Breaking News:
Ohio GOP Poll Workers Received Supplemental Training Last Thursday
The Board of Elections of each county in Ohio chooses a certain number of people from each political party to serve as poll workers at elections. A gentleman who initially asked to be selected by the Board of Elections for Franklin County (which includes the state capitol, Columbus) on the Democratic side was told there were no slots remaining, so he called back and got a slot on the Republican side. This poll worker has requested that his name not be used in this article.
On November 1, he attended the formal training provided by the Franklin County Board of Elections (BOE) and thought he was ready to go. To his surprise, that very afternoon in the mail he received a form letter from the Ohio Republican Party informing him that, although he had completed the "required" training, on Thursday (November 2) he could receive "optional" training provided by the Ohio GOP at a private facility. Again, the letter was not from the Franklin County Board of Elections nor from the Secretary of State of Ohio (the state department that oversees Ohio elections) nor from any department or agency thereof; it was from a political party offering what appeared to be its own training beyond what state and county officials have deemed appropriate and adequate for poll workers.
Click here to view a facsimile copy of the letter in pdf format.
Because of the short notice for this extra training, the poll worker could not rearrange his schedule to attend, so I cannot report anything whatsoever about what the Republican poll workers were taught, but a representative for the Ohio Democratic Party assured me in a Sunday afternoon phone conversation that no such supplement to the formal training was being provided to Democratic poll workers.
The poll worker who received the letter says that he heard nothing at the formal training about the possibility of supplemental training being subsequently provided by the political parties, themselves, so it appears that this Thursday event was not sanctioned by the Board of Elections.
The mystery, of course, remains as to what, exactly, was covered in the supplemental training, as well as what organizations or corporations were delivering content.
In addition to contacting the Ohio Democratic Party campaign headquarters on Sunday, I contacted a top campaign official for a state-wide Ohio candidate about this supplemental training. He said, "It's news to me." The official, who asked to remain anonymous, went on to say, "I haven't heard anything about this [extra training]."
Aside from long-standing and persistent accusations that recent elections in Ohio have been tainted by vote rigging, outright fraud, and vote suppression tactics aimed at keeping Republicans in political control, new problems are already expected with Ohio's recently enacted voter ID law. Application of the law to voters voting by absentee ballot was suspended pursuant to a temporary restraining order issued by US District Judge Algenon Marbley pending a hearing on Wednesday, November 8; however, the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals has since stayed that temporary restraining order upon request of Republican Ohio Attorney General Jim Petro.
The Democratic candidate for Ohio Secretary of State, Jennifer Brunner, has called in her platform for Ohio to "[r]educe reliance on training and Election Day assistance now contracted for from voting machine vendors to avoid the 'outsourcing' of our elections to private companies," indicating that the formal training Ohio poll workers are currently receiving is already under the partial control of private, third parties brought in at the behest of the office of the Secretary of State, which oversees elections.
Clearly, even if Ohio law (and laws in other states) is modified to ensure that thorough training is uniformly provided to poll workers through the development and implementation of "best practices," political parties themselves must still be assured that they need not offer their own "optional" training to help poll workers of their own party have a differential advantage when it comes to ensuring free and fair elections at the level of the polling sites.
Whether or not the extra training delivered by the Ohio GOP was unethical or possibly illegal is beyond the scope of this article, but the very existence of such extraordinary "training" of Republican poll workers in the Buckeye State is certain to further fuel suspicions among some Democrats that Republicans are not about to play by any set of rules accepted and embraced by others when it comes to winning elections.
Further information, should it become available, will be posted here as updates and edits to this post.
Published 11/07/2006 01:33:00 AM
<< 13 Comments Total
If it's not transparent, verifiable and auditable, then it's a circus show, and quite possbly a theft, rather than an election.
Republicans are "special", and they just need a little more help learning than others.
My Pet Goat,
I agree. I think that the extra training was for basic reading 101.
I heard they have pictographs on the training pamphlets for the republicans and that led to the confusion as there are none on the ballots.
BTW DW, after voting this morning at 7:11 EST, I still couldn't get that little Pacman to eat all the Republican names; and I ran out of quarters. The guy next to me was playing Missle Command ver 2.0 Iraq and he looked like he was losing, too. Is there a crack for the machines to let us play all day?
Is there a crack for the machines to let us play all day?
If the Princeton tests were any indication, Diebold's probably written one...
Good Morning Dark Wraith:
The local stations out here in Az are already reporting problems with the "Jim Crow Never Left Us Here" voter ID law requirements, and, the new, no-bid contract provided Diebold machines are already causing problems and the polls haven't even been open all that long.
the athenians had a great system. they used baskets and pebbles. the romans used a "head count" system where the voters passed through the gate with their candidate's name over the arch. the whole rush to electronic and other systems has bothered me, mainly because it was viciously backed and rabidly defended by the republicans who have a vested interest in suppressing or discouraging full participation in the elections.
Wow, that is interesting. Too bad he couldn't attend this "training".
Oh my god, I can't believe all the shit at the polls. This is our last year in NYS with the wonderful little lever machines and the curtain. Wonder what will happen next year? One good thing is that the state is turning bluer and bluer.
Pete King of Long Island was doing robocalls yesterday in his district, the bastard. He's the only Repuke on Long Island. Can you imagine how many congressional districts are on Long Island? 15. yowsers. We could be a state. 2 states. 3 states
DW,
Is there ANY possibility, with all the election problems on both sides that might have been contrived by Rove, that would allow Bush to stop the election or call for a re-election in the future?
Is there anything in any bill he's reinterpreted that might allow that?
Since we're at 'war', are there some possible emergency laws that might be looked at diferently?
Good afternoon, Father Tyme.
Theoretically, yes, the President and Congress might be able to craft something in an emergency session. It seems to me that this would put the Democrats in a bad position: seeking a permanent injunction could land the matter before the U.S. Supreme Court, and we've seen how they are on matters involving His Highness when it comes to who's going to be our leader come Hell or high water; but on the other hand, letting a new election proceed would give the Republicans a chance to regroup and ensure a much more solid win.
At this moment, I don't think the Bush Administration is going to take such a tack. They're going to take a wait-and-see attitude until the numbers are more solid tonight. From there, they'll have to decide how far they're willing to push to ensure some level of protection, not just from a newly elected Democratic majority in Congress, but also from a newly elected Democratic majority that just survived an ugly, nasty, dirty election.
Come tomorrow, life will have changed, whether or not the Democrats trounce the Republicans today. The problem is that, as things look right now (at this hour), it looks like there will be Democratic gains, but the cheating is going to keep those gains from being the landslide that would otherwise have happened were the elections to have been free and fair.
And therein lies the challenge: do we take our win and run with it, our do we look like a bunch of sore winners crying about how we should have won more?
Really bad position to be in, that.
The Dark Wraith will speak to the matter more forthrightly tomorrow.
Because of the short notice for this extra training, the poll worker could not rearrange his schedule to attend,
Man, I really hope he can find out from the other Repub. poll workers what the supplemental training included.
Very interesting indeed, I would be very curious to know what this training might have entailed?
Good afternoon, DW. I would hope the republikans would continue to use this particular training regimen elsewhere, it didn't seem to work very well in Ohio.
i am that poll worker.
part 2:
i show up and am listed as the presiding "new" republican precinct judge. my first time working the polls. again i remind you, i tried to represent the democrats after being forced to pick a side in order to be a poll worker, i opted to assist the repubs because no call back from the dems... in my precinct, i was assisted by one democrat and one republican for the majority of the day. the reason i was given for choosing a side was for balance. the 2nd demo assigned to the precinct did not show leaving me as the tie breaker in the end.
sincerely,
INDEPENDENT!