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Mahoning board provides elections example
Turnout for the presidential election should reach 80 percent, the state’s top elections official says.
YOUNGSTOWN — In an effort to make Election Day easier for poll workers, Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner looked to the Mahoning County Board of Elections.
The Mahoning board provides a flip chart to its poll workers as a reference guide for questions on their duties, voter identification, how to open and close the polls, security, vote challenges and write-in candidates, among other topics.
Brunner said the guide is so helpful that her office is creating a similar one that will be distributed to each county in time for the November general election.
“I was so excited by the flip charts,” Brunner said Thursday in an interview at The Vindicator. “We like the concept.”
In a wide-ranging interview about elections, Brunner said she doesn’t plan to appeal a decision by U.S. District Court Judge Edmund A. Sargus Jr. in Columbus to allow Libertarian Party presidential candidate Bob Barr and other Libertarian candidates to appear on the Nov. 4 ballot with their party label.
The judge declared the state’s rules restricting “third party candidates” affiliations from the ballot to be unconstitutional.
Libertarians lost their party affiliation in Ohio after the 2000 election when their presidential candidate failed to receive at least 5 percent of the state’s vote. State law requires third political parties to have their presidential candidates reach that 5-percent threshold in order to keep their affiliation on the ballot.
Brunner said she will ask the federal judge for guidance on what parties can have affiliations for their candidates on the ballot. The state gets a lot of requests from various political parties for affiliations, she said.
“Do you let every party on the ballot?” Brunner asked. “We hope the judge can help us sort this out. Too many parties can cause voter frustration.”
Socialist Party presidential candidate Brian Moore wants to run with his party’s affiliation on the Nov. 4 ballot.
Brunner expects a huge turnout of voters for the November election. Turnout should be 80 percent in November, she predicted. It was about 72 percent in 2004 compared with 64 percent in 2000.
Brunner also said she and her staff are working hard to put together a plan to improve ballot security.
She pointed out that there are books and articles written about the validity of elections in Ohio, particularly the 2004 presidential race.
“It’s a frenzy created by missteps by the secretary of state’s office [when J. Kenneth Blackwell ran the office] and some boards of elections,” she said. “Elections are historically stolen. I can’t prove anything happened to steal the election in 2004. ... Things weren’t right [in 2004], but it didn’t amount to stealing an election.”
Blackwell appeared Thursday in front of a U.S. House judiciary subcommittee investigating the 2004 election.
Blackwell dismissed allegations that the 2004 presidential race in Ohio was tampered with, saying the “checks and balances” at the county level made it “virtually impossible for either party to rig an Ohio election,” according to The Columbus Dispatch.
skolnick@vindy.com