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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsPurged from voting rolls while deployed, Ohio vet demands answers
Purged from voting rolls while deployed, Ohio vet demands answersBy Derek Hawkins January 11 at 5:02 AM WP
Every year, Ohio officials scrub an untold number of names from state voter rolls under an aggressive and, some argue, unconstitutional policy that purges people who fail to vote in consecutive elections.
Joe Helle, the Democratic mayor of Oak Harbor, a small village near Lake Erie, says he was once among the disenfranchised. On Wednesday, in a dramatic exchange at the steps of the U.S. Supreme Court, he confronted the man he says was ultimately responsible for twice barring him from casting ballots.
The moment was more than six years in the making. In 2011, Helle, an Army veteran, returned home from tours in Iraq and Afghanistan and tried to vote in a local election, only to be told that poll workers couldnt find his name. A couple of months later, in the general election, he was blocked again. This time, board of elections officials revealed he had been removed from the states roll due to inactivity.
I started crying, Helle told The Washington Post. To come home after defending that fundamental right and to be told that I couldnt exercise it, that was heartbreaking.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2018/01/11/an-army-vet-was-purged-from-ohios-voter-rolls-now-a-mayor-he-confronted-the-official-in-charge/?tid=sm_fb&utm_term=.ad30bf3788b4
GarColga
(124 posts)we have the same policy of purging inactive voters. However if you show up at the polling place and find you are not in the poll book, you can register right then and there and get a ballot. Easy peasy.
workinclasszero
(28,270 posts)Looks like.
Roland99
(53,342 posts)workinclasszero
(28,270 posts)Red states making up BS to disenfranchise citizens as they go.
rainin
(3,011 posts)or veterans. I am the lone dem in my circle of military families. They are largely Trump supporters, Fox viewers, and outraged that someone would not stand for the Anthem.
I would love to see the truth finally reach the military. We can't wait until something happens personally to each one of them.
Curious, is Rush Limbaugh still on Armed Forces Radio?
Farmer-Rick
(10,207 posts)I voted absentee in PA and either the mail was too slow for the registration to make it there in time or the actual ballot never arrived in time. They changed the rules so often that it was difficult to meet the deadlines.
This was back in the late 1980s. Since then, I don't let the the government stop me from voting. I get hassled because I insist on using my military ID but we vote here in TN on those broken voting machines so no telling if my votes are ever counted. But I go through the pretense, just in case.