Voter challenges hit another snag for state GOP

By the Dayton Daily News   27 October 2004

Never mind the policy issues at stake in the election. It's getting so a person can't even keep up with the issues relating to how the election is to be conducted.
The political parties are fighting about who should be allowed to vote and where, about how registration should be handled, who should be present at polling places and what kind of voting machines to use.

You would think this was the first time this country ever ran an election. How much more unsettled could things have been in Afghanistan a week before the election?

The year has seen a lot of new voters registered, especially, according to most reports, among Democrats. The state Republican Party has decided that new registrants who can't be reached by pre-election mail (whose mail is returned undelivered, in other words) are suspect. This has led the party to certain embarrassments, including raising doubt about a local fellow whose mail was returned because he is now in Iraq in his country's uniform.

The Ohio Republican Party has ped all its pre-election challenges in Montgomery County. It has done this not out of shame for challenging the guy in Iraq or in recognition that the local Republican chairman says registration horror stories are not happening here. Rather, the state GOP gave up on technical grounds; forms were filled out wrong, and it's too late to fix them.

The Republicans now warn that their withdrawal doesn't mean they won't be challenging some voters. It just means any challenges that occur will be on Election Day.

Clearly, the state Republicans have legitimate concerns about the registration process in some places. A lot of stories have flown around elsewhere about Dick Tracy and Mary Poppins being registered by people who were paid per registrant. Exactly how Mr. Tracy or Ms. Poppins might actually get to vote is not clear; one would think — and hope — that would not be possible.

Those who do make challenges on Election Day have a fine line to walk. They are obliged not to slow things down at the polling places to the point that would-be voters leave; not to hassle people only according to the neighborhood that they live in; not to give any registered voter the impression that voting is going to be a hardship.

Montgomery County, after all, is not some sort of Democratic stronghold in which Republicans have to be particularly on guard. Republicans are more than half the power structure. And Republicans at the county elections board are the ones who have convinced the county party chairman that the county is not facing a deluge of cheaters.

Elsewhere around the state, Republicans will apparently be pursuing some pre-election challenges. The more they limit themselves — before Election Day and on it — to places that nonpartisans recognize as trouble spots, the more legitimacy they give their efforts.

As for Montgomery County, with their own local leader skeptical of their interference, and with their workers unable to put the forms together right, state Republicans would be well-advised to declare their effort jinxed and unnecessary — and give it up.