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Editorial: Worrisome vote in Ohio
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More from OpinionYou may have thought Election Day was Nov. 4 but it's Election Day — or rather days — now in Ohio, from Tuesday to today.
During that window, Ohioans can simultaneously register and vote with no residency requirement and only minimal ID requirements. And they need not cite a reason for needing to vote early or to obtain an absentee ballot.
This is a worrisome precedent and especially in Ohio. More than 30 states allow early in-person voting without requiring a reason. This has the potential to detract from the great national rite of Election Day itself and, with an early start to voting, distort the shape of the presidential campaigns. Like the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary, it's an incentive to campaign there at the expense of other states.
This is especially true in Ohio, which, with the shift of one county, gave the 2004 election to President Bush. It's not too much of a stretch to say that if Barack Obama wins Ohio and its 20 electoral votes, he wins the election; if he loses, he has a lot of ground to make up elsewhere.
Polls show the candidates in a statistical dead heat. The results with a week of early voting are predictable. Millions are being spent on TV, radio and print ads, rallies, phone banks and automated calls. News accounts say advocacy groups have been hauling vanloads of homeless to local boards of elections and Obama volunteers have been working on an early student vote.
This would seem to favor the Democrats. Republicans think so but they have yet to stop it in the courts.
Local election officials justify the early voting window as reducing lines on Election Day. But lax voting requirements invite fraud. For all the talk of online or computerized voting and virtually automatic registration, nothing has proved more foolproof and accepted than showing up at a designated polling place on the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November, identifying oneself to election officials and voting on a ballot that leaves a paper record.
Posted by laurarmc on October 6, 2008 at 7:18 a.m. (Suggest removal)
The reason early and absentee voting has become prevalent is that problems with the election day voting process which plagued 2000 and 2004 have not been addressed.
Lines, yes. Mostly in precincts that lean democratic. Lines that can be hours long.
Also machines that can easily be hacked, and a court case in Ohio right now is examining probable hacking that occurred in 2004.
And while the editorial worries over fraud, this has not emerged as one of our election problems.
Posted by Scapegoat on October 6, 2008 at 7:29 a.m. (Suggest removal)
Dimocrats created the original problems, they blame everyone else for their incompetence and now hold fraud laden elections to correct their own mistakes. hmmmm, sounds very much like the mortgage meltdown. Incompetence breeds incompetence breeds fraud.
Posted by USA_ROCKS on October 6, 2008 at 9:11 a.m. (Suggest removal)
How is it that all the voting descrepancies are always perpetrated be the left? Always causing our problems, never responsible for them.
Posted by ebrockway on October 6, 2008 at 10:30 a.m. (Suggest removal)
Yeah the homeless vote will be fun to unravel. Offer them a sandwich and a free ride anyplace they want to go, they'll vote for your guy as many times as they can.
Now to just find a way to get the Incarcerated Citizen vote.
Posted by NowHearThis on October 6, 2008 at 11:07 a.m. (Suggest removal)
Leftist-liberal Democrats; the party of voter registration and election fraud. How many illegal aliens has a Democrat registered today? Hundreds, maybe thousands!
Posted by mikeb6804 on October 6, 2008 at 9:10 p.m. (Suggest removal)
Wait till jw gets old enough to vote! Too bad, he'll never get smart enough....
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