Reading the tea leaves in Ohio
Posted: Monday, March 03, 2008 4:17 PM by Mark Murray
From NBC/NJ's Mike Memoli
COLUMBUS, OH -- Today in Ohio’s capital city, the temperature reached the upper 60s, with a mix of sun and clouds. Tomorrow’s forecast calls for rain, and lots of it. So which day would you rather vote?
Across the state, Ohioans are in fact voting today. And hundreds of thousands have cast ballots in the past few weeks, as voters take advantage of the state’s new early voting option. Local elections officials are reporting record numbers of early votes cast in tomorrow’s primary. And though both Democratic campaigns have encouraged their supporters to vote early, there is some evidence that Obama may have an upper hand.
“Without question I think both campaigns on a national level, since they hit Ohio have encouraged early voting,” said Steve Harsman, director of elections in Montgomery County. “We’re at well over three times the number we had in the primary in 2004, and we’re anticipating a huge turnout tomorrow.”
Since 2006, Ohio voters have had the option to request absentee ballots 25 days before primary elections, and without giving a reason. Through the so-called “no-fault” absentee balloting, a person can also come in person to a county board of election office, request an absentee ballot, and immediately return it.
“We’re doing 4, 5, 600 ballots a day out of our office,” said Brian Williams, director of elections in Summit County, which includes the campaign hot spot of Akron. “That’s just unprecedented as far as over-the-counter votes, and a reflection of how the campaigns are recommending people vote in person.”
Kelly Pallante, director of the Trumbull County Board of Elections, says people have been lined up outside her office all day to vote. She said over 3,000 people have voted in person, and another 4,000 by mail. In 2004, just over 3,000 people voted absentee for the primary. In Franklin County, officials have extended the voting hours to 9:00 pm tonight to keep up with the demand. “It’s just been so popular this year,” said Ben Piscitelli, spokesperson for the board of elections there. “We were open on President’s Day, which should have been a county holiday.”
Officials unanimously agree that the Democratic Party is what is driving the interest. Some said that the Obama campaign in particular seems to have generated the most activity. In Montgomery County, Harsman said that the day after the Obama campaign did a massive phone push to get people to vote, more than 1,000 people came in person to vote, doubling or tripling the usual day-to-day traffic. “From our experience, it’s Obama that’s having the impact here,” said Summit County’s Williams, who added that some voters have been mistakenly putting “Obama” in the part of the form where they are supposed to indicate their party.
Clinton’s campaign has been active as well in encouraging early votes. On the first day of balloting, Gov. Ted Strickland led events all over the state to draw attention to early voting as he cast his ballot in Franklin County. This weekend, it held events in all 88 counties in which early voting was a focal point.
But it appears that Obama’s campaign has been more deliberate about encouraging these votes, even at events for campaign surrogates. At an event in Akron for Michelle Obama last week, a field organizer asked for a show of hands of how many people had already voted. More than a third of the crowd raised their hands. And the next day, at an event in Canton, the campaign had vans waiting outside the event waiting to bring people to vote at the Stark County Board of Elections.
“You guys are the die-hards, you’re the supporters, you’re gung-ho, so we want your votes now!” field organizer Maureen Tracey-Mooney told a crowd at a Michelle Obama event in Cincinnati last month.
Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner said last week that nearly 200,000 absentee ballot requests had been received in Franklin and Cuyahoga Counties alone. She predicts a statewide turnout of over 50%, based in part on the early voting numbers in Ohio and the turnout in other states this year. In 2004, turnout for the primary was just under 33%.
“I think the voters are pretty excited, because we thought that we’d be an afterthought after Super Tuesday,” Brunner said. “But it’s kind of like the BCS National Championship where we started watching primary after primary in states just like we watched all those different [bowl games]. And here Ohio State ended up in the national championship.”
And amid concerns about how smoothly the election will run, Brunner added: “The one thing I can tell you is we’ll perform better in the election than the Buckeyes did.”
