Voting Alerts are popping up here - Republicans sending out "Do Not Forward" mailers that, when returned, allow them to challenge votes cast down the road.  

How about giving such tactics the "smell test", Chuck?  They're up to no good - as usual -

Isn't this the same state where, in 2004, (Republican) Secretary of State, Ken Blackwell, rejected thousands of registration forms collected by Democrats because they weren't printed on 80 pound paper?  He also decided not to count many more provisional ballots cast in the wrong precinct (even some cast in the right precinct).  Sounds like the Republicans have made their bed, now they have to lie in it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_amh5NP0pVY&NR=1

I find it funny that Republicans are upset over this, where people actually have a chance to correct their error and vote.

Where is the upset over the issue of the GOP and voter suppression in Indiana (Crawford v Marion County)? Read Jonathan Alter's article at Newsweek.com.

http://www.newsweek.com/id/158392

By hook or by crook folks... THIS is what the Republicans will resort to to win. Who DO you want running our country?

How's that Palm Beach Butterfly Ballot Souffle taste now, Republican scum?

Reap what you sow, folks.  Every disenfranchization case in my memory has been the GOP at the expense of the Dems.  Not one -- NOT ONE -- verified case of voter fraud in the entire nation, and yet states have enacted "anti-fraud" legislation based upon the oft-repeated lie of fraud.  

Reap what you sow.  I can't stand Strickland or Rendell, but I'm awfully glad they're where they are this election cycle...

"Evil triumphs because good is stupid."  Maybe not this time...

Ohh, so when the republicans disenfranchise voters its fine, but when a dem even slightly calls their ballots into question, we're suddenly trying to subvert an election. I see. Jeez, it sounds like an honest mistake that they're working hard to get resolved to me. I'm sure this will all work out and I hope (in vain I imagine) that neither side tries to make huge deal out of this. I mean there's still over 50 days to get it sorted. It isn't like it's election day.

Bravo, Brunner!

Right backatcha Mr. Von Spaklecowplop!

change the d a m form. Make it easier to understand. State,on the form, that the box must be checked or the form is incomplete. Simple.

change the d a m form. Make it easier to understand. State,on the form, that the box must be checked or the form is incomplete. Simple.

Does McFool's campaign really believe that they can just break every rule or law just because it doesn't suit them?
Maybe if they paid attention to the small details, they would not be in the situation they are. What a bunch of dolts......Wake up we can not afford 4 more years with an unintelligent leader!!
Obama & Biden

McCain and the Republicans want a loose interpretation to fit their needs yet are trying to disenfranchise thousands in Michigan who have homes foreclosed on.  The Republicans are repulsive in their "do anything" attitude toward winning.  They are totally "unfit" to hold any office in this great nation. They have come close to destroying this country in the last eight years.  We cannot afford even 1 more year, much less 4 more years of the same.  Our country will not survive them.  They are totally without morals or integrity!!!

"If they are too stupid to fill out a form properly, they are too stupid to vote."  Kinda reminds you of what Republicans said about Democrats in Florida in 2000, eh?  But I'm sure this is TOTALLY different....

It hurts to laugh, the southern ohio security moms and independent swing voters will be turning out for McCain in such droves that this partisan trickery wont make a lick of difference. And the good thing that will come from this will be the final end of the credibility of the liberal media in America.

Why in the world would the state allow campaigns to print their own forms? That is just asking for trouble.

If the McCain campaign was helping with registering voters, maybe they should go to the Obama campaign headquarters for an inservice.  Sounds like they want to re-do Florida in Ohio.

what's the flap about? they get a phone call and a new form. It's a heck of a lot more fair than what the Republicans did to thousands of voters in Florida and other states, including Ohio the last time around.

Just what is happening in this election?

Republicans have a stiff, incoherent, womanizing Senator running for election with a liberal record.  He's been rejected by everyone on the far-right from evangelicals to the NRA.  Now the Republicans are crying about the media and disenfranchised voters.

The Democrats have a candidate that typifies the ideal Christian family in America.  He's well spoken, charismatic and armed with an advertising budget that far exceeds his opponent.

Has the political world gone topsy turvey?
Democrats and now Republicans and Republicans are now Democrats!!

So... voting for McCain... is a vote for... a Democrat?!

Boy the Republicans sure don't like it when their nasty tricks don't work, do they?

No surprise here; Jennifer Brunner has been nothing short of a disappointment since taking office.  The more she moves toward "voter reform" the murkier the waters become. Truly a civil servent who does not know if they are on "first or third"

Seems like the McCain Campaign doesn't think they need to play by the same rules as everyone else.
At least someone is calling them out on it!

state law “provides absolutely no room to accept forms if the voter has not taken the step of affirming that he or she is an eligible voter."
The law should be upheld, if the ballots have not ben filled out correctly they should be discarded as fraudulant.

Rules are rules and apparently the Republicans believe that when they mess up the rules should not apply to them.  Interesting....nice thought...bad idea.  Of course this is consistent with the Republican's campaign what with all the lies and all...

Once again, the Republican Party is above the law!!  Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner makes it perfectly clear there is a violation on the form, and that they will help to rectify the problem.

The Republican Party one again, refuses to admit they made a mistake and are now whining that they are being punished, despite the fact that Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner and her office will contact every person that did not check the correct box.  How is that punishment again??

If this was the Democratic Party that made the mistake... the GOP would not budge one inch on the issue and call it voter fraud.  Republicans can cry-me-a-river!!

WAKE UP, AMERICA!!!  VOTE SMART... NOT SENILE!!!

It's okay to disenfranchise black voters in Ohio, but heaven forbid Republicans become disenfranchised? They can dish it out, but they don't like it when it's done to them.

To bad, McCain people -- you made the problem.  You designed the form, you correct it.

This is a very interesting development.  To send out a form with a check-box that goes unchecked is unfortunate indeed, however, the laws must be complied with.

The Secretary of State is absolutely correct in her insistence that the laws should indeed be complied with, despite the McCain campaigns attempts to cry foul.

Just as those 'butter-fly' ballots that were so confusing for some in the 2000 Florida debacle were dealt with to the dissatisfaction  of the voters, so will this.  It is unfortunate, sure, but the law is the law.  

Here we go again...the GOP trying to steal another election...makes me sad for my children.
Patricia 49 Pennsylvania

The percent of expats that want to vote and actually have their vote counted is less than 30%.  In the primaries only my wife was able to vote and we both followed the same process.  The current process is unreliable, costly, and slow.  This is another example of why internet voting should be made available and used.

ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!!!!!

Let everyone vote.

There seems to be worry over the disenfranchisement of voters on both sides.  Republicans have been playing games for years and now seem to be hung by their own forms.

I would let them vote as long as they agreed to correct all the efforts to undermine the democratic vote.

There are more voter tampering by the Republicans that are in need of correction.

Republicans like to play rough.
An eye for an eye is
A vote for a vote.

Let everyone vote on both sides

at least the Ohio secretary of state is fairer and following the real law unlike the bias and obvious partisanship of the Florida sec. of state in 2000.  or unfortunately this is small paybacks for the way Dems were treated in Florida....one could wonder. some things have a way of correcting themselves...Republicans WILL NOT steal this one folks.

Wow, it's weird how the Republican stance on what the letter and spirit of election law is changes depending on who screwed up n filling the forms.

ah ha.....here we go again people, sounds familiar!

How does it feel, John McCain???? You Republicans stole an election in 2000. Hurts, doesn't it?

The rules are clear.  Anyone who made it through 2nd grade knows that sometimes you don't get credit if you don't fill out your paper completely.  Anyone who has filled out any kind of form on the internet - to register to post here, for instance, or pay for a transaction with your credit card - knows you have to check a box confirmin that you actually want to do whatever it is you just spent time filling out info to do.  That the McCain camp issued these forms and then complains that people who don't fill them out correctly should get the ballot anyway is typical of their new attitude of "the rules don't apply to us".  The point of box on the application is that the checked box is their "word".  It's the thing that says "I am giving you my word that I am legally entitled to this ballot".   If you don't need to check the box to certify that you are a legitimate absentee voter, what's the point of the application? Why not just mail them to every household?  Now, when people fill out those ballots and forget to check the box that says they filled it out themselves and it represents their true and correct infomation and vote, will the McCain camp say we should count their ballots anyway?  People have to be accountable for their own work sometimes, and this is one of them.  Do it right or it doesn't count - it's a pass/fail thing.  Duh.

No voter should be disenfranchised; however, Republicans are complaining that these incomplete forms should be accepted as complete and valid.  Yet the Republicans fail to state what they are planning to do on election day and with forms of absentee Democratic voters.  

The Republicans  plan to contest the validity of the address listed for voters who are listed as Democrates.  They will have a list of foreclosed homes and will challenge whether the voter(s) still resides at the address.  The Republicans will try to disenfranchise many of these voters whose homes are on the foreclosure list by claiming that they cannot vote because they don't live at that address anymore.  HOW HYPOCRITICAL!  Yet the Republicans know that just because there is a foreclosure listed for a home, doesn't mean that the people no longer live there.  THEY JUST WANT TO PUT THESE VOTERS THROUGH HOOPS IN ORDER TO GET THEM SO FRUSTRATED THAT THEY WILL NOT VOTE; THEREFORE, THROUGH PLOYS, THE REPUBLICANS WILL TRY TO DISENFRANCHISE THE VOTES OF MANY DEMOCRATIC VOTERS.

It can be assumed, knowing how devious the Republicans play, that this scrutiny will not be applied to voters listed as Republicans.

The reason the McCain camp is upset is because those ballots were actually intended for Democrat voters, but McCain, in yet another "senior moment" told his crew to send them to Republican voters. Meanwhile Steve Schmidt is pulling some poor staffer's hair out because Gramps messed up his supreme Rovian plan to suppress the Dems again in '08!

The Republicans are gettng just desserts after all the fixed elections they have done. And by the way, why isn't your news agency reporting on the thousands of people - mainly African American - in Michigan whose homes are being foreclosed on by Republican owned finance firms in order to put them out of an address so their voter registrations are invalid.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/09/10/michigan-gop-using-forecl_n_125446.html

Michigan Republicans plan to foreclose African-American voters


The chairman of the Republican Party in Macomb County, Michigan, a key swing county in a key swing state, is planning to use a list of foreclosed homes to block people from voting in the upcoming election as part of the state GOP’s effort to challenge some voters on Election Day.

“We will have a list of foreclosed homes and will make sure people aren’t voting from those addresses,” party chairman James Carabelli told Michigan Messenger in a telephone interview earlier this week. He said the local party wanted to make sure that proper electoral procedures were followed.

State election rules allow parties to assign “election challengers” to polls to monitor the election. In addition to observing the poll workers, these volunteers can challenge the eligibility of any voter provided they “have a good reason to believe” that the person is not eligible to vote. One allowable reason is that the person is not a “true resident of the city or township.”

The Michigan Republicans’ planned use of foreclosure lists is apparently an attempt to challenge ineligible voters as not being “true residents.”

One expert questioned the legality of the tactic.

“You can’t challenge people without a factual basis for doing so,” said J. Gerald Hebert, a former voting rights litigator for the U.S. Justice Department who now runs the Campaign Legal Center, a Washington D.C.-based public-interest law firm. “I don’t think a foreclosure notice is sufficient basis for a challenge, because people often remain in their homes after foreclosure begins and sometimes are able to negotiate and refinance.”

As for the practice of challenging the right to vote of foreclosed property owners, Hebert called it, “mean-spirited.”

GOP ties to state’s largest foreclosure law firm

The Macomb GOP’s plans are another indication of how John McCain’s campaign stands to benefit from the burgeoning number of foreclosures in the state. McCain’s regional headquarters are housed in the office building of foreclosure specialists Trott & Trott. The firm’s founder, David A. Trott, has raised between $100,000 and $250,000 for the Republican nominee.

The Macomb County party’s plans to challenge voters who have defaulted on their house payments is likely to disproportionately affect African-Americans who are overwhelmingly Democratic voters. More than 60 percent of all sub-prime loans — the most likely kind of loan to go into default — were made to African-Americans in Michigan, according to a report issued last year by the state’s Department of Labor and Economic Growth.

Challenges to would-be voters

Statewide, the Republican Party is gearing up for a comprehensive voter challenge campaign, according to Denise Graves, party chair for Republicans in Genessee County, which encompasses Flint. The party is creating a spreadsheet of election challenger volunteers and expects to coordinate a training with the regional McCain campaign, Graves said in an interview with Michigan Messenger.

Whether the Republicans will challenge voters with foreclosed homes elsewhere in the state is not known.

Kelly Harrigan, deputy director of the GOP’s voter programs, confirmed that she is coordinating the group’s “election integrity” program. Harrigan said the effort includes putting in place a legal team, as well as training election challengers. She said the challenges to voters were procedural rather than personal. She referred inquiries about the vote challenge program to communications director Bill Nowling, who promised information but did not return calls.

Party chairman Carabelli said that the Republican Party is training election challengers to “make sure that [voters] are who they say who they are.”

When asked for further details on how Republicans are compiling challenge lists, he said, “I would rather not tell you all the things we are doing.”

Vote suppression: Not an isolated effort

Carabelli is not the only Republican Party official to suggest the targeting of foreclosed voters. In Ohio, Doug Preisse, director of elections in Franklin County (around the city of Columbus) and the chair of the local GOP, told The Columbus Dispatch that he has not ruled out challenging voters before the election due to foreclosure-related address issues.

Hebert, the voting-rights lawyer, sees a connection between Priesse’s remarks and Carabelli’s plans.

“At a minimum what you are seeing is a fairly comprehensive effort by the Republican Party, a systematic broad-based effort to put up obstacles for people to vote,” he said. “Nobody is contending that these people are not legally registered to vote.

“When you are comprehensively challenging people to vote,” Hebert went on, “your goals are two-fold: One is you are trying to knock people out from casting ballots; the other is to create a slowdown that will discourage others,” who see a long line and realize they can’t afford to stay and wait.

Challenging all voters registered to foreclosed homes could disrupt some polling places, especially in the Detroit metropolitan area. According to the real estate Web site RealtyTrac, one in every 176 households in Wayne County, metropolitan Detroit, received a foreclosure filing during the month of July. In Macomb County, the figure was one household in every 285, meaning that 1,834 homeowners received the bad news in just one month. The Macomb County foreclosure rate puts it in the top three percent of all U.S. counties in the number of distressed homeowners.

Wayne, Oakland, Macomb, Kent and Genessee counties were — in that order — the counties with the most homeowners facing foreclosure, according to RealtyTrac. As of July, there were more than 62,000 foreclosure filings in the entire state.

Joe Rozell, director of elections for Oakland County in suburban Detroit, acknowledged that challenges such as those described by Carabelli are allowed by law but said they have the potential to create long lines and disrupt the voting process. With 890,000 potential voters closely divided between Democratic and Republican, Oakland County is a key swing county of this swing state.

According to voter challenge directives handed down by Republican Secretary of State Terri Lynn Land, voter challenges need only be “based on information obtained through a reliable source or means.”

“But poll workers are not allowed to ask the reason” for the challenges, Rozell said. In other words, Republican vote challengers are free to use foreclosure lists as a basis for disqualifying otherwise eligible voters.

David Lagstein, head organizer with the Michigan Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN), described the plans of the Macomb GOP as “crazy.”

“You would think they would think, ‘This is going to look too heartless,’” said Lagstein, whose group has registered 200,000 new voters statewide this year and also runs a foreclosure avoidance program. “The Republican-led state Senate has not moved on the anti-predatory lending bill for over a year and yet [Republicans] have time to prey on those who have fallen victim to foreclosure to suppress the vote."

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