Obama: thank god we've got democrats in charge of the machines

Democrat's voter suppression efforts in Ohio.

[rquoter]If Ohio polling looks like Chicago, 'thank' Brunner

Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner has a reputation as the most partisan state official in Ohio. And she works hard to earn it. The Democrat's latest stunt rejected absentee ballots for thousands of Republicans.

But it's not her first rodeo. Almost as soon as Brunner was elected in 2006, she tried to remove several Republican county elections officials, including Ohio Republican Party Chairman Robert Bennett. They accused her of "storm trooper tactics" to silence critics.

Then Brunner spread an alarm that Ohio's electronic voting machines were vulnerable to tampering - a favorite claim of the paranoid left. Elections officials who participated in Brunner's study called her conclusions over-hyped "leaps in logic" and said, "The report itself could be viewed as an attack on the elections system ... (that) planted seeds in the mind of the public to mistrust those who oversee elections."

Brunner also demanded an overhaul of voting methods just before the March primaries, causing meltdowns in some precincts.

And now she's hassling Republicans who want to vote for John McCain.

Two Hamilton County voters have sued, accusing her of "the disenfranchisement of thousands of voters."

The John McCain campaign sent out more than 1 million applications for absentee ballots to Republicans. Each had a line at the top next to a box: "I am a qualified elector."

Brunner sent a memo telling county election officials to reject those applications for absentee ballots if the box was not checked. "Failure to check the box leaves both the applicant and the board of elections without verification that the applicant is a 'qualified elector'," she wrote.

But that's contrary to state law and Brunner doesn't have the authority, according to the lawsuit and an opinion from Hamilton County's Republican Prosecutor Joe Deters.

Ohio law allows voters to request an absentee ballot on the back of a grocery sack if they want to, as long as they include their name, address, date of birth, signature and either a driver's license number, last four Social Security numbers or a valid picture I.D.

There is nothing in the law about checking a box to verify a qualified voter. The voter's signature is enough, because that's what is checked to send ballots, said Hamilton County Clerk of Courts Greg Hartmann, who ran against Brunner in 2006 and is now county chairman for the McCain-Palin campaign. "It's just bald partisanship," he said. "She's trying to disqualify likely McCain voters."

The Deters opinion said "it is equally reasonable that the squares are intended simply as bullet points in an inartfully designed application."

Brunner said, "While state law does not require a check box, the McCain-Palin campaign designed its form to require that voters check a box to affirmatively state they are qualified electors."

Sen. Gary Cates, R-West Chester didn't buy it. "This is not a time to give people the appearance that voters are being suppressed," he said.

Majority Floor Leader Sen. Tom Niehaus, R-New Richmond, said, "Take the politics out and you'd think the state's chief elections official would err on the side of allowing people to vote."

State law requires local officials to notify voters if their applications are rejected. That will cause confusion, especially for elderly absentee voters, Hartmann said. It's also costly and time consuming in an election year.

Since the Florida debacle in 2000, most states have made voting easier. Ohio now lets anyone get an absentee ballot. This year, Ohio could again decide a close election - and Brunner is inviting the kind of lawsuits and suspicions that destroy public trust.

She said Hamilton County "may face other lawsuits or even challenges to the rights of those whose applications they would process" if her memo is ignored.

Brunner's web site says she "wants to ensure that Ohio elections are free, fair, open and honest; and to encourage the highest level of participation in our democracy." So why reject 1,500 voters in Hamilton County and thousands more in Ohio?

An honest mistake? With Brunner's partisan record, not likely.

Laying litigation landmines to lawyer the outcome if Democrats don't win? That fits like a tinfoil hat with her irresponsible attack on Ohio's voting machines.

Raw partisanship? Ring the jackpot bell.

"Well, I tell you what, it helps in Ohio that we've got Democrats in charge of the machines," Barack Obama said on Sept. 3.

I think he was talking about Brunner - the partisan secretary of state who is doing her best to bring Chicago elections to Ohio.[/rquoter]

 

more on the democrats and voter fraud in Ohio.

[rquoter]Buckeye State or Banana Republic?
September 26, 2008 - by Patrick Poole

Ever since Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner was elected following the near-Democratic sweep of statewide offices in November 2006, she has worked steadily to give her party the edge it needs to win the White House in 2008.

Knowing that no Republican has ever won the presidency without Ohio, and that the Buckeye State gave George W. Bush his electoral margin of victory in 2004, Brunner has turned a blind eye to massive voter fraud throughout the state by Democratic party-aligned groups like ACORN. She is also flagrantly violating Ohio election law and pulling out all the stops for her man, Barack Obama, in this battleground state.

The most critical issue might be decided within the next few days. Secretary Brunner has unilaterally opened a [1] one-week window, from September 30-October 6, for absentee voters to register and cast a ballot on the same day, with only the last four digits of th Social Security number needed to vote. No ID, no problem.

This method, of course, opens up the system to massive voter fraud. Not only that, but state law requires that voters be registered 30 days in advance of when they vote — a provision of the law that Brunner’s week-long window openly flaunts. The Ohio GOP [2] filed a lawsuit with the Ohio Supreme Court earlier this month to put a stop to the practice.

Then on Thursday, the ACLU jumped into the fray by [3] filing their own lawsuit in federal court in support of Brunner’s plan, claiming that following the 30 day advance registration law could disenfranchise voters. Thus, the Ohio Supreme Court, which could rule at any moment on the matter, may end up being overruled by an unelected federal court judge. This reverses the scenario seen in 2000, when Democrats complained that the U.S. Supreme Court intervened against the Florida Supreme Court’s attempts to erase Bush’s razor thin victory there. Democrat complaints about federal intervention in state elections appear to depend on whose ox (invariably the GOP’s) is getting gored.

Secretary Brunner’s same-day registration and voting plan only scratches the surface of the partisan warfare she has waged to ensure Ohio swings for Barack Obama and her fellow Democrats on November 4.

In a move to actively suppress GOP absentee voting, Brunner has directed county election boards to reject potentially thousands of Republican applications for absentee ballots prepared by the McCain campaign, which sent out more than 1 million applications. The applications include a check box to note that the applicant is a qualified voter. Brunner, however, has stated that if the box isn’t checked, the application must be rejected.

But as Cincinnati Enquirer columnist Peter Bronson [4] observed earlier this week, a valid application for absentee ballots can be submitted on the back of a grocery sack, as long as it includes the voter’s name, address, signature, and government-issued ID information, making the check box on the McCain-printed absentee applications superfluous. Two voters who had their applications rejected on that basis have sued to stop the secretary of state’s edict, and at least one government official has issued an opinion that Brunner is acting contrary to state law.

Jennifer Brunner’s attempts to suppress Republican absentee voters in Ohio is far from trivial, as more than [5] 300,000 voters have already applied for absentee ballots in just the four largest counties in the state. In my own home of Franklin County (Columbus), 130,000 applications — or 16 percent of registered voters countywide — have already been received. Both John McCain and Barack Obama are trying to bank these early votes in their favor, which will almost certainly be necessary to secure a win in the Buckeye State and net Ohio’s crucial 20 electoral votes.

Not all of Brunner’s partisan actions have been so overt. In fact, she has been planning ahead for legal challenges to her efforts by rigging county board of elections in favor of Democrats. Last year, the Canton Repository [6] reported comments made by Stark County Democratic Chairman Johnnie Maier that Brunner was attempting to stack local election boards with Democratic lawyers to counter the GOP:

The party chairman said Brunner wanted county Democratic parties to select attorneys to fill spots on county boards of elections — to help counter purported legal maneuvers by Republican board members to suppress the Democratic vote. The board always has two Democrats and two Republicans.

And then there is the blind eye that Brunner has been turning to flagrant election fraud through bogus voter registrations submitted by ACORN. The Cuyahoga County (Cleveland) Board of Elections is currently investigating 75,000 ACORN registrations, with multiple registrations under the same name, different birth dates, and non-existent addresses. The Cleveland Plain Dealer [7] reported just a few weeks ago:

Board employees are unsure how many of the cards are fraudulent. But the voter registration department received so many suspicious cards that it began compiling a binder with evidence. The binder grew to be an inch-thick.

Numerous reports of bogus registrations submitted by ACORN and other Democratic Party-aligned organizations have surfaced statewide, and yet no action has been taken by the secretary of state. Added to her overlooking systematic voter fraud by Democratic Party allies, Jennifer Brunner’s flagrant ignoring of election laws, suppressing Republican voters, and stacking local election boards represent an unparalleled corrupting of Ohio’s election system.

Thus, Obama’s chances to win the White House have improved dramatically by having one of his own as Ohio’s highest election official. But the price of his victory might be for Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner to turn the Buckeye State into banana republic.[/rquoter]

 

and the SoS is barring observers from the polling places:

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