'Challengers' - Blackwell VII.B

Knowing that the odds were stacked against him Blackwell brought out the big guns by sending to the Controlling Board a March 3 letter signed by the sponsors of HAVA 2002: Rep Bob Ney (R), Rep Steny Hoyner (D), Senator Mitch MConnell (R), and Christopher Dodd (D).

These sponsors argued in their letter

"Not only are such [voter-verified paper record] proposals premature, but they would undermine essential HAVA provisions, such as the disability and language minority access requirements and could result in more, rather than less, voter disenfranchiement and error... [T]he propoasals mandating a voter-verified paper record would essentially take the most advance generations of election technologies and systems available and reduce them to little more than ballot printers. The current proposals would do nothing to ensure greater trust in vote tabulations, but would be guaranteed to impose steep costs on States and localities and introduce new complications into the voting process.

So a bipartisan commission in a very intense and divided election year sets aside their party differences and explains that the action currently being cosidered by both the Ohio Legislature and the Controlling Board would disenfranchise minorities and the handicapped, increase the cost for taxpayers, make the e-voting machines nothing more than printers, and provide not one stitch more of security.

* Yet the task of overcoming misinformation accepted by so many would be huge, especially since Ohio's Senate President Doug White and Ballot Security Chairman Randy Gardner had publicly expressed their doubts about Blackwell's haste. With such china-shop egos as Democractic Senator Bob Hagan, who refused to deal with any of Blackwell's 'minions' over that large request, the money was prevented from being sent.

* Then on March 23rd Blackwell sent out a missive to the delaying counties and told them to make a decision by Tues the 31st at 10:00 a.m. or it would be made for them.

* On April 8, however, the "Ballot Security Commission decided in a non-binding 7-1 vote (Chairman & Senator Randall Gardner, R-Bowling Green) decided to decline the 122 million dollars set aside for purchasing e-voting machines. The committee demanded voter-verified paper receipts

* Dr. Dan Tokaji, assisstant professor at OSU's Moritz College of Law, advocated as the lone voice in the wilderness,

"The state of Ohio is presently in violation of the equal-protection clause and Voting Rights Act. It's incredible that the state of Ohio is dragging its feet now for four years and will continue to disenfranchise voters. There are clearly voting systems that are better than the hanging chad punch-card, but none of those problems would be solved with the voter-verifiable paper trail. Some people have become so myopically focused on the paper trail they are ignoring the procedural problems which are much more likely."

* Yet drag their feet they did, preferring the chaos of the hanging chad to newer and better voting machines.

* Blackwell's response to the whole catastrophe on April 9 was

It's moving forward. Folks who should have started paying attention 18 months ago, started paying attention 18 days ago."

* Ten days later on the 19th Blackwell made another appeal to the Controlling Board to release the money.

* The end was in sight and the machines were almost ready to be installed. Suddenly the 125th Senate signed H.B. 262 on April 28. This House Bill, formerly introduced on Aug 14, 2003 (approved by the House on 1/21/04 by a 59 - 38 vote), took a broad elections bill and made it define what precisely a voter-verified paper trail was. The bill also gave fund control to the Controlling Board. Grandstanding Senators voted for the bill by a margin of 93 - 3. The turning point came ,according the Akron Beacon Journal's March 5th edition, sometime in Febrary when Senators Fedor and Kimberly Zurz won over House Majority Whip Jeff Jacobson to their bill.

*What formerly had been a blank check for the SoS, (see H.B. 5 from the 124th Assembly) and slightly lowered his authority. For one the Senate defined the voter-verified paper trail as

"a physical paper printout on which the voter's ballot choices, as registered by a direct recording electronic voting machine, are recorded. The voter shall be permitted to visually or audibly inspect the contents of the physical paper printout."

*The Bill also moved funds from one controlled by the Controlling Board to special election funds set up by the HAVA 2002 legislation. Hence, some 27,500,000 tax-payer dollars would be moved from Fund 3AA to 3AR and nearly $80,000,000 would move from 3AA to 3AS and an additional 27 million would be distributed for voter-education programs and poll-worker training funds. With regard to the afore-mentioned voter-education program the Senate voted to cut the 15.3 million dollars down to 5 million dollars.

* On May 3 the Controlling Board approved a $38 million dollar request for implementation of the voting machines. Rather amazingly Pinnochio-nosed Senator Bill Harris (R-Ashland)managed to describe with a straight face, what was the aim of the legislature as "It was never the intent of the legislature to install or delay this issue."

* On May 8 Governor Taft signed Jim Carmichael's (R-Wooster) H.B. 262, which more less gave a political spanking to SoS Blackwell. The press release claims that Bills would go into effect 90 days hence, but the 124th legislature's website claimed that the Bill became law immediately. So one of the group is being disingenuous, but neither cares because the attempt is to run down SoS Blackwell. Since this bill was a Trojan Horse gift, the e-machines would prove to be impossible to implement since none of the contrancted machines had such capabilities.

* Earlier a 109 page Speaker Householder memo revealed that Speaker Householder's staff would have a two-pronged strategy:
1) Householder would spend some 8.5 million to repell Blackwell's initiative, which was attempting to end Gov. Taft's and the Republican Legislature's sale's tax increse.
2) The aides of Householder would attempt to drive up Blackwell's negatives with adds and denuciations.
Blackwell responded to Taft, Householder, and Bennett with a fundraising letter and phone interviews in which he said,

"Given your obvious rancor, all attempts by you to play the grand conciliator is not only useless, but disingenuous in the extreme. After playing around the edges for months and years, your true spots have finally come to light. Your 'stab in the back' comment is final proof you have chosen a path for the party which does not include me. I also remember your attack on me last September [2003]. At least you are consistent!"

* With such friends as Bennett, Taft, and Householder, who needs enemies?

* In a phone interview Blackwell described the then struggle in the following manner:

"I'm engaged in a struggle for the heart and soul of the party. [Bennett] take[s] the Republican Party down the path of high taxes and big government and runaway spending."

* Things looked gloomy for the Aragorn Blackwell.

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