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Guns Guns Guns
Guest
No Republican candidate has ever won the Presidency without carrying Ohio, and recent polls show Barack Obama and Mitt Romney almost even in the state.
Every vote may matter, including those cast by the seven members of the Sharp family—Teresa, her husband, four grown children, and an elderly aunt.
An official summons from the Hamilton County Board of Elections arrived in the mail last month. Hamilton County, which includes Cincinnati, is one of the most populous regions of the most fiercely contested state in the 2012 election.
The letter, which cited arcane legal statutes and was printed on government letterhead, was dated September 4th. “You are hereby notified that your right to vote has been challenged by a qualified elector,” it said.
“The Hamilton County Board of Elections has scheduled a hearing regarding your right to vote on Monday, September 10th, 2012, at 8:30 A.M. . . . You have the right to appear and testify, call witnesses and be represented by counsel.”
The Ohio Voter Integrity Project, which polices voter-registration rolls in search of “electoral irregularities,” raised questions about her eligibility after identifying her house as a vacant lot.
The Sharp household had first been identified as suspicious by computer software that had been provided to the Ohio Voter Integrity Project by a national organization called True the Vote, founded by a Tea Party activist, Catherine Engelbrecht.
The software, which has been distributed to similar groups around the country, is used to flag certain households, including those with six or more registered voters. This approach pinpoints lower-income residents, students, and extended families.
In Hamilton County alone, the new groups have challenged more than a thousand names.
In Ohio, if voters whose eligibility has been challenged come to the polls in November, they may be forced to use a provisional ballot, which will be counted only if officials sanction it.
As Bill Clinton put it, “This is not rocket science. They are trying to make the 2012 electorate look more like the 2010 electorate”, when many minority voters stayed home, “than the 2008 electorate.”
Every vote may matter, including those cast by the seven members of the Sharp family—Teresa, her husband, four grown children, and an elderly aunt.
An official summons from the Hamilton County Board of Elections arrived in the mail last month. Hamilton County, which includes Cincinnati, is one of the most populous regions of the most fiercely contested state in the 2012 election.
The letter, which cited arcane legal statutes and was printed on government letterhead, was dated September 4th. “You are hereby notified that your right to vote has been challenged by a qualified elector,” it said.
“The Hamilton County Board of Elections has scheduled a hearing regarding your right to vote on Monday, September 10th, 2012, at 8:30 A.M. . . . You have the right to appear and testify, call witnesses and be represented by counsel.”
The Ohio Voter Integrity Project, which polices voter-registration rolls in search of “electoral irregularities,” raised questions about her eligibility after identifying her house as a vacant lot.
The Sharp household had first been identified as suspicious by computer software that had been provided to the Ohio Voter Integrity Project by a national organization called True the Vote, founded by a Tea Party activist, Catherine Engelbrecht.
The software, which has been distributed to similar groups around the country, is used to flag certain households, including those with six or more registered voters. This approach pinpoints lower-income residents, students, and extended families.
In Hamilton County alone, the new groups have challenged more than a thousand names.
In Ohio, if voters whose eligibility has been challenged come to the polls in November, they may be forced to use a provisional ballot, which will be counted only if officials sanction it.
As Bill Clinton put it, “This is not rocket science. They are trying to make the 2012 electorate look more like the 2010 electorate”, when many minority voters stayed home, “than the 2008 electorate.”