The folks at Virginia-based blog The Motley Moose point out startling news coming out of the State of Ohio- are we in for a repeat of 2004?:
About one-third of the absentee ballot applications received at the Hamilton County Board of Elections have been ruled invalid because Republican Sen. John McCain’s presidential campaign printed a version of the form with an extra, unneeded box on it.
Just wait! It gets better!
It turns out the problem is that the McCain campaign added a box on these forms that required you to check it to confirm you were an eligible voter. Yep, that's right- check here if you are eligible to vote. I guess the act of actually requesting an absentee ballot doesn't qualify that. And if you don't check it...
... bingo. You get the picture. And the McCain campaign has sent out over a MILLION of these forms. The State of Ohio and the local election boards, understandably, don't want to pay to fix the mistake on this- how much d'you want to bet the McCain campaign wants to pay to fix it?
Over seven-hundred and fifty absentee applications have been rejected so far. If we're counting on absentee and early voting to help us mobilize our GOTV effort, then this is a clear and present danger to it.
It looks like these were sent to the general public, meaning all Ohio voters would be affected. And again, remember, these were the applications for absentee ballots... but if you're going to be gone, and there's a process to have to do everything all over again... how many votes are we going to lose, especially with a million in the pipline?
We need to get the word out! Make sure our boys and girls on the ground know about these sorts of shenanigans, and can take action to fix it! Jennifer Brunner, the Ohio Secretary of State is already involved, but we need to get the media's attention on this one. We're gonna need every single vote we can get this election cycle. We can ill afford another debacle like Florida, and we all know the shenanigans that were played in Ohio the last go-round.
Spread the word! And a special thanks to the folks at The Motley Moose! There's no way we could keep up with all the shenanigans the McCain folks are pulling without independent blogs adding their voices!
UPDATE:
From the comments, thanks to Chumley, seems like this is the tip of the iceburg:
See HERE.
Quote:
Just listening to the substitute host, Lee Rayburn, on the Thom Hartmann show:
"Misleading" absentee ballot applications are being mailed out by the McCain campaign to registered Democratic voters in purple states. The return addresses are inaccurate, as well as other information. "Misleading, lying" mailers are going out in Florida and other purple states. It's a caging tactic.
Calls are coming in verifying that this is happening in small towns, as well as larger ones.
UPDATE 2
Wow, my first time on the rec list! Thanks, guys! For someone who sneered at Democrats less than four years ago, and who was an active RedState poster less than two, it's a hell of an honor! There's power in numbers, we need to make damn sure we're letting people know this BS is going on.
UPDATE 3
Edit: In the comments below, BerkeyBee mentions that:
... the Republicans mailed out requests for ballot applications to Republicans. Jennifer Brunner, the Democratic Secty of State, ruled the applications were ILLEGAL, meaning that the Hamilton county BOE could not send out absentee ballots to Republicans.
But instead of just requiring that the ballot applications be thrown away (which is what Ken Blackwell would have required), they are notifying these people that their applications were invalid.
The Republicans are claiming that they have used these forms before.
So, in Ohio at least, we may just have a case of extreme irony and misfortune amongst McCain's base. As much as I enjoy schadenfreude (sp), no matter the party, election fraud needs to be stopped. As as chumley pointed out, this is happening elsewhere. Since Ohio is a key state in this election, we need to be aware of similar things happening in the future.