The more publicized parts of Ohio HB3 will henceforth require voter ID and we all know what that means. But what has not received publicity - and for this I fault the Ohio state reps - is HUGE:
1. The cost of ordering a recount will quintuple - going from $10 to $50 PER PRECINCT - making it virtually unaffordable
2. Electronic machines will be exempted from recounts by random sampling, even in close, disputed elections. In the 2005 election, 41 additional Ohio counties (of 88) were switched to Diebold touchscreen machine
Marji Mendelsohn and Janice Weiss, co-founders, WeUnite.org
From the Daily Digest of Democracy for Cincinnati:
It is highly likely the so-called "election reform" bill, HB 3, will be addressed by a state House and Senate conference this week AND voted in both
houses. There may not be any opportunity for public testimony. It would be a good week to contact you state legislators. Congressweb appears to be an
easy way to do that. http://congressweb.com/
While Diebold is not explicitly addressed in the legislation, you might express your concern about electronic voting and your support to keep the
machine audit in the bill. The ID requirement is definitely something to oppose.
John Burik MEd, LPCC
Now, shocking legislation is poised to disenfranchise a vast number of Ohio voters. Our legislature recently finished work on a large piece of revised election law that we believe will disenfranchise as many as 100.000 voters.
Sub HB3 is so problematic that, even after the Senate corrected some of the worst parts of this legislation, Senator Grendell broke ranks with his Republican colleagues over the fairness of the bill. When it went back to the House, it was turned down 99 to 0 apparently because it imposed a limit on how much state bosses could collect from their employees. Sub HB3 as passed by the Senate was opposed at the hearings by:
CASE (Citizens' Alliance for Secure Elections)
OLWV (Ohio Chapter of the League of Women Voters)
CC (Common Cause)
PFAW (People for the American Way)
OCA (Ohio Citizen Action)
GCVC (Greater Cleveland Voter Coalition)
OHE (Ohio Honest Elections)
Northeast Ohio Coalition for the Homeless
NAACP
In testimony at the hearings, it was only supported by the secretary of state.
All the pieces of the election puzzle that we have seen in the past couple of years, when assembled today, show a picture where the foreground is focused mainly on incompetent and untrustworthy vendors supplying the voting machines. And in the background we see new election process rules that make voting significantly harder for isolated groups of people: the very young, the elderly, and the highly mobile. We can't blink our eyes and make this picture go away, we must create a better one.
From CASE (Citizens' Alliance for Secure Elections) see http://caseohio.org
