True the Vote Observers Barred from Franklin County Polling Places

Source: Columbia Dispatch

True the Vote observers barred from Franklin County polling places

By: Darrel Rowland
The Columbus Dispatch - November 06, 2012 6:11 PM

A Houston-based group that wanted to monitor 30 Franklin County polling places for potential voter fraud was thwarted yesterday by the county elections board.

True the Vote - whose Ohio branch is called the Voter Integrity Project - was denied status as official observers because at least most of the candidates who supported the organization's effort withdrew their backing. State law allows groups of at least five candidates to assign poll observers, and the group originally had obtained signatures from a bipartisan group of six candidates for county office.
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There were charges yesterday that the candidates' names had either been falsified or merely copied on forms requesting observer status for the True the Vote at several Franklin County polling places. Many are in predominantly African American neighborhoods.

Elections Director William A. Anthony Jr. said the group may be investigated for possibly falsifying documents after today's election. The forms themselves warn that elections falsification is a fifth-degree felony.

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One person told the elections board that she attended True the Vote training sessions and the observers were instructed to use cameras to intimidate voters when they enter the polling place, record their names on tablet computers and send them to a central location, and attempt to stop questionably qualified voters before they could get to a voting machine.

Read more: http://dispatchpolitics.dispatch.com/content/blogs/the-daily-briefing/2012/11/6-november-2012---ttv-denied.html