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Fatal house fire
Ohio's voter-crossover laws unevenly enforced
Some Democrats think ease of switching party affiliation undermined Obama's candidacy.
Sunday, March 09, 2008
DAYTON — — Niaisha Casey, a 33-year-old Huber Heights resident and registered Democrat, said she voted for Barack Obama in the March 4 primary and is proud of it.
But she's upset that the voter in front of her that day said he was a Republican but wanted to vote a Democratic ballot and was never challenged by poll workers, as state law requires.
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Get latest headlines via RSS feeds"They just handed him one," Casey said. "It was that easy."
Ohio's crossover laws for primary elections have long been unevenly enforced, and in many counties, not enforced at all. But with allegations that Republican voters were encouraged to cross over and choose Hillary Clinton as the weaker Democratic presidential candidate, Tuesday's primary has focused new attention on whether the law should be changed.
Edward B. Foley, director of the election law project at Ohio State University, said it's time for Ohio's legislators to take a closer look at the state's primary election rules after decades of looking the other way. "If we like the current law, let's enforce it," he said. "If we don't, let's change it."
Some states have open primaries in which voters are not required to declare their party affiliation. Others have closed primaries that require voters to declare their party affiliation in advance, usually 30 days before the primary.
Ohio's primary system is semi-closed in the sense that voters are required to declare their party affiliation on primary day. Independent voters may ask for a Democratic or Republican Party ballot with no questions asked. But the law requires poll workers to challenge voters who have declared themselves Democrats or Republicans during the last two years.
Crossover voters must sign a form stating they intend to uphold the principles of their new party. If they refuse to sign, they may still vote, but the ballot will be counted as "provisional," giving the board of elections 10 days to investigate its veracity. In an even more bizarre twist under Ohio law, if a majority of poll workers doubt the loyalty of a crossover voter, they may classify the ballot cast as provisional, whether the voter signs the form or not.
The law was designed to help ensure that only voters who believe in and support the philosophy of a particular party have a voice in determining its candidates for office, Foley said. Mark Owens, chairman of the Montgomery County Democratic Party, believes the law should be enforced and even strengthened. "There can be room for one party to mess in the primary of the other party if they make it too simple" to cross over, he said.
Of six county board of election offices contacted in the Miami Valley, three said they enforced at least part of Ohio's crossover law (Montgomery, Miami and Mercer), but three others said they haven't enforced any part of the law in years (Greene, Warren and Shelby).
"Our board decided in the 1990s that the voters have the right to pick the ballot they want to vote" regardless of past party affiliation, said Michael Moore, director of the Warren County Board of Elections. "I know that it's really caused some concern this time. I think it's opened some eyes."
Steve Harsman, director of the Montgomery County Board of Elections, said his poll workers were instructed to ask crossover voters to fill out a form. But, he added, they were not told to make provisional those ballots cast by voters who refused to sign the form.
Steve Quillen, director of the Miami County Board of Elections, said it's not practical in a popular primary race to challenge voters who refuse to sign the crossover form. "If there's a long line, and poll workers have gone through 20 minutes of being harangued by voters, they just say, 'What the heck, here's the ballot.' "
Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner is ultimately is responsible for enforcing Ohio's election laws. Jeff Ortega, a spokesman for Brunner, said her office is surveying how many counties enforced the crossover law and how many forms were signed and collected on March 4. He wasn't sure when that data would be available.
Brunner is making training of poll workers a top priority for the fall presidential election, he said.
Foley of Ohio State said there's no way to determine how many Republican voters "raided" the Democratic primary in Ohio with what he called "strategic" voting for Clinton, but he doubts it made any difference in the ultimate outcome. "Had the election been won by 20,000 votes instead of 240,000, it might have been a factor," he said. "Even if you could count all the strategic crossover votes, I don't think the numbers could be anywhere close to the margin of victory."
But that doesn't assuage the doubts of Obama supporters like Niaisha Casey, who is still fuming that poll workers didn't challenge the crossover voter in front of her. "There's no telling how many voters out here voted the same way," she said.
