“I was furious when I found out that my vote was thrown out just because I made a very minor and obvious mistake,” Franklin County resident Kenneth Boggs wrote in a signed affidavit. (He wrote “10” instead of “6” in the slot for his birth month. It was October 2014 at the time. Everything else on his absentee ballot was copacetic.)
More than 1 million absentee ballots have been requested in Ohio for the Nov. 8, 2016, general election. Secretary of State Jon Husted actively encourages the use of absentee ballots (surely you’ve received an application in the mail by now.) Husted, the named defendant in a lawsuit that recently found many of his voter disenfranchisement policies unconstitutional, oversees plenty of tricks across the state’s 88 counties, each meant to fuck with the official vote count. The lawsuit is moving forward in federal appeals court, but the clock is ticking.
Here we are, sitting in a “battleground” state a few weeks out from one of the great fulcrums in modern American politics. The right to vote is sacred territory. It’s not for nothing that powerful state leaders have ensconced that right with every ounce of confusion and misinformation they can muster.
Story coming soon at clevescene.com.
Sandy 