Jon Husted may need a hug

U.S. District Judge Algenon Marbley came back on Tuesday with his ruling over the provisional ballots and Husted’s midnight changes to Ohio election law. A brief refresher: Ohio Secretary of State, Husted issued a last minute directive placing the responsibility for provisional ballot identification on the voters instead of the poll workers. This was in violation of an order Judge Marbley set. This resulted in many provisional ballots not being counted, and the real bad ones are mixed with the one’s Husted conspired to have thrown out.

Judge Marbley wrote a scathing 17 page ruling, which can be read here, saying the directive on counting provisional ballots issued by Husted was “a flagrant violation of s state election law” that could disenfranchise voters. And Marbley owns. Are you not sure how about this, “The surreptitious manner in which the secretary went about implementing this last minute change to the election rules casts serious doubt on his protestations of good faith.”

Husted is appealing the ruling because potentially fraudulent votes could be counted, remember he mixed the “bad” with the one’s that actually shouldn’t be counted…I wonder why they’d do that?

Marbley went on to write, “Ohio voters reasonably expect that the secretary of Ohio will abide by the General Assembly’s laws in administering a federal election. For an executive of the state to (flout) state law in arbitrary reassigning a poll worker’s statuary duty to a voter, with the result being disenfranchisement of the voter, is ‘fundamentally unfair and constitutionally impermissible.”

The judge’s ruling says that directive violates a state law that places the responsibility on poll workers to properly fill out the ballot application. The directive also violates an agreement the reached in federal court, called a consent decree, which protects provisional ballots that contain mistakes because of poll worker error.

Provisional ballots are provided to voters who eligibility had been questioned, which as you know the Tea Party was out in masses trying to challenge people at the polls. The voter then has ten days to prove their eligibility to ensure their vote is counted. They should begin counting them on Saturday. Marbley’s ruling will narrow the circumstances for rejecting the provisional ballots and orders Husted to issue a new directive by Friday at noon.

Husted was unavailable for comment, shocking. His spokesman Matt McClellan says Husted will appeal the ruling “because it allows potentially fraudulent votes to be counted. By eliminating the ID requirement on provisional ballots, the ruling is contrary to Ohio law and undermines the integrity of the election.”

Marbley criticized the provisional ballot application Husted designed for the presidential election. Marbley openly questioned whether the poor drafting was “by design or accident.” I wonder.

According to Marbley the form illegality shifts the responsibility for recording identification information on the provisional ballot application from the poll worker to the voter. The form also makes it difficult for election officials to tell if the errors are the fault of the poll worker or the voter. Marbley wrote, “The voter acting in good faith cannot suffer disenfranchisement as a result of the secretary’s drafting errors.”

This came from an article written by Joe Guillen for the Cleveland Plain Dealer (Save the Plain Dealer). Personally, I think Marbley is being kind through most of this statement. Call it what it is, voter suppression. Husted conspired to disenfranchise voters, and his argument now is that it worked so you can’t make him count the provisional ballots because some fraudulent ballots will be counted too. Well, bananas for him. Well, too damn bad, Jon. You should have thought about that before you decided to disenfranchise people. My other favorite John (Kasich) better fire his ass for this. I mean come on, what kind of politician are you if you get caught disenfranchising voters? Call up the Dems in Cuyahoga County for help on getting around the system. Everyone who worked for former Mayor Michael White was indicted.