GOP may seek court action if challenges of new voters continue to be rejected
Tuesday, October 26, 2004
Mark Niquette
THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH 
 The Ohio Republican Party is threatening to sue county elections boards that reject GOP voter challenges because they were not properly filed, even as Democrats are saying all the challenges should be dismissed.

Republicans filed 35,427 challenges in 65 counties last week against newly registered voters whose mail was returned as undeliverable. The GOP suspects fraud, while Democrats accuse Republicans of trying to suppress votes.

Franklin County and possibly other counties have rejected some of the challenges because the wrong precinct for the voter being challenged was listed, which the GOP has blamed on a computer glitch.

But State GOP Chairman Robert T. Bennett said last night that a name and address should be enough to determine whether the voters live where they are registered — and boards that take a different view could face court action.

He said the move is being made to prevent the challenges from having to be made at the polls on Election Day and possibly slow down voting.

Spokesman Jason Mauk said no decisions about legal action have been made, and that it’s not clear yet how many counties could be affected.

Matthew Damschroder, director of the Franklin County Board of Elections and a Republican, said the county prosecutor’s office has advised the board to reject challenges with the mistakes because that’s what is done with other filings.

The Ohio GOP has withdrawn all of the 4,219 challenges it filed in Hamilton County because of mistakes made on those forms, but Mauk said there are no plans to pull challenges elsewhere because the errors were not as bad.

David Sullivan, coordinator of Ohio Democrats’ voter-protection project, has written to the county boards, urging them to dismiss all of the challenges.

Critics note that some of the challenges have been made against people serving in the military.

"We think that this whole escapade was poorly thought out and done without any kind of sufficient proof," Sullivan said.

Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell is expected to issue a directive today to county boards with guidelines for handling the challenges.

There already have been several lawsuits filed in Ohio on election issues, and legal experts fear other lawsuits are possible if the county elections boards don’t handle the voter challenges in the same way.

The Franklin County board has scheduled hearings Thursday at its offices on 2,371 of the 4,219 challenges determined to be valid. Challenged voters will be asked to show a driver’s license, utility bill or other proof of residency.

The Delaware County Board of Elections voted yesterday to dismiss 153 of the 749 challenges filed there after staff members worked through the weekend to sort through them.

In Delaware, challenges were dismissed because voters had either already been removed from the list of eligible voters or old addresses had been d or removed, officials said.

A preliminary hearing was scheduled at 6:30 p.m. Thursday in Room G22 of the Rutherford B. Hayes Building in Delaware, and final hearings will be held Friday, Saturday and Sunday at the Delaware Area Career Center.

The Licking County Board of Elections is expected to conduct a hearing at 6 p.m. tonight to determine the eligibility of 52 registered voters, Director Mary Jo Long said yesterday.

Meanwhile, several hundred Democrats, union members and others marched from the Statehouse to Blackwell’s office yesterday, carrying a banner that read, "Don’t let nobody turn you around" — demanding that Blackwell ensure all eligible voters are allowed cast ballots.

Protesters said they fear thousands of minority and poor voters might lose the right to vote because of the way provisional ballots and other election issues are being handled in Ohio.

"We will not and we cannot forget about what happened in Florida, and we’re not going to let it happen here in Ohio," said John Lewis, a Georgia congressman who was a leader in the civil-rights movement in the 1960s.

That means making sure voters know where their polling locations are and ensuring county elections boards have adequate resources for enough phone lines, poll workers and other needs, protesters said.

Blackwell said he is working closely with county elections boards and that he would lobby the Legislature if necessary for money to reimburse boards for unexpected expenses.

Blackwell said the courts have upheld his position in four lawsuits filed against him so far, and he said critics can either be part of the problem or the solution.

"In final analysis, do they want to continue a fruitless effort that only creates confusion and detracts from getting things done, or do they want to marshal efforts to make sure folks get to the right precincts?" he said.

Dispatch reporters Tom Sheehan and Dana Wilson contributed to this story.