It Starts...

[Capstone]

...early in-person voting in Ohio, that is.

Something else may have started, too: a possible harbinger of the sort of dirty tactics we've seen in past elections in this state ('00 and '04 to name a couple). My wife (a substitute teacher) and I (a professional driver) took time off on Tuesday and headed to our county's Board of Elections Office in order to vote. When we got there, though, we were politely told that the regular ballots had been delayed due to the recent wording changes ordered by the Court WRT Issue 2, that we'd have to cast our votes via something called a "proof ballot" , and that this method of voting would include a process called "remaking" (in which the proof would later be transferred to a regular ballot in the presence of at least one Republican and one Democrat). Needless to say, we decided to leave and live to vote another day, preferably after the regular ballots have made it there safely.

On the bright side, my call to John Husted's office was readily answered and the issue was resolved in just a few hours, though I can't help but wonder how many people were (or will be) persuaded statewide to cast their votes by some means other than the regular ballot ...and whether the added complications will effect the outcome of the election in Ohio...

 

[Capstone]

Well, I'm happy to report: we made it back to the Perry County BoE on Friday and voted along the (Democrat) party line all the way down our respective tickets.

Here's to the hope that our efforts have bolstered the quest to overcome the onslaught on fairness that's been shamelessly carried out by Ohio's Republican leaders.

Time will tell...

 

[Old Rocks]

Thank you for voting in spite of the Ohio GOP. Amazing to see the GOP attempting to abridge the most basic right in this nation.

 

[Capstone]

Thank you for voting in spite of the Ohio GOP. Amazing to see the GOP attempting to abridge the most basic right in this nation.

Thank you, Old Rocks, for seeing the GOP's larger effort for what it is.

Ironic, that the so-called 'party of limited government' and of 'fiscal responsibility' has been spending millions of the tax-payers' dollars in various states in order to limit access to the peoples' capacity to throw their asses out of office.

Yes, it really is amazing; expected, but amazing in its blatancy nonetheless.

Jay Bookman has summed it up nicely here

[...] There can be no justification for such efforts, and the Ohio example gives the larger GOP game away. They are engaged in a shamelessly partisan effort to deny the ballot to eligible, legitimate voters, and if you have to stoop to tactics like that to win, in a sense you have already lost.

Amen to that...

 

[007]

Well, I'm happy to report: we made it back to the Perry County BoE on Friday and voted along the (Democrat) party line all the way down our respective tickets.

Well, I'm happy to report: you're a fucking idiot.

 

[Dick Tuck]

Good news, Capstone. It shows that the right wing voter suppression is getting its ass kicked by the GOTV ground game. Fucking mittens thinks his Madison Avenue approach can win. What a moron.

 

[007]

Good news, Capstone. It shows that the right wing voter suppression is getting its ass kicked by the GOTV ground game. Fucking mittens thinks his Madison Avenue approach can win. What a moron.

Right wing voter suppression? Please provide a link to this IDIOT claim... fucking scab.

Dick Suck, up to spewing his CHICKEN SHIT again...

 

[Dick Tuck]

Good news, Capstone. It shows that the right wing voter suppression is getting its ass kicked by the GOTV ground game. Fucking mittens thinks his Madison Avenue approach can win. What a moron.

Right wing voter suppression? Please provide a link to this IDIOT claim... fucking scab.

Dick Suck, up to spewing his CHICKEN SHIT again...

I'll give you a dozen links when you choose to stop sucking the fuck juice from Romney's asshole.

 

[daveman]

High court tells Ballot Board to rewrite Issue 2 | The Columbus Dispatch

It was a liberal group that filed suit regarding Issue 2. They're to blame for the use of proof ballots.

 

[daveman]

Good news, Capstone. It shows that the right wing voter suppression is getting its ass kicked by the GOTV ground game. Fucking mittens thinks his Madison Avenue approach can win. What a moron.

Right wing voter suppression? Please provide a link to this IDIOT claim... fucking scab.

Dick Suck, up to spewing his CHICKEN SHIT again...

I'll give you a dozen links when you choose to stop sucking the fuck juice from Romney's asshole.

You won't give any links at all. Your mindless obscenities are just a smokescreen.

 

[California Girl]

I have also voted. Romey/Ryan.

 

[RosieS]

We voted by mail in the primary and the general election. Straight Dem. since we are overtly partisan. Also retained Supreme Court Judges and voted down blatent Fl. Constitutional Amendments.

One of those asked for only a majority vote to overturn Florida Supreme Court decisions rather than 2/3 rds of the Legislature.

Another one deceptively called "Religious Freedom" would authorize public school funds for use in private (read Christian) schools. Voucherizing property tax dollars.

Must be that they are all fed up with homeschooling all those darling children, huh.

Regards from Rosie

 

[Luddly Neddite]

We have also voted.

I read that the Rs will have been successful in stopping as many 10 million people from exercising their Constitutional right to vote. That could be enough to give Robme and LyinRyan the "win".

But, they can't stop us all.

 

[Capstone]

High court tells Ballot Board to rewrite Issue 2 | The Columbus Dispatch

It was a liberal group that filed suit regarding Issue 2. They're to blame for the use of proof ballots.

From your own linked article:

[...] The court said the ballot language, written by staff members for Secretary of State Jon Husted, says nothing about who will select members of the new citizens commission that would draw districts, which “leaves voters to speculate.” The ruling goes on to say the language is “similarly deficient because it does not state what criteria the commission will use in drawing (districts).”

[...] Matt Cain, spokesman for Voters First, said the court “pointed out exactly what we’ve been saying — that Jon Husted and the Ballot Board wrote manipulative language to change the outcome of an election.” He said Voters First will submit its proposed language when the board meets again to redraft the language. [emphasis added]

First of all, even in the eyes of a Republican-dominated high court, "the liberal group" won, Daveman. That means the Husted gang's obvious attempt to improperly manipulate the language is directly responsible for any delay in getting the proper language on the ballot.

Secondly, the person I spoke with from Husted's office on that Tuesday morning agreed that the regular ballots should have been ready and available on time IN SPITE of the wording changes (and following her efforts, they were made available to Perry County voters later that same day).

Lastly, the delay that forced some to make two trips instead of one was just one link in a chain of attempts to suppress the vote in Ohio. From the "uniform set times" (which conveniently effect many more Democrats than Republicans), to the litigation surrounding the final three days of early in-person voting, the gist of the overall effort has become crystal clear: partisan disenfranchisement on as large a scale as possible.

 

[decker]

We have also voted.

I read that the Rs will have been successful in stopping as many 10 million people from exercising their Constitutional right to vote. That could be enough to give Robme and LyinRyan the "win".

But, they can't stop us all.

well either way the state will be close run thing between romney and obama.

 

[Capstone]

The corruption keeps rollin':

[...] As of last year, a private equity firm called HIG Capital is heavily invested in Hart. Who controls HIG Capital? Why, many of the owners - including the company's founder - all come from Bain Capital. Isn't that convenient how they invested right before their former boss got the Republican nomination for President?

H.I.G. Capital employees have given $338,000 to Mitt Romney's campaign. That amounts to over $1500 per employee. Bain Capital, Mitt's former company, by comparison, only gave him $268,000. H.I.G. is the 11th largest donor to the Romney Campaign. Clearly they are working really hard for their man. It appears that they will work even harder on election night. Although not boisterously promising to deliver states where their machines are to Romney as Wally O'Dell of Diebold did for Bush in 2004, they can alter hundreds of thousands of votes and swing the vote in the crucial swing state of Ohio.

Will Mitt's cronies steal our democracy the way they stole our jobs? Time will tell, but they have certainly positioned themselves to do so if they choose.

Democracy is for sale in America, ladies and gentlemen. But it's not cheap - only cheapened.

And more relevant to this thread:

[...] This November, much of the Ohio electorate will cast its ballots on machines again owned by close cronies of the Republican presidential candidate. In Cincinnati and elsewhere around the state, the e-voting apparati are owned by Hart Intercivic. Hart's machines are infamous for mechanical failures, "glitches," counting errors and other timely problems now thoroughly identified with the way Republicans steal elections. As in 2004, Ohio's governor is now a Republican. This time it's the very right-wing John Kasich, himself a multi-millionaire courtesy of a stint at Lehman Brothers selling state bonds, and the largesse of Rupert Murdoch, on whose Fox Network Kasich served as a late night bloviator. Murdoch wrote Kasich a game-changing $1 million check just prior to his winning the statehouse, an electoral victory shrouded in electronic intrigue. The exit polls in that election indicated that his opponent, incumbent Democrat Ted Strickland, had actually won the popular vote.

Ohio's very Republican Secretary of State is John Husted, currently suing in the US Supreme Court to prevent the public from voting on the weekend prior to election day. As did Blackwell and Governor Robert Taft in 2004, Husted and Kasich will control Ohio's electronic vote count on election night free of meaningful public checks or balances

Hart Intercivic, on whose machines the key votes will be cast in Hamilton County, which includes Cincinnati, was taken over last year by H.I.G. Capital. Prominent partners and directors on the H.I.G. board hail from Bain Company or Bain Capital, both connected to Mitt Romney. H.I.G. employees have contributed at least $338,000 to Romney's campaign. H.I.G. Directors John P. Bolduk and Douglas Berman are major Romney fundraisers, as is former Bain and H.I.G. manager Brian Shortsleeve.

US courts have consistently ruled that the software in electronic voting machines is proprietary to the manufacturer, even though individual election boards may own the actual machines. Thus there will be no vote count transparency on election night in Ohio. The tally will be conducted by Hart Intercivic and controlled by Husted and Kasich, with no public recourse or accountability. As federal testimony from the deceased Michael Connell made clear in 2008, electronically flipping an election is relatively cheap and easy to do, especially if you or your compatriots programmed the machines.

So as the corporate media swarm through Ohio, reporting breathlessly from "ground zero" in Cincinnati, don't hold your own breath waiting for them to also clarify that the voting machines in what may once again be America's decisive swing state are owned, programmed and tabulated by some of the Romney campaign's closest associates.

I remember hearing on local talk radio that voting machines would be used for early voting in some locations (the old Northland Mall in Columbus to name but one -- and anyone familiar with the demographics of that area wouldn't be the least bit surprised).

Personally, I can't say what's more troubling; the blatancy of the corruption from the far right (we've seen it on display in Ohio for more than decade now); or the do-nothing-about-it attitude that has seemingly permeated the other side of the aisle.

 

[Capstone]

The plot thickens...

Tagg Romney made headlines yesterday after he said in an interview that he wanted to punch Barack Obama during the presidential debate on Monday night. Mitt Romney's 42-year-old son, who has already faced criticism for his dealings with Allen Stanford who was convicted of milking investors out of $8 Billion in a Ponzi scheme, may have much bigger questions to answer after shocking allegations brought forth by PolitcolNews.com.

The website claims that Romney owns an interest in Hart Intercivic voting machines which will be used to calculate votes in Hamilton County. If true, this raises serious questions as there were a number of red flags during the 2004 campaign that saw George Bush defeat John Kerry. Some politicos still call into question the 2004 election for strange calculations that Diebold voting machines, who had openly supported Bush, came up with that November.

[SARCASM]Yeah, no potential conflict of interest there.[/SARCASM]

As the crusty ol' maxim goes, "Actions speak louder than words.", and what the GOP's actions have been screaming this election season is a clear understanding that they can't win the election in November; they can only steal it.