How Blackwell sabotaged the democratic vote in Ohio

This is as nauseating as it is infuriating. Makes me feel as if we are living in fascist Germany.


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...To make Kerry's odds even tougher, the man running the game - Secretary of State Ken Blackwell -also co-chairs the Ohio committee to re-elect George Bush. A former mayor of Cincinnati, Undersecretary of HUD, and U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Human Rights Commission, Blackwell is one of the national GOP's most prominent African-American officials and a leading candidate to replace Bob Taft as Governor of Ohio. More to the point, he publicly spearheaded Republican efforts in the state to reduce the number of his fellow African-Americans whose votes would go to the Democrats

In some cases, the courts over-ruled him, and - much to their credit - most black voters stood up to his harassing tactics. But Blackwell never stopped trying.

As chief election officer, he decreed that voters, if challenged, could cast provisional ballots only at their correct precinct. Previously, they could vote anywhere in the county in which they were registered. When a lower court over-ruled him, he appealed the decision and got his restriction reinstated. This might, in part, explain why Ohio now has some 100,000 fewer provisional ballots than many Democrats expected.

Less successfully, Blackwell tried to enforce an outdated rule that polling stations could recognize voter registrations only if printed on heavy bond paper, even though local election boards had officially approved lighter-weigh forms. Had the courts not stopped him, this would have kept thousands of newly registered Democrats from voting.

Similarly, Blackwell refused a request from the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) to inform former felons that, according to Ohio law, they had every right to vote.

He presided over efforts to send massive numbers of poll-watchers into predominantly African-American precincts to challenge prospective voters. Again a Federal Court curtailed the effort, which looked calculated to slow down the process so much that prospective voters would turn away in frustration.

He failed to provide African-American precincts with sufficient voting machines, which added to the incredibly long lines waiting to voting. Many people stood for hours, and no one knows how many walked away...



http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/111104A.shtml

He makes me want to puke.

Not only to this country but to African-Americans lets hope he can not be elected dog catcher after this election!

He 'made his nut' in Cincinnati running as a Democrat because he knew nobody would vote for him if he ran as a Republican. Once he'd won a few elections as a Dem, he changed horses and became a raging right-wing neocon. Anybody really think his original devotion to the Democratic Party might have been somewhat weak?

Tells you we Dems need to vet our candidates for office better!

Secty of state should not have any ties to national parties on issues like this. Talk about conflict of interest.

I think there must be a special room in hell reserved for people like Clarence Thomas and Ken Blackwell who should know better than to abandon their roots for personal gain.

wrong precinct.

With counties constantly moving around polling places, it's only fair that people are allowed the same leeway.

What a disgusting POS

Nader called him an 'uncle tom'. I wasn't sure that was all PC but no one at the press conference raised an eyebrow.

Definition: a servile black character in a novel by Harriet Beecher Stowe
contemptuous name for a Black man who is abjectly servile and deferential to Whites


I need to get out more often.

:-)

but I won't disagree if Nader's willing to put his ass on the line to say it himself. As I noted upthread, he started out in Cinci as a Dem. I'm as pissed about him changing parties as anything -- I think it was all choreographed because in the late seventies or early eighties, he wouldn't have been able to be elected dogcatcher in Hamilton County as a minority Republican. So he ran as a Dem until he got some cachet built up, and then jumped parties.