Ohio
Senate Rules Committee
Ignores all Citizen Input
in Passing ID Requirement in H.B. 3:
CASE Warns of Increased Voter Disenfranchisement, the Dangers of
Privately Run Elections, and Cancels the
Right of citizens to Challenge Federal Election Results in Ohio
courts.
From CASE (Citizens' Alliance for Secure Elections)
Contact:
Phil Fry (937) 362-4493 [email protected],
Pete Johnson (614) 846-4018 [email protected],
or
Susan Truitt (614) 270-5239 [email protected]
COLUMBUS, OH - The Rules Committee of the Ohio Senate approved H.B. 3
December 7, 2005, despite two days of strong opposition testimony.
The four Democratic committee members refused to take part in the
final
vote as a protest to the Republican steamrolling the public and their
colleagues as well.
HB3 requires a current, government issued ID with a current address and
this requirement alone will affect several hundred of thousand voters
and disenfranchise many tens of thousands of them. Students, the
elderly, youth, and recently moved families will have to produce
alternate forms of ID. The result will be confusion, frustration,
discouragement, and possibly anger directed toward the Ohio Senators
who forced this bill into law.
HB 3 makes it impossibly difficult for voting advocacy organizations to
register new voters by making the process extremely slow and expensive
and punishing workers who make a mistake with the threat of a felony
penalty. Workers who could be working state-wide are now required to
register with every Board of Elections in the state, take a test from
every board, and return any registration to the board of the newly
registered voter. This makes registration drives at gatherings like the
Ohio State Fair and similar events impossible.
HB 3 removes a process to audit the electronic voting machines which
are prone
to errors and susceptible to hacking as recognized by the recent GAO
report (see below)
HB 3 cancels our right
to
challenge federal election results.
The Ohio legislature,
while focusing their efforts on prohibiting access to voting, failed
to address a more serious concern: Electronic voting Machines. The
General Accounting
Office, (GAO) recently released a 107 page scathing report* on
electronic voting machines in our country. The report supports
what
CASE has been claiming, that
electronic voting machines are not secure, not accountable, not
transparent, not accurate, and not certifiable. A bipartisan panel
which included both Republican Congressman
James Sensenbrenner (R-WI) and Democratic Congressman John Conyers
(D-MI) released a joint news release regarding this report.
Most community news sources have not made these important findings
widely available to the public yet.
CASE advises all Ohio voters to
- call, email, or FAX your State Senator today to tell them
not to support HB 3. http://www.senate.state.oh.us/
- attend the Senate session at the Ohio Statehouse Tuesday,
December 13, to sit in the gallery while the full Senate
considers the
passage of HB 3, at 1:30 PM.