Voting
Election Day – that’s an antiquated phrase. In many jurisdictions counties are still counting votes, here a full week after “election day”. Voting began a month before the “day” with early “in person” voting, and what we used to call “absentee, now mail-in ballots. They can actually be mailed in, like, through the US Post Office mail. Or the voter can find a local drop box to drop the ballot in.
When I first started voting, back in the “dark ages” of the 1970’s, there were only two ways to vote here in Ohio. Either you voted on election day, or you voted “absentee”, meeting the strict legal requirements to be “absent” from the actual polling place. I even remember one May primary election when I forgot to get an absentee ballot. I drove home to Cincinnati from college in Granville in order to cast my “election day” in-person vote.
Ohio Pride
Here in Ohio there’s a certain smugness about the election. Ohio prides itself on elections called on Election Day (or early in the morning of the next day). Congressman Jim Jordan, the proud representative of a gerrymandered Ohio district that wiggles across much of the state, has been tweeting over and over again: “It’s Election Day, not Election Month”.
Arizona and Nevada are still counting ballots, a week after the election. They will be mostly done by the end of this week. California, on the other hand, will still be counting on into the Thanksgiving weekend, and maybe beyond.
If you are over forty, you might remember that crazy November of 2000, as we watched day after day the counters in Florida desperately trying to sort out a 597 vote difference out of six million cast for Bush and Gore (and Nader). That’s less than 1/100th of a percent difference, well within the “margin of error”. With six million votes to count, no matter what, there’s going to be some unavoidable errors. 1/100th of a percent is beyond absolute certainty, regardless of how many times that votes are counted.
Fewer Votes
Here in Ohio, we didn’t have those problems. Sure, we knew that Cincinnati, and even more Cleveland, were going to be the last tallies in, but it was going to happen before the counters went to bed after election day.
But Ohio needs to get over itself. We get our results quicker, because we have fewer people voting. Last week, only 51% of Ohio registered voters came to the polls. That’s fewer voters than in 2018, and just barely more than in 2010. Ohio’s high turnout was in the 2020 election – just under six million voted, 74% of those registered.
So in last week’s election, almost half of registered voters (and another 500,000 or so not registered at all) didn’t vote. Less than half of Ohio citizens made the decisions about who are leaders are – like Jim Jordan and JD Vance. Ohio has made voting cumbersome, difficult, and inconvenient. And we’ve done it on purpose – because the Republican legislature doesn’t want “the other half” to vote. They know that those non-voters wouldn’t choose them.
Voter Suppression
Voter suppression in Ohio is more insidious than it is in Georgia. We’ll let you hand out cookies and water in a long voter line. Of course, if you vote in an urban area, you can expect that there will be a long wait to cast your ballot. And yes, you can register to vote online. If you have an Ohio state ID or driver’s license. Otherwise you need to print a PDF form, fill it out, and send it to your local board of elections. Let’s think that part over.
What if you recently moved to Ohio (obeying the 30 day residence requirement) but haven’t changed your ID’s over? What if you don’t drive and don’t have a State ID? How about if you don’t have a printer? What if you’re using a public computer that won’t let you print? What if you don’t know where your county “seat” is, much less the Board of Elections?
Yep, Ohio online registration is easy. Your signature from you driver’s license (or State ID) is transferred to the Board of Elections for a “signature match”. But if you don’t have those, then registering to vote is burdensome and difficult.
Purge
Here in Ohio, there is an annual “cleansing” of the voting rolls. Miss four years, and they send out a “form”. Miss the form and another two years, and you’re “purged” from the list. Infrequent voters find themselves unable to vote, even though they live at the same address.
Here in Ohio, we used to have a “golden week”, when voters could register and vote in the upcoming election on the same day. That week was dropped. Here in Ohio, every registered voter was sent an application for an absentee ballot (vote by mail). Now,you must request that application. And here in Ohio, we used to have drop boxes for absentee/mail ballots throughout the county. Now – there’s one drop box, at the County Seat.
So, “efficient” Ohio is really voter suppressed Ohio. What would happen if another 500,000 Ohioans voted? Maybe it would take longer to get election results. And the outcome of those results might be very different. Meanwhile, we have the “smoothest” election process available.
It’s easy, as long as people don’t vote.
