Ohio ballot battle heats up
Nov. 2 outlook: more poll workers, political watchdogs
Friday, October 15, 2004
Diane Suchetka and Scott Hiaasen
Cleveland Plain Dealer

Ohio's polls will be packed on Election Day.

Even without the voters.

Election monitors, election challengers and election lawyers - from across America and around the world - are headed to the Buckeye State. 
 Add campaigners, pollsters, extra poll workers and reporters from around the country and you've got a crowd.

They're coming our way because Ohio could be the battleground state that decides who will be America's next president.

And it has already had enough controversy - about punch-card machines, voter registration cards and provisional ballots - to win "The State Most Likely to be the Florida of the 2004 Election" award.

"We've got a lot of problems here," says Dan Tokaji, a voting rights lawyer and law professor at Ohio State University. "And we're a key swing state. Both of those are very good reasons for people to be focusing on Ohio."

The ultimate goal is to leave the vote up to voters and prevent the kind of legal action that forced the U.S. Supreme Court to choose America's president in 2000.

Expect the most election overseers in Ohio's eight or so largest cities, including Cleveland.

They'll be concentrated in precincts where problems are most likely to occur - precincts with large numbers of new voters, for example, or where problems were reported in 2000.

So who will voters in those precincts face in the gantlet from parking lot to voting booth?

Election challengers, for one.

They represent a political party or a group of candidates and can try to keep you, or anyone else, from voting. To challenge you, all they do is tell a poll worker they don't believe that you're old enough, a U.S. citizen or a resident of the precinct you're voting in.

Both the Democrats and Republicans say they don't intend to prevent anyone from voting. They're bringing in challengers, they say, so they can observe what's happening inside polling places and prevent problems before they occur - and to keep an eye on challengers from the other party.

Ohio law allows only poll workers, voters, challengers and police officers inside the polls. Local elections officials worry that challengers will slow down the voting, making long lines longer and discouraging some voters.

"We do not - and I want to emphasize this - we do not plan to do any challenging," said David Sullivan, who has taken a two-month leave from his job in Massachusetts to become the Democratic Voter Protection Coordinator in Ohio.

"Our goal is to only prevent problems," said Sullivan, the lawyer who worked in Florida on behalf of Al Gore after the 2000 election.

Republicans haven't ruled out challenging voters, but they say it's not their primary focus.

"Our goal is to protect the integrity of Ohio's election laws," said Jason Mauk of the Ohio Republican Party. "We don't want this election to be decided by a bunch of lawyers."

Many of the challengers will be lawyers or law students who are volunteering and traveling here from out of state. Columbia University, for example, has trained about 1,000 New York law students, lawyers and other election overseers on the laws of Ohio, Pennsylvania and other states.

Lawyers and law students will serve as election monitors, too. They will be stationed outside the polls to answer questions and help solve problems.

Some will be volunteers for the Republican Party, some for the Democratic Party and some for bigger campaigns organized by groups such as the Ohio Voter Protection Coalition.

That group is made up of other liberal public-interest groups such as the Urban League, the NAACP, the AFL-CIO and the League of Women Voters.

How the monitors work will vary, but most will be at precincts where problems are expected. In the Cleveland area, that will likely be on the East Side of the city and in Warrensville Heights and Bedford Heights, where Democrat-friendly independent groups have registered thousands of new voters.

The coalition hopes to recruit thousands of volunteers to work across the state. In Cuyahoga County, it's targeting 180 polling places in Cleveland and surrounding communities.

The group's monitors will wear shirts that say, "You have the right to vote. Ask me." They'll hand out an Ohio voter "bill of rights" explaining, for example, that voters who make a mistake can get a new ballot, and who can use provisional ballots -the special ballots for voters who think they're registered but don't appear on the rolls.

And they will, like other monitors, be part of a larger network.

They'll have cell phones so they can call command centers in each city where 20 or more lawyers will be waiting to answer legal questions. Other command centers will also be staffed with volunteers, waiting at computers, ready to quickly verify a voter's precinct. And if any voters are at the wrong precinct, monitors will be available to drive them to the right one.

They'll also fill out incident reports, with times and witnesses, in case an issue leads to legal action later.

In a few polling places in Ohio you could also see international election monitors - from Ghana, India, Mexico and Australia.

"Our goal has always been to increase public confidence in the U.S. elections," said Karen Decker, program director for Fair Election International, a human-rights organization that observes elections overseas.

That group hopes to send two delegates each to Cuyahoga and Franklin counties to visit polling places and oversee the tabulation of votes on election night, though details haven't been firmed up.

In Cuyahoga County, the elections board is hiring an inspector - one additional worker - for every polling place to make sure no election laws are violated and help voters find their correct precincts. The inspectors will also make sure the poll watchers stay at least 100 feet away from the polling place, as required by law, and that they don't get in the way of voters.

Cuyahoga officials have also asked police to discreetly step up patrols around polling places.

"We explained that they would have to be visible but not intimidating," said Gwen Dillingham, deputy director of the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections.

She is expecting more than the usual number of campaigners - maybe six at a polling place. And more exit pollers and reporters, too.

Will all that oversight keep the Ohio election results out of court?

It depends, experts say, on how close the race is.

Just in case, both presidential campaigns are recruiting another group of lawyers who will be ready to descend on Ohio after the election, in case a Florida-style recount is called.