> adoption of an auditable paper trail into the
> Ohio election process. In a state where virtually
> all ballots are cast and/or counted on electronic
> equipment, this cuts to the core of the ability
> to monitor an election's outcome. The new
> provision in HB3 will make the paper trail
> virtually meaningless.
>
> HB3 further imposes a huge jump in the cost of
> forcing a recount. In 2004, the charge was $10
> per precinct, with some 11,366 precincts in the
> state. Thus the Green and Libertarian Parties,
> which paid for it, had to pay somewhat more than
> $113,660. Now the charge will be $50 per
> precinct, jumping the charge to some $568,300.
>
> Finally, and perhaps most astonishingly, HB3
> eliminates the state statutes that have allowed
> citizens to challenge the outcome of federal
> elections within the state. After the 2004
> election, election protection advocates filed a
> challenge to Bush's victory. Their attorneys were
> attacked with an official attempt to levy
> sanctions, and then were thwarted from an
> effective suit when GOP Secretary of State J.
> Kenneth Blackwell locked up the state's voter
> records.
>
> But HB3 would now entirely eliminate any
> possibility of a state-based legal challenge. The
> only alleged recourse for those wishing to
> officially question the vote count in a
> presidential, US Senate or US Congressional race
> in Ohio would be at the United States Congress.
> There is now no recourse whatsoever on the state
> level.
>
> Despite grassroots protests and bitter opposition
> from Common Cause, the League of Women Voters and
> other pro-democracy groups, HB3 passed with only
> one Republican vote against it (all Ohio
> Democratic Senators and Representatives voted
> against).
>
> So the Ohio GOP has taken another giant step
> toward ending the possibility of any other party
> ever taking power in the Buckeye State. When
> combined with new campaign finance laws that
> allow huge chunks of private and corporate money
> to flow virtually unregulated into GOP coffers,
> HB3 may have all but ended free elections in
> Ohio---at least until election protection forces
> can somehow reverse the trend. .
>
> Since the Civil War, only one presidential
> candidate---John F. Kennedy in 1960---has won the
> White House without carrying Ohio. This and the
> other repressive legislation passed by the Ohio
> GOP will make it virtually impossible for anyone
> but a Republican to carry the Buckeye State in
> future statewide and federal elections.
>
> Bills like HB3 are also being lined up to flow
> through Republican-controlled legislatures
> throughout the US, including a very similar one
> in Georgia. "This comes straight from Karl Rove,"
> says Cliff Arnebeck, one of Ohio's leading
> election protection attorneys. "This legislation
> originates with a demand that one-party rule by
> made permanent throughout the United States."
>
> With today's passage of Ohio HB3, along with the
> seating of Justice Alito, the GOP grip on the
> American throat has very significantly tightened.
>
>
>
> Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman are co-authors
> of "How the GOP Stole America's 2004 Election and
> Is Rigging 2008". They are co-editors, with Steve
> Rosenfeld, of "What Happened in Ohio?"
> forthcoming from the New Press.
>
> © 2006 The Free Press
>
> ###
>
>
>
>
>
>