'Electile dysfunction'

Editorial    Toledo Blade    09 August 2005

A STATEHOUSE cynic once described the Ohio League of Women Voters as being composed of "the Democratic wives of Republican businessmen," but over the years the league has developed a deserved reputation as a good-government group with a genuine concern for the proper conduct of elections in this state.

Now the group, joined by its Toledo affiliate, has taken this concern to a higher level, filing a lawsuit in federal court in Toledo that seeks to force Ohio to reform voting procedures that have become sloppy and disorganized over the past three decades, denying numerous citizens their constitutional right to cast ballots in federal elections.

This is not, as some will charge, a partisan jihad or an attempt to rehash controversies from the 2000 or 2004 presidential elections. The defendants are the offices of governor and secretary of state, not the individuals who occupy them. No fraud is alleged, and no monetary damages are being sought, only reversal of what the league calls "30 years of dysfunctional election administration."

These deficiencies include, the league contends, "widespread problems with the voter registration system, the absentee and provisional ballot processes, the training of poll workers, the organization of polling places and precincts, and the allocation of voting machines."

Lucas County voters have become far too familiar with the inordinate difficulty involved with registering to vote, getting an absentee ballot on time, receiving wrong information from ill-trained election workers, and then seeing some votes counted twice or not at all. But we are not alone. These are statewide problems.

Ohio once enjoyed a reputation for conducting fair elections, but several decades of official neglect and partisan tinkering with the rules have clouded that good name. And even though trustworthy elections are crucial to the democratic process, too often the institutions that run them get short shrift when it comes to personnel and adequate funding.

As we have previously argued, Ohio would be better served by a professional, nonpartisan bureaucracy to run elections. The current partisan method of appointing election officials has the advantage of a built-in watchdog procedure, but it tends to exclude participation by third parties and independents, a serious flaw in a democracy. Rather than partisan advantage, the object of the elections system should be ensuring that everyone qualified to vote can do so and have their ballot counted accurately.

While no voting system can function perfectly all the time, many of the barriers to proper election administration that have cropped up in Ohio can be weeded out if the League of Women Voters' lawsuit gets its proper day in court.