Valley View vs. Greenville
Cars and Parts Springfield Swap Meet
Carroll Commencement
Ellen Belcher is the Dayton Daily News opinion pages editor. She writes about state government, education, the environment, higher education and all things Dayton.
Martin Gottlieb is an editorial writer and columnist for the Dayton Daily News opinion pages. He focuses on the political process itself and does such national issues as war, the economy, taxes and Social Security, as well as a hodge-podge of local and state issues.Home > Blogs > A Matter of Opinion > Archives > 2011 > March > 23
Wednesday, March 23, 2011
Editorial: Making voters show photo ID is bid to hassle
Ohio House Republicans are moving to change voting requirements not because any problem exists, but because they have the votes to do what they want.
They want to require voters to show a photo ID at the polling place. Not just a photo, actually, but a government photo: driver’s license, military ID, passport or state identification card. The idea, theoretically,
is that this would cut down on voter fraud, specifically on people trying to vote as other people. Problem is, though, that’s not a problem.
Nobody is pointing to any large number of people who do that. Nor does it make sense that people would do it. It’s illegal, and trying it at the polling booth would be chancy. And there’s practically no payoff. How many people are going to risk a major punishment just to cast a vote?
The people who raise alarms about voter fraud are taking advantage of the real existence of registration fraud. They’re hoping that people confuse the two. But the two are very different.
When workers are paid by the name to get new people registered, they sometimes submit fraudulent names, the likes of Donald Duck and Mickey Mouse. But, as has been noted on this page before, Mr. Duck isn’t likely to show up to vote.
New Secretary of State Jon Husted — a Republican, formerly of Kettering, who has been engaged in election issues for years — submitted a list of proposed reforms a couple of weeks ago. This one wasn’t there. That tells you something.
He needs to stand against this.
Under current law, Ohioans must show some form of identification to vote. But a utility bill (sans photo) will do. That requirement is only a few years old. Even before it was passed, Ohio had no voter fraud problem that anybody had identified.
Democrats say Republicans are targeting potential Democratic voters. Beyond any dispute, the people who don’t have government-provided photo IDs are disproportionately minorities and poor. (Also young and old.)
The numbers surprise a lot of people. About 10 or 11 percent of the population is thought to be without a government-issued photo ID, and about three times as many blacks as whites, in percentage terms, according to legislative testimony. A 2006 survey by the New York University Brennan Center for Justice found that people earning less than $35,000 a year were more than twice as likely to lack a government ID as those making more.
Daniel Tokaji, associate director of Ohio State University’s Election Law @ Moritz project, said the bill “would make it more difficult for eligible citizens to vote and have their votes counted, while doing nothing to promote electoral integrity.”
Sponsors say that the state will provide IDs free to anybody who can’t afford one. (You know this is a top priority when legislators start talking about spending new money just now.) But to get help, prospective voters would have to claim and prove poverty. What level of proof the state would accept is not made clear in the bill.
What’s clear is that no American citizen should have to go through that process to vote.
Sponsors of the bill say that no great drop-off in minority voting or voting in general has arisen in Indiana and Georgia since they adopted photo ID laws. But they need to make the case that putting a new burden on people will do some good, not simply that it won’t do harm.
In a pattern that’s becoming all too familiar, the legislature is rushing ahead, having, for example, held hearings a week after the introduction of the bill and held a House vote passing the measure on Wednesday, the day after the open hearing.
Everything about the bill — substance and process — makes the House Republicans look bad. The Senate and governor should ignore them.
TweetGo to our facebook page and Like us to comment.
Martin Gottlieb: Christopher knew how to handle Holbrooke in Dayton
In the last moments of the touch-and-go Dayton peace talks about Bosnia in 1995, the holdout was the Bosnian Muslim government, not the Serbs or Croats.
At a pivotal point, Secretary of State Warren Christopher said this to the Bosnian leader:
“Mr. President, I am truly disappointed at the fuzzy, unrealistic and sloppy manner in which you and your delegation have approached this negotiation…. (W)e must
have your answer in an hour. If you say no, we will announce in the morning that the Dayton peace talks have been closed down.”
Anybody familiar with Christopher’s public image knows that when he said “fuzzy,” “unrealistic” and, worst of all, “sloppy,” he was swearing.
Besides being a strikingly fastidious, impeccable dresser, a man whose bearing and appearance bespoke perpetual self-discipline, he was precise to a fault in his thinking and speaking. He was not one to say things he had to take back or to overstate.
If you go by the image, though, he was also not one to speak so undiplomatically. But he could do it in the crunch.
Christopher has been something of an invisible man in the history of the talks at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base that ended the Bosnian war. That’s understandable.
The talks were the brainchild of then-Assistant Secretary of State Richard Holbrooke. His ultimate boss was President Bill Clinton. Both of those men have been seriously honored in Dayton.
To add a third honoree would be pushing it. And Christopher, who died over the weekend at 85, wasn’t very visible.
However, anybody who reads Holbrooke’s book, “To End a War,” from which the quote above is taken, knows that Christopher’s role was substantial.
He approved Holbrooke’s call for a peace conference in this country. The first instinct of most in the Clinton administration — perhaps including Christopher — was that the risks of failure were too high. Holbrooke had to do some convincing.
Christopher decided not to attend the talks regularly. He thought his presence would be an invitation to others of his rank to attend — foreign ministers from Russia, the European Union and maybe even Britain, France and Germany. That would have been too many bigwigs with speeches.
But, after being here for the opening, he returned repeatedly at crucial moments. His job was to pressure the various presidents from the Balkans to break through various roadblocks. His presence was designed to make sure that everybody understood that this wasn’t merely a Holbrooke thing, but that Clinton was engaged and had strong views about how it ought to come out.
Before Dayton, Holbrooke and Christopher had been considered professional rivals. Reporters had written about tensions between them. They were opposites in style, Holbrooke being the colorful personality, the outside-the-box big thinker, and Christopher the conservative lawyer.
On Bosnia, though, Christopher told Holbrooke, “I’m not always sure what you are doing or why. But you always seem to have a reason, and it seems to work. So I’m quite content to go along with your instincts.”
That understates his own knowledge of the subject, which was intense. He was instrumental long before the talks, when the dicey Croat-Muslim “Federation” was created. It’s now half the country, with the other half being the Serb entity.
But things had gone horribly in Bosnia for Christopher and everybody else before Dayton. Washington and the United Nations had been laughably ineffective. The Clinton administration was being accused of cowardice. A couple of diplomats had quit the State Department in anger. Three others — people close to Christopher and Holbrooke — had died when a military vehicle they were in tumbled off a cliff.
Christopher needed something. So did Clinton, who had all manner of other problems. (The Dayton talks coincided with the government-shutdown crisis over budgetary matters.)
Before Christopher was secretary of state, he was chosen to deliver the news to Taiwan that President Jimmy Carter was recognizing what was then called Red China. And he was the administration’s point man in the fight for ratification of a Panama Canal treaty opposed by Ronald Reagan. And he was the chief negotiator in the Iranian hostage crisis under Carter.
Tough assignments.
(Later he was Al Gore’s top representative in Florida for the fight after the 2000 election.)
So he knew something about people in Holbrooke’s position and their need for support from Washington.
He had a long career, with ups and downs. He did not emerge as a legendary or pivotal figure.
But he was not afraid to let others emerge.
TweetGo to our facebook page and Like us to comment.
Editorial: Energy transition harder after Japan
In the 1970s and early 1980s, Dayton Power & Light was involved with two other utility companies in an effort to build a nuclear power plant on the Ohio River, not far east of Cincinnati. But construction costs soared hugely above original estimates. The plan was finally abandoned, and the site was turned into a coal-fired plant.
Otherwise, southwestern Ohioans might be looking at the Japanese horror with even more interest.
As it is, though, Duke Energy would like to build a nuclear plant — or at least explore the option — in Portsmouth. The project is many years off. Perhaps more years now than last month.
Nuclear energy was making something of a comeback before the earthquake/tsunami. Even some environmentalists had softened on it, given the good safety record of modern plants. If there’s no accident, nuclear energy is non-polluting (setting aside concerns about disposal of spent fuel rods). And it can provide energy without consuming scarce resources.
President Barack Obama has embraced it, at least as part of a mix to be used to gain the United States a measure of energy independence. In the wake of Japan, he has not backed off, though some European countries have taken high-profile actions to demonstrate their worries about nuclear.
Still, the American political situation relating to nuclear energy has changed. Exactly how much has changed won’t be known until the Japanese situation plays out. One thing seems clear: Proponents of nuclear energy will have one heck of a job selling the it-can’t-happen-here argument.
Meanwhile, the United States is already dependent on nuclear energy for 20 percent of its electricity. What — if anything — must and can be done to secure existing plants is the top question for the government for the moment, not whether to build new plants.
Government inspection and regulation must be aggressive and well funded. In a time when Congress is looking for places to cut spending, this is one realm that can’t be cut.
The Japanese disaster coincides in time with a hike in the price of oil and with new reminders about the vulnerability of American access to Mideast oil. And it follows on the accidental spillage of vast amounts of oil into the Gulf of Mexico.
It also follows the refusal of Congress last year to pass a major bill designed to curb carbon emissions so as to combat global warming. Now the Obama administration is planning to get some of that task accomplished through regulations, and some Republicans in Congress want to thwart that effort.
All these events — combined — are a boost to newer forms of energy, such as solar, wind and geothermal. They’re looking better all the time.
This country is fortunate to have options. As is often said, however, all the options are flawed, being somehow dangerous or impractical for many uses. Widespread, economical use of alternative forms of energy for generation of vast amounts of energy is still in the future. In the transition, there will be disappointments, as many are now disappointed with ethanol, a relatively new form.
Japan’s disaster makes the necessary transition away from fossil fuels all the more difficult. It also focuses attention on just how difficult it will be.
Trade-offs can be tricky. At a certain stage in the history of nuclear energy in Japan, communities became nervous about having nuclear plants in their midst. So the decision was made to build new plants at old sites, thus avoiding new siting fights. That’s one reason there are so many reactors concentrated in a small area.
Must have seemed like a good idea at the time.
TweetGo to our facebook page and Like us to comment.
Editorial: Kasich’s redo turns out well for Dayton
A problem for Gov. John Kasich turns out to be an opportunity for Dayton — and James Leftwich, head of the Dayton Development Coalition.
Gov. Kasich wanted Mark Kvamme, a California venture capitalist, to direct his private JobsOhio effort and the state department of development, which is a Cabinet-level job. Democrats objected, and a liberal interest group took the governor to court, arguing that, under the state constitution, Mr. Kvamme had to be an Ohio resident to take the position.
Mr. Kvamme isn’t moving and didn’t think he should have to — since he’s taking just a $1 a year salary and wants to keep his ties to California.
Last week the governor effectively acknowledged that Mr. Kvamme’s appointment couldn’t stand, and he appointed Mr. Leftwich to the job Mr. Kvamme was slated for. Mr. Kvamme got a new position, a non-Cabinet job.
Even though the rules are clear and that somebody should have anticipated the residency problem, the governor blew off the criticism.
“I was frustrated when some tried to raise roadblocks to his eligibility to serve based on his residency,” the governor said. “But I guess I shouldn’t be surprised by anything in politics. I’m confident we could (have) overcome those objections.”
Mr. Leftwich, whose salary will drop from over $250,000 to $134,000, believes he got the job because Gov. Kasich and Mr. Kvamme see the Dayton Development Coalition as a smaller version of what they’re trying to create at the state level. Mr. Kvamme, when he testified before the legislature about JobsOhio, pointed to successes the private development coalition has had.
He could have also noted that some of the problems the coalition has had will be problems for JobsOhio. For instance, the coalition depends on money from local governments and private businesses. Without the public money, it would be poorer — and less able to do the work it does.
At the same time, though, it wants to operate as a private entity, keeping much of its spending and its meetings private. Not all Dayton-area public officials think they have the input they deserve, considering their financial contributions.
Without the public money, there are questions about how sustainable the coalition’s work is.
JobsOhio hasn’t worked out how transparent it’s going to be — even though the governor ultimately makes decisions about how it spends its money, which will include private and public funds. To insist it’s not a public agency when it’s acting on behalf of the state; when the governor has the final say about the moves it makes; when its money reverts to the state if it’s ever shut down is rejecting the meaning of open government.
It’s good for Dayton to have someone who knows the region’s strengths — and specifically Wright-Patterson Air Force Base’s — in the development department job. It never hurts to be close to discussions about what businesses might be coming to Ohio.
It’s also good that Gov. Kasich recognized the regional approach to economic development that the coalition represents. Its mission is to grow jobs across the region, regardless of whose backyard they land in. Not being beholden to a specific jurisdiction has allowed it to focus on the needs of businesses looking to locate or expand here over all other considerations.
If you’re a company executive, you undoubtedly like knowing that you’re being treated like a client who has to be satisfied, not just a prize to be fought over.
But there is one odd thing about Gov. Kasich’s selection of Mr. Leftwich. Gov. Kasich repeatedly and brutally criticized former Gov. Ted Strickland during the election campaign for the loss of NCR to Georgia, saying Gov. Strickland “couldn’t figure out how to keep NCR in the state.”
Trying to pin that loss on Mr. Strickland was ridiculous, considering the evidence that the company’s CEO was bent on leaving Dayton.
If Gov. Kasich insists on continuing to believe otherwise, then his development director, Mr. Leftwich and the coalition, are also culpable.
Maybe Mr. Leftwich can get the governor to stop using NCR as the poster child for why Ohio needs people like him, Mr. Kvamme and Mr. Leftwich to sell Ohio.
TweetGo to our facebook page and Like us to comment.
