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Republicans to "Cage Votes" in Ohio

Republicans operatives are poised to challenge the votes of hundreds of thousands of voters in Ohio.

On Friday, election officials in Ohio sent a letter to every registered voter in the state. A state law that was passed in 2005 requires that this mailer - which is marked DO NOT FORWARD - is posted 60 days before federal elections. The purpose is to identify a list of voters for whom the mail is undeliverable. That list can then be used to challenge voters at the polls on Election Day.

The practice is called "vote caging." In it's most noxious forms, voters are purged from the rolls.

Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner - who was elected after the law went into effect - has issued a directive that bans counties from purging these voters off the list without due process for the voter.

But the list will be made available to Republican operatives who can challenge any voter on the list at the polling place on Election Day by making the case that the citizen was not voting from his or her current address. Challenged voters will be forced to cast a provisional ballot which may never be counted.

How many voters might this affect? The last time this mailer went out was in March, before Ohio's presidential primary. In five of Ohio's biggest counties, over 600,000 voters were put on the undeliverable list.

Read the whole story at Miller-McCune.

Posted by Tate Hausman on September 7, 2008 09:34 PM | Permalink

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