THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH (Ohio): "VOTER ROLLS IN OHIO ARE BLOATED"

THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH (Ohio): "VOTER ROLLS IN OHIO ARE BLOATED"



Columbus, Ohio • Nov 09, 2012 • 32° Light Fog
THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH

Dispatch.com


INACTIVE REGISTRATIONS
Voter rolls in Ohio are bloated



"More than one out of every five registered Ohio voters is probably
ineligible to vote.

In two counties, the number of registered voters actually exceeds the
voting-age population:....."

On Fri, 9 Nov 2012 01:15:11 -0800 (PST), "PJ O'D"
wrote:

THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH (Ohio): "VOTER ROLLS IN OHIO ARE BLOATED"

Columbus, Ohio • Nov 09, 2012 • 32° Light Fog
THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH

Dispatch.com

INACTIVE REGISTRATIONS
Voter rolls in Ohio are bloated

"More than one out of every five registered Ohio voters is probably
ineligible to vote.

In two counties, the number of registered voters actually exceeds the
voting-age population:....."

"Husted Continues to Push The Big Lie: Voter Fraud
By Leonidas On September 17, 2012

Secretary of State John Husted – with help from the Columbus Dispatch
— continues to repeat the Big Lie in this election, that voter fraud
is an issue in Ohio. On Sunday, Husted and the Dispatch continued to
try to stir the pot on election fraud. Fortunately, other media
outlets in Ohio effectively called them out on this BS.

Regular Plunderbund readers know why this is important. The
Republicans this election cycle have engaged in a national effort to
restrict the ability of people to vote through voter ID laws and other
restrictions. In Ohio – which already has a voter ID law – the
efforts have focused on restricting early voting.

Sunday, the Dispatch ran a front page article titled, “Voter rolls in
Ohio are bloated, experts say.” The article cites as evidence that
Ohio’s voter rolls contain about 1.6 million inactive voters. Inactive
voters are generally people who have not voted in recent elections or
have moved.

So is this a big deal? No.

The primary reason that the voting rolls contain lots of inactive
voters is simple: people move. Hard to believe, but when they move,
people commonly don’t tell their OLD Board of Elections that they have
moved to a new county. This is especially true of students.

Interestingly, despite the headline claiming that “experts” say the
voting lists are “bloated” – no actual non-partisan expert is quoted
in the article. Certainly nobody is quoted in the article to justify
the loaded term, “bloated.”

Frankly, we are surprised that the number of inactive voters is so
low. More importantly, we aren’t sure why this is a big deal – the
only problem we can see is that a precinct list may take a couple more
pages to print out.

John Husted – fresh off his loss on early voting in Federal Court –
jumps into the fray. He says, “Common sense says that the odds of
voter fraud increase the longer these ineligible voters are allowed to
populate our rolls.” Husted seems, as the Dispatch suggests, to be
taking his talking points from a right wing group called Judicial
Watch, which has filed lawsuits in a number of states relating to
inactive voters on the voting lists. So far, none of these lawsuits
have been successful.

Husted is wrong and his efforts to suggest that voter fraud is a
problem in Ohio is reckless.

A trial lawyer we know said over breakfast, “whenever someone refers
to ‘common sense’ to support a claim, that means he has no evidence.”

We decided to see what a real expert on election law says about the
evidence. Daniel P. Tokaji, a law professor at Ohio State’s Moritz
College of Law, is the most knowledgeable person we know about
election law. Last year, he wrote:

I’ve closely studied Ohio’s election system for the past eight years,
and am not aware of a single proven incident of in-person voter
impersonation fraud – that is, a voter going to the polls pretending
to be someone he or she is not. If there are any incidents of
in-person voter impersonation in Ohio, they are extremely rare. Yet
that is the only type of fraud that a government-issued photo ID
requirement can even hope to address. . . ."

http://www.plunderbund.com/2012/09/1...e-voter-fraud/