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County Election Boards Scandal in Columbus
Thursday, August 16th, 2012
Robert Wechsler
Update: August 18, 2012 (see below)
There is a longstanding pattern of scandals in the cities that the Council on Governmental Ethics Laws (COGEL) chooses for its annual meeting. COGEL was in Chicago when Rod Blagojevich was arrested, and in New Orleans when Rep. Jefferson was re-elected despite the bribery charges against him (they held). COGEL stayed in the D.C. hotel where then mayor Marion Barry had just been arrested.
This year COGEL is meeting in Columbus, OH, in early December. So the scandal is a few months early. This time, it's not a case of a bad apple. Many individuals are involved. In fact, the whole system is involved. And the system is rotten.
The individuals involved are those who sit on county election boards, and the individual who has the power to make decisions for election boards if the evenly divided (by major party) members split their votes. The decision that is causing problems is whether to hold extended and weekend hours for early voting. One would think the hours would be the same across the state (and that is how the problem was solved yesterday, in response to articles and editorials criticizing how the matter was being handled). But each county was allowed to decide for itself.
That might be acceptable if each county had an independent election board. The election boards are bipartisan, but they are far from nonpartisan, not to mention independent. In fact, the major party county committees recommend names to the secretary of state. And the vote breaker of these four-member boards is a highly political individual who belongs to a major party, the secretary of state himself. The current secretary of state is a former speaker of the Ohio house and state senator. He was the Ohio co-chair for the McCain campaign.
The result of this highly politicized election system was that all Democrats voted together and all Republicans voted together. But it wasn't just that one party favored extended voting hours and the other opposed them. Democrats consistently favored extended hours, but Republicans only favored them in relatively wealthy counties that lean toward Romney and other Republicans. In the urban counties, Republicans voted against extended hours, putting the final votes in the hands of the secretary of state, who sided with party.
After severe local and nationwide criticism, the secretary of state, instead of letting the problem be dealt with by an independent body, made a statewide decision himself: no extended hours and no weekend early voting. How can anyone believe that this decision was not intended to help his presidential candidate and others in his party?
According to an article today in the Columbus Dispatch, in Franklin County, where Columbus sits, "blacks disproportionately cast in-person early votes in 2008." This means that more blacks than whites in Columbus and across the state will be effectively disenfranchised by the secretary of state's decision, as they would have been by the system in existence, before the secretary of state overrode it. And since blacks are considered likely to vote disproportionately for Obama, the decision means fewer votes for Obama in an important state.
As I wrote in a blog post four years ago, when there were other problems in Ohio and other states, elections have to be taken out of the hands of local parties and politicians. To contaminate the election system with conflicts of interest and scandals such as this, to tempt so many individuals into acting against the interest of their community, to exclude the most neutral people from involvement in elections, is as damaging as anything could be to the public's faith in our democratic system.
We need either a national system or local/state systems where election and redistricting boards are made as independent from politics and parties as possible.
Update: August 18, 2012
According to an article on Buzzfeed yesterday, which includes two letters from the Ohio secretary of state to the Montgomery County (Dayton) elections board, the secretary of state has taken the position that a county elections board member cannot even vote in protest against the secretary of state's directive to shorten the extended hours for early voting. When the two Democratic election board members voted, knowing that their votes would only be in protest, the secretary of state began the process to remove them for office, effectively for insubordination (I don't feel he has any legal basis for removal).
This raises the question whether it is acceptable for a local official to vote in protest when a state official or body has acted in a way that he feels does damage to the people in his community. It is certainly valuable to send a message to the public at large as well as the state elections system that they disagree strongly with the secretary of state's directive. This could be done in the form of a vote or in the form of an open letter. But it should be done not as a partisan act, but rather as an act that reflects the interests of the community. Therefore, it would be best to hold a public hearing first, and base the protest on what is said at the hearing. Turning the protest into what could appear to be a partisan feud is itself damaging to the community, making it look as if the county elections board is simply a partisan war zone.
The election board members' hasty protest and the secretary of state's unnecessary use of his power in a partisan attempt to stifle county officials' speech add to the case against having any partisan individuals involved in the election system at any level. The secretary of state feels that acting partisan deserves removal of county officials. I feel that acting partisan deserves removal of the secretary of state, and other partisan individuals, from the election system.
Robert Wechsler
Director of Research-Retired, City Ethics
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There is a longstanding pattern of scandals in the cities that the Council on Governmental Ethics Laws (COGEL) chooses for its annual meeting. COGEL was in Chicago when Rod Blagojevich was arrested, and in New Orleans when Rep. Jefferson was re-elected despite the bribery charges against him (they held). COGEL stayed in the D.C. hotel where then mayor Marion Barry had just been arrested.
This year COGEL is meeting in Columbus, OH, in early December. So the scandal is a few months early. This time, it's not a case of a bad apple. Many individuals are involved. In fact, the whole system is involved. And the system is rotten.
The individuals involved are those who sit on county election boards, and the individual who has the power to make decisions for election boards if the evenly divided (by major party) members split their votes. The decision that is causing problems is whether to hold extended and weekend hours for early voting. One would think the hours would be the same across the state (and that is how the problem was solved yesterday, in response to articles and editorials criticizing how the matter was being handled). But each county was allowed to decide for itself.
That might be acceptable if each county had an independent election board. The election boards are bipartisan, but they are far from nonpartisan, not to mention independent. In fact, the major party county committees recommend names to the secretary of state. And the vote breaker of these four-member boards is a highly political individual who belongs to a major party, the secretary of state himself. The current secretary of state is a former speaker of the Ohio house and state senator. He was the Ohio co-chair for the McCain campaign.
The result of this highly politicized election system was that all Democrats voted together and all Republicans voted together. But it wasn't just that one party favored extended voting hours and the other opposed them. Democrats consistently favored extended hours, but Republicans only favored them in relatively wealthy counties that lean toward Romney and other Republicans. In the urban counties, Republicans voted against extended hours, putting the final votes in the hands of the secretary of state, who sided with party.
After severe local and nationwide criticism, the secretary of state, instead of letting the problem be dealt with by an independent body, made a statewide decision himself: no extended hours and no weekend early voting. How can anyone believe that this decision was not intended to help his presidential candidate and others in his party?
According to an article today in the Columbus Dispatch, in Franklin County, where Columbus sits, "blacks disproportionately cast in-person early votes in 2008." This means that more blacks than whites in Columbus and across the state will be effectively disenfranchised by the secretary of state's decision, as they would have been by the system in existence, before the secretary of state overrode it. And since blacks are considered likely to vote disproportionately for Obama, the decision means fewer votes for Obama in an important state.
As I wrote in a blog post four years ago, when there were other problems in Ohio and other states, elections have to be taken out of the hands of local parties and politicians. To contaminate the election system with conflicts of interest and scandals such as this, to tempt so many individuals into acting against the interest of their community, to exclude the most neutral people from involvement in elections, is as damaging as anything could be to the public's faith in our democratic system.
We need either a national system or local/state systems where election and redistricting boards are made as independent from politics and parties as possible.
Update: August 18, 2012
According to an article on Buzzfeed yesterday, which includes two letters from the Ohio secretary of state to the Montgomery County (Dayton) elections board, the secretary of state has taken the position that a county elections board member cannot even vote in protest against the secretary of state's directive to shorten the extended hours for early voting. When the two Democratic election board members voted, knowing that their votes would only be in protest, the secretary of state began the process to remove them for office, effectively for insubordination (I don't feel he has any legal basis for removal).
This raises the question whether it is acceptable for a local official to vote in protest when a state official or body has acted in a way that he feels does damage to the people in his community. It is certainly valuable to send a message to the public at large as well as the state elections system that they disagree strongly with the secretary of state's directive. This could be done in the form of a vote or in the form of an open letter. But it should be done not as a partisan act, but rather as an act that reflects the interests of the community. Therefore, it would be best to hold a public hearing first, and base the protest on what is said at the hearing. Turning the protest into what could appear to be a partisan feud is itself damaging to the community, making it look as if the county elections board is simply a partisan war zone.
The election board members' hasty protest and the secretary of state's unnecessary use of his power in a partisan attempt to stifle county officials' speech add to the case against having any partisan individuals involved in the election system at any level. The secretary of state feels that acting partisan deserves removal of county officials. I feel that acting partisan deserves removal of the secretary of state, and other partisan individuals, from the election system.
Robert Wechsler
Director of Research-Retired, City Ethics
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