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Angry mob of voters turns on Ohio GOP thugs

UPDATE - the party party has a related piece. (RIGHT click and “save link as” or follow the first link to stream.)

BlogWood readers are aware of the GOP challenges to registered voters in Ohio and Florida.

Early details indicated that Repugs were mailing literature to voters in minority precincts and compiling lists of returned mail in order to challenge those voters who were unable to get mail at their registered address. According to the GOP, a returned letter is proof that fraud is taking place.

Now, we learn that in Ohio, and quite possibly elsewhere, the letters the GOP sent were registered mail - the kind you have to accept and sign for. So, if anyone willfully refused a registered letter from the GOP, or if anyone was not home and didn’t bother to trek down to the post office to retrieve said letter, they were put on a challenge list.

In Ohio, the state party had local representatives swear out affidavits to the effect that the voters on the challenge list were not eligible to vote. Thankfully, challenged voters showed up at a recent hearing and raised hell, and this particular strategy may just land some Rethugs in jail where they belong.

When Catherine Herold received mail from the Ohio Republican Party earlier this year, she refused it.

The longtime Barberton Democrat wanted no part of the mailing and figured that by refusing it, the GOP would have to pay the return postage.

What she didn't count on was the returned mail being used to challenge the validity of her voter registration.

Herold,who is assistant to the senior vice president and provost at the University of Akron,was one of 976 Summit County voters whose registrations were challenged last week by local Republicans on behalf of the state party.

She went to the Board of Elections on Thursday morning to defend her right to vote and found herself among an angry mob -- people who had to take time off work to defend their right to vote.

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.

The group whose right to vote was at stake Thursday was diverse -- old and young, black and white, professional, blue collar, veterans, immigrants, and students -- and many were assisted by volunteer attorneys for the Ohio Voter Protection Coalition.

No further challenge

In addition to dismissing the challenges, the elections board ordered that none of those voters whose registrations were called into question could be challenged again at the polls.

The board was giving each a letter to present at the polls should their registrations be challenged there.

``I'm 62 years old, I've been voting for 40 years.... I think it's appalling. It's scare tactics,'' Herold said after her hearing.

Herold said she moved in January, but changed her address with the board of elections and has voted twice since then -- in the March primary and in the August special election.

But returning the Republican literature landed her on the ``challenged'' list.

Many of the challenged voters -- initially 35,000 statewide -- were targeted because cards sent to them were returned to local boards of election as undeliverable.

Herold was angry when she was notified that her right to vote was being challenged.

``I felt that my voracity was being challenged, that my honor was being challenged. They basically were saying that I lied about where I lived. I resented that.''

The challengers, all older longtime Republicans -- Barbara Miller, Howard Calhoun, Madge Doerler and Louis Wray -- were subpoenaed by the elections board and were present at the hearings. Akron attorney Jack Morrison, a Republican, volunteered to represent the four.

Democratic board member Russ Pry suggested that the four could be subject to criminal prosecution for essentially making false claims on the challenge forms. The form states that making a false claim is subject to prosecution as a fifth-degree felony.

On Morrison's advice, Miller then refused to take part in any hearings after Herold's, invoking her Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination.

Wray filed a challenge against 25-year-old Barbara Jean DeWilde of Stow, but testified that he had no personal knowledge that DeWilde didn't live at her Stow address, other than information he received from Summit County Republican Party headquarters.

DeWilde called the challenge ``a mockery of America's free election process.''

Immigrant responds

Twinsburg resident Errol Horam's registration was challenged twice.

An immigrant from Jamaica, Horam, 55, said he came to the United States because ``it is the greatest democracy on the face of the earth.''

``I am disappointed in the Republican Party,'' Horam said as he left the hearing room.

``I'm really disappointed that they are trampling on people's rights and democracy and depriving them of their right to vote.''

The angry voters had the Republicans on the defensive.

``Why'd you do it?'' one challenged voter shouted out at Calhoun. ``Who the hell are you?'' the man asked.

``What the hell do you care?'' replied Calhoun, an attorney.
......

Bennett on Thursday defended the GOP's challenge of voter registrations, saying that efforts by Democrats that registered the likes of Mary Poppins and Dick Tracy to vote warranted it. However, he said GOP attorneys -- other than just Morrison -- should have been at the hearing to represent the four party members who signed the challenges.

``I don't know what happened. I'm still looking into that,'' he said.
......

Pry and elections board member Wayne Jones said after the hearing that they intend to contact the U.S. Justice Department to investigate the challenges.

``You don't mess with somebody's right to vote,'' Jones said. He believes the effort to challenge legitimate voters is proof that Republicans are running scared in Ohio.
......

``There was no evidence,'' Hutchinson said of the challenges.

Yeah, like someone’s gonna show up on election day and claim to be Dick Tracy?

Rethugs are panicking, and for good reason. If minority votes are counted, Kerry will easily win. Florida’s looking good, too, with Kerry holding a commanding lead in the Miami area that may be too much for Bush to overcome in the rest of the state.

The Herald poll shows Sen. John Kerry winning Miami-Dade County with 54.3 percent of the vote to 41.5 for Bush. Four percent are undecided.

Splitting those undecided voters down the middle, Kerry goes to 56 percent, Bush to 43 and Ralph Nader will end up with less than 1 percent.

If Kerry wins Miami-Dade County 56 to 43, then the likelihood of him winning Florida is very high. Here's why:

In 2000, Al Gore beat Bush by almost 40,000 votes in Miami-Dade County.

BIG NUMBERS

According to the Herald poll, done by Zogby International, Kerry is positioned to win Miami-Dade by anywhere from 90,000 to 100,000 votes.

A margin that large in Florida's most populous county would be hard for Bush to make up across the rest of the state.

Now I realize if the poll's margin of error were to fall in the president's favor, Kerry would beat Bush, 53 to 46 percent (instead of 56-43). But even then, because of new voters, Kerry would still walk away with 50,000 more votes than Bush.