Bloodless Coup

Democracy Deserves Better than Republican Challenge in Ohio

Unlike many people, my tolerance for a significant level of nonsense, finger pointing and strategizing around election time is pretty high. I've even upped my expectations. I see it like psyching yourself up to go watch something like, oh, Day After Tomorrow; you have to adjust your expectations for how awful it could be in order not to run screaming and gagging from the theater. This year, I know both sides will cry dirty tricks. I've heard from my mom in Florida that the Democrats are trying to steal the vote in Florida. (Really she said it.) And I let it go, especially after the last political interaction she and I had.

Today, via Eschaton, I read an article about 976 challenges to voter registrations made by Republicans in Ohio that the local election Board voted unanimously to dismiss. It seems that for no apparent (or, no good, justifiable... - we could guess the apparent) reason, these 976 people (out of some original 35,000 according to the Beacon Journal) had their registrations challenged. The manner of the challenge was a mailing - and the implication was that it was certified, as there seems to have been a mechanism of refusal by the recipients - from the GOP. If the recipient refused or was unavailable to accept the mailing, it was returned, and the voter was put on the challenged list. It seems (again, the implication of the article) the original list was made up of people who had changed addresses, and then the GOP mailer went out, "[b]ut returning the Republican literature landed [the recipient] on the "challenged'' list."

People who move need to register their new address. A freshly registered "Mary Poppins" who handed in her forms with "D. Duck" "M. Mouse" and "W. Coyote" should be challenged. There is a legitimate representation issue, and this is important to note. However, challenging a vote simply because a person refused to sign for what looked to be "Republican literature" is outrageous. Who accepts a certified letter from a political party they don't belong to? Can we really believe that the originators of this plan didn't have that in mind when they conceived it? Those who hatched and executed this scheme to challenge legitimate voters in order to do nothing more than undermine the free and fair electoral process should be ashamed, and investigated by the appropriate body (which seems to be Justice, which has been contacted by the election board). I can understand parties "working their angle." This, however, is absolutely reprehensible.

It it important to note, that in the unanimous vote to throw out the challenges, the leadership to make the decision came from Republicans. "After hearing some of the protests, the board voted unanimously to dismiss all 976 challenges. The move, ironically, came from Republican board member Joseph Hutchinson and was seconded by Republican Alex Arshinkoff after they determined that the four local Republicans who made the challenges had no evidence to back up their claims." Standing up to this kind of thing within party ranks should happen more often, or we risk forgetting that our primary efforts as citizens should be support of our system of democratic representation. You can have winners and losers in any kind of political system. Democracy in the the United States deserves better than this kind of action.