Update, March 27: The Columbus Dispatch reports statewide officials say prosecution for Limbaugh is very unlikely: “lying through your teeth and being stupid isn’t a crime.” Ari Melber’s Limbaugh’s Lying Voters Under Investigation on The Nation’s Campaign Matters blog has a lot more.
Kim Zetter’s The Mysterious Case of Ohio’s Voting Machines, on Wired’s THREAT LEVEL, has context for Ohio in general. From earlier in the month, Lingering questions in Ohio and Uncounted delegates & Ohio’s delegate math on Dan Tokaji’s excellent Equal Votes Blog cover the equally-important non-Limbaugh issues.
(originally posted March 7)
Art House Queen’s picture of the streets blocked surrounding the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections symbolizes voter disenfranchisement across the state. They ran out of ballots in Sandusky County and Franklin County; voting machines broke down in Montgomery County and no doubt elsewhere; a dozen computer memory cards spent the night in the back of a sherriff’s van in Lucas County before being counted; in Obama stronghold Cuyahoga County, voter privacy was compromised and huge numbers of provisional ballots still haven’t been counted.
The Secretary of State is “very pleased”, citing it as improvement over 2004 despite horrible weather; and very importantly, the move to paper ballots in Cuyahoga County went well, and the state’s pressuring Diebold to refund the $21 million for the decertified voting machines. Democracy in America, 2008. Nothing to see here, move along, move along …
Except …
This time there may be a new wrinkle. Scott Isaacs has been following the issues in Butler County, and broke an interesting story: under Ohio law, Republicans who followed Rush Limbaugh’s call to “pimp yourself for a day and vote for Hillary” appear to have committed election falsification, a felony, punishable by six to twelve months in prison and a fine of up to $2,500.
Scott’s got quotes from the Ohio election code, and links out to a discussion board with several Republicans saying things like “I have voted for the Demonicrat Hillary Clinton. may God have mercy on my soul”, and
It was painful…
At least I didn’t have to sign a “Pledge of Allegiance” to the Democratic party hahah
A friend that works with me (from Portage County) had to sign a “Pledge of Allegiance” to the Democrat party upon receiving the Democrat Ballot. It has wordage in it similar to the American pledge of allegiance, promising to uphold the standards of the Democratic party before all others..or some crap. He said he felt like he was signing the Communist Manifesto haha
What the heck is that? LOL
It’s the law, dude, and you just confessed on the Internet to breaking it. Just in case there was any ambiguity, somebody posted the election code, and this poster and another said “guilty as charged.” LOL.
Somebody else commented about the pledge supporting the principles of the Democrat party: “I said that would be easy, because they don’t have any. Everybody got a good chuckle as there isn’t a Democrat within 5 miles any direction from where I vote. I then proceeded to cast my vote for Hillary Clinton.” Hmm.
In the comments on Scott’s column, OHJP writes
I was a Presiding Judge in the Ohio Primary and I know many people “crossed parties” and told me they were doing it. I explained that if they were doing it, they were committing election fraud, a felony. Most insisted that they intended to vote Democrat in the fall (clearly uncomfortable but I could not call them liars, as we have no written affidavits anymore), although one man, new to this country, insisted that he was a republican but was voting democrat because he got a PHONE CALL that told him to do it…. I wish we still had the affidavit system, or had something that said that by signing the poll book you were swearing to your affiliation as well as your identity.
Could be interesting. Who knows whether the results, in conjunction with provisional ballots, will be enough to effect the delegate assignments; with luck, we’ll find out. With Limbaugh intensifying the crossover campaign in the ramp to the March 24 deadline for registration in Pennsylvania, we haven’t heard the last of this. And there’s a very interesting question underlying this:
Is Rush Limbaugh, who encouraged his listeners to commit the felony of election falsification, criminally liable?
We shall see …
PS: Some good news: the switch to paper ballots in Cuyahoga County appears to have gone well on the whole, other than running out – a problem that appears solvable if elected officials do math better in the future and stop complaining about having to allow people their right to vote.
jon | 07-Mar-08 at 10:34 am | Permalink
Here’s an excerpt of the comment I posted on Scott’s blog, with suggestions on getting the word out:
jon | 07-Mar-08 at 12:14 pm | Permalink
Here’s the digg link for Scott’s story.
jon | 10-Mar-08 at 9:23 am | Permalink
Scott’s story got a brief mention and link from Brad Friedman’s voting rights blog — not sure what it has to do with the rest of the thread, but any publicity is good publicity!
And there’s a thread on Bloggers for Obama about this post and art house queen’s.
Oh, and Cuyahoga County is demanding a refund for the decertified Diebold machines (the reason they used paper ballots). $21M. Hopefully to be applied to future, cleaner, elections. Props to the election officials there, and for Secretary of State Brunner for backing them.
jon | 10-Mar-08 at 9:17 pm | Permalink
A friend whose mom worked the election in Ohio, and said she saw life-long die-hard republicans filling out democratic ballots — a noticeable percentage of the vote in her small rural town.
jon | 10-Mar-08 at 9:29 pm | Permalink
Steven Rosenfeld’s Alternet story, while skeptical that the Limbaugh effect influenced the overall voting total, does have some interesting tidbits, especially
Susan Davis, in the Wall Street Journal’s WSJ.com, looks at exit polls for Texas (where crossover voting is legal) to estimate Limbaugh’s influence: only 53% of Republicans who voted in the Democratic primary supported Obama, as opposed to 72% in Virginia and Wisconsin. With Republicans making up 9% of the electorate, this is about a 1.7% difference. The Clermont and Warren County numbers imply that it may be even higher in Ohio.
Update on March 11: I should point out that this is the maximum impact, and doesn’t take into account that these states may well have more conservative voters who are crossing over legitimately, and tending to favor Clinton as her rhetoric shifts in that direction … or people who would have done this anyhow, Rush or no. If I were to guess, maybe .5% on a statewide level. It’s likely to be higher in certain areas, though, so it still could shift some delegates.
jon | 12-Mar-08 at 3:52 pm | Permalink
Gregory Korte’s pre-election Crossover voting has baggage: Prosecution possible for mischief has more:
and …
jon | 12-Mar-08 at 6:50 pm | Permalink
A link on Moms who think led me to Amanda Garrett’s story in the Cleveland Plain Dealer. They interviewed several local voters, including five who acknowledged lying. Also:
And it sounds like local politicians are taking this seriously — in a commendably non-partisan way:
jon | 12-Mar-08 at 8:04 pm | Permalink
My comment in a couple of threads on Kos(1, 2)
jon | 13-Mar-08 at 7:33 am | Permalink
In response to one of my comments on Kos, somebody posted a screed with a title “Obama supporters panic, throw hissy fits”, with something along the lines of how Obama had broken ranks with the rainbow coalition and now that the nomination is slipping away, the sky is falling.
Yeah. Right.
For some reason a lot of “progressives” are threatened by attention to voting rights issues; Kossack DHinMI’s nasty attack on voting rights advocate Brad Friedman was another good example. It’s rare to see it coupled with such unawareness of the strategic situation, though: Obama’s position has gotten steadily stronger and stronger over the last month — including on March 4, as Clinton failed to make a significant dent in his lead as time continues to run out for her.
And, um, shouldn’t Jesse Jackson have something to say about whether or not Obama’s splitting the rainbow coalition?
Sheesh.
jon | 13-Mar-08 at 7:41 am | Permalink
Kim Zetter’s Did Limbaugh’s Crossover Voters Break Ohio Law? on Wired’s THREAT LEVEL blog looks the details of the election falsification law.
Kim quotes Dan Tokaji, a law professor at Ohio State University’s Moritz College of Law who specializes in election law, as saying it’s debatable whether Ohio’s law is enforceable and says that even if it is enforceable the likelihood that anyone would be prosecuted under it is “infinitesimally small.” He notes that many poll workers didn’t have voters sign an affidavit. [Interestingly, the presiding judge I quoted above bemoaned the lack of an affidavit — inconsistent instructions to poll workers?] And
We shall see … it’s not clear whether Dan had read the the Cincinatti Enquirer pre-election article with the Republican prosecutor saying that if the Board of Elections referred an issue to them, prosecution was substantially more likely if it like it was a part of an organized effort to tamper with the election — or the Cleveland Plain Dealer article with multiple voters admitting to lying and a Board of Elections member saying he wanted to look into it more.
Here was my comment:
jon | 13-Mar-08 at 8:04 am | Permalink
Actually, that comment of mine on the Wired blog had some very unfair snark directed at the mainstream media, which has in fact taken the lead on this story. This thread gives a pretty clear history: the Cincinnati Enquirer and TV stations were on this before the election, and the Cleveland Plain Dealer did a major investigative piece after.
Social networks have also been discussing this, with threads in the One Million Strong for Obama group on Facebook (which is where I saw Scott’s piece after he posted it — and where some of the key links have come from); and it’s now starting to hit the discussion boards.
By contrast, the blogosphere has been virtually silent. As of today, a Google blog search for Ohio election falsification reports only 185 hits. The Unapologetic Mexican’s Chattering Felons for Clinton covered this on March 9; other than that, Kim’s, on Wired THREAT LEVEL, is the only high-profile mention I could find (the Jed Report and poblano on Kos threads only discuss the impact, not the legality).
Even voting-related blogs like John Gideon’s Voters Unite!, Dan Tokaji’s Equal Vote Blog, and Rick Hasen’s Election Law Blog, have all been silent; Brad Friedman’s BRAD BLOG had one brief link to Scott’s Newsvine column in a story on voting machines in Illinois, but that’s it. What’s with that?
Disappointing.
Thank heavens for social networks and the much-maligned MSM. Alas, I can’t edit my post on Wired’s blog, but I did remove the “(eventually)” from my update at the top of the story here.
jon | 13-Mar-08 at 10:29 am | Permalink
The Cleveland Plain Dealer editorializes in favor of dropping the pledges (“loyalty oaths”) in future elections:
Meanwhile, in Mississippi, crossover voting (some of which may also be illegal) may have cost Obama many as five delegates. No projections yet on the effect of Republicans re-registering as Democrats for the upcoming Pennsylvania primary — registration closes on March 24.
jon | 25-Mar-08 at 9:34 am | Permalink
The story continues to get coverage, with Joe Gullen’s Cuyahoga County Board of Elections begins investigation of primary crossover voters in the Cleveland Plain Dealer and Steven Rosenberg’s Will Rush Limbaugh Be Indicted for Voter Fraud?. A report is expected on March 31; prosecutions are considered unlikely.
Ari Melber’s Limbaugh’s Lying Voters Under Investigation on The Nation’s Campaign Matters blog is a pretty definitive update, with the best set of links I’ve seen yet. It also describes Limbaugh’s outrage after Fox’s Julie Banderas said “Republican shock jocks” were possibly “anti-American” for urging people to break the law — and his respsone after Ari discussed this on CSPAN: “Stuff it, pal, stuff it!” There’s also some valuable context:
We shall see.
jon | 26-Mar-08 at 10:33 pm | Permalink
The thread on The Nation now has 481 comments. There’s also a 100+-comment thread on Facebook, although a lot of it wanders into different subjects.
In the rather disappointing thread in the Politics tribe, where only a couple people other than me posted, I commented:
Here’s some more details, cut-and-paste (with a few minor edits) from an email I sent some friends:
jon | 28-Mar-08 at 10:58 am | Permalink
The Columbus Dispatch reports statewide officials say prosecution for Limbaugh is very unlikely: “lying through your teeth and being stupid isn’t a crime.”
What’s strange to me is that people keep talking about how hard it is to prove intent. I certainly agree in general, but I’ve seen reports of at least a dozen admissions of guilt — on the internet, in newspaper interviews, notes on pledge cards. Investigative boards have subpena powers. Why are they choosing not to look at the crimes that people have confessed to? And why are they using “difficulty of proving voter intent” as a reason not to look at the bigger picture?
Chris Hutcherson | 03-Oct-08 at 1:00 pm | Permalink
What happens if two candidates get the same number of votes?