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Gees, Ohio Secretary of state wants to disqualify his opponent
Didn't see this coming
Apparently the Democrat is leading by 28 points in Ohio against Kenneth Blackwell. (You'll remember him from the election of 2004 Ohio voting problems) Since He's losing so much they have been looking over the Democrats application and trying to figure out out to cause the election not to happen. Fun Fun. Big surprise.
Apparently the Democrat is leading by 28 points in Ohio against Kenneth Blackwell. (You'll remember him from the election of 2004 Ohio voting problems) Since He's losing so much they have been looking over the Democrats application and trying to figure out out to cause the election not to happen. Fun Fun. Big surprise.
Comments
This might be more enlightening than your above link.
The question is this: Do people have to live where they vote? The answer is yes. The board of elections gets the final say. It is a bi-partisan body with an equal number of Republicans and Democrats. There are obvious conflicts of interest. If the decision cannot be mitigated by the board, Blackwell would not be allowed to make a ruling. Or to be more precise, he could make a ruling, but it would be almost automatically forwarded to a court setting.
"Home fraud" has been a problem in Ohio for several years. Politicians will either set up a dummy residence in a ward, or will move to a new city/council/district for the sole purpose of being elected there.
Like Hilary did in New York, when I lived there. XD
In Detroit, city firefighters were required by law to live within city limits. As this was highly undesirable, many firefighters lived in the surrounding suburbs, owning small token houses in the city. I don't see anything wrong with this.
As for politics, the idea of requiring a representative to actually live in the district they represent seems silly. The people there should have the right to vote for whomever they desire for whatever reasons they desire. If they don't want a representative who does not live in their area, then they should either not vote for him or recall him.
On this specific case, it appears that this candidate's residency situation was well known long before, and that the Republican campaign is making an issue of it for purely political reasons. They wouldn't have bothered if he were losing, and they should have settled the matter earlier if their intentions were pure.
"Ohio law doesn’t require a person to be registered to vote at their primary residence."
"Ohio law anticipates that individuals may have more than one residence in the state and may choose where they wish to be registered."
"Strickland has been up front about his living arrangements since becoming the area’s congressman."
The issue of where he is registered to vote is irrelevant. The only argument is thus whether or not his residence in the district counts as a residence, and there doesn't appear to be any legal reason it does not.
The allegations against him certainly don't appear to have been made in good faith.
§ 731.02. Qualifications of members of legislative authority.
 Members of the legislative authority at large shall have resided in their respective cities, and members from wards shall have resided in their respective wards, for at least one year immediately preceding their election.
This is the basis for the home fraud argument. While it specifically addresses legislative members of municipal governments, court rulings have expanded its sphere of influence to include all elections.
I somewhat agree with you that voters should have the right to elect whomever they desire. But that is simply not a reality in Ohio right now.
It would be interesting to test the boundaries of that assertion, though. The Constitution limits the presidency to natural citizens (no matter what the folks at Movies You Should See said about Arnold). By your reasoning, should foreigners be allowed to run for president?
I have spent some of this morning reading up on the issue and looking at the Ohio laws and constitution, and it seems the law supports Strickland, if only technically. The issue is not really "does Strickland live in the place he votes", but "is he legally registered to vote". Ohio requires anyone running for governor to be a resident of the state (check) and a "qualified elector", which means he has to have been registered to vote in Ohio for thirty days before the election. (OH Const. Art. V, §1, OH Const. Art. XV, §4). [1] The complaint -- and the republican members of the board -- want to retroactively invalidate his voter's registration. Nice of them to wait until fewer than 30 days before the election.
The actual controversy is the legitimacy of his registration. In the Morning Journal News article, one of the Republican members of the county elections board wanted to add criteria to the state's requirements for "residency" to take into account where Strickland pays the local city income tax. The board's legal advisor said -- correctly, no doubt --- the board didn't have the authority to add to the state's requirements. That seems obvious enough.
The state's requirements for determining a voter's residency in a county in Ohio are not very stringent. The law specifically says that he does not lose his residency in the state, or in a county of the state, just by moving, so long as he "intends to return" to that place[2]. He could just say that; it might even be true. When I applied for California residency status in the 90's so my wife and I could pay in-state tuition for our respective schools, we fully intended to stay in California afterwards, but the job in New Mexico came up when I graduated. years (and many California tax dollars paid) later. Were this to go to court, the GOP guys will lose. This is a disingenuous extension of Rym's argument. Foreigners cannot run for president because the law specifically excludes them from the office. Maybe they should be, but the law would need changing. Similarly, Strickland meets the requirements of the state of Ohio for being registered to vote, and has for thirty days before the election, and thus meets the requirements of an elector. He is therefore a legal candidate for governor. It could be argued that the law's residency requirements should be tightened up, but that is for the legislature. It is certainly not a job for two GOP guys on a county elections board, along with Strickland's GOP opponent.
Cheers,
Hank
[1] This from Ohio's Candidate Requirement Guide available here. The Ohio Constitution is available here
[2] The relevant law here is the scarily-titled Ohio Revised Code, Title XXXV, §3503.02, Paragraph (B), here
"Shown are (from left) Larry Bowersock, board president; Nick Barborak, assistant prosecutor; Lois Gall, board director and Al Fricano, board member, as they discuss the residency of Ted Strickland" actually a camel attempting to each a child?
CIP: Remember a few years ago when Torricelli was getting killed in the polls because of a scandal and he decided to drop out less then 40 days out from the election? NJ law said no changing of the ballots yet... The Democrats went to the court and had the law "interpreted" to mean "It's not 40 days that's important, it only matters of new ballots can be printed in time."
This same issue has cropped up in FL where Foley dropped out and his replacement is trying to get signs put up near polling places so people will know a vote for Foley is really a vote for the Republican who is on the ballot. Democrats are fighting this saying the signs are a form of "electioneering" and are not allowed near a polling place. The same "40 day" law prevented the FL Republicans from getting Foley's name replaced on the ballot...
Personally, I feel you benefit the most by having a Representative or Senator from the majority party to represent you. Minority party members NEVER get the good chairmanships. With that said... If the person you have is useless you might as well get rid of them.
Also, (Jason can probably back me on this) when you see a poll that says, "people want party X out of power" you need to read more into the poll. Often times they are sampling people in an area controlled by party Y. i.e. If you ask New York city dwellers who they want to control Congress they will likely say, "the Democrats" and this will be reported as news... but, the news service conveniently leaves out the fact that the people they surveyed are already represented by the Democrats and have no effect on the voting habits of the people who want Republicans!
The problem is that polls only represent the opinions of the kind of people who are willing to answer polls. I know I'm not that kind of person; I typically screw with pollsters. Did Scrym just talk about this? I can't remember, but I know it's been a big topic in the news industry over the past year. We all know polls are shit, but we need data.
Marketing firms are reporting that the number of calls they must make to get a single person to cooperate with a poll continues to skyrocket. Political committees are by extension experiencing the same problems. In the suburban countywhere I live and work, population roughly 250,000, it is impossible to get an accurate sampling because even a pool of 250,000 is not large enough to get a representative cross-section that won't fuck with the numbers.