Activists Want Ohio Election Chief Out

The Associated Press

Thursday 31 August 2006

Columbus, Ohio - Activists filed a civil-rights lawsuit Thursday claiming Secretary of State Ken Blackwell deprived people of their voting rights during the 2004 presidential election and seeking to have him removed from overseeing the general election in November.

The plaintiffs, who range from the Ohio Voter Rights Alliance for Democracy to the head of a Columbus neighborhood association, accuse Blackwell of distributing fewer voting machines per person in black neighborhoods, purging voter registrations and disproportionately assigning provisional ballots to blacks. Those provisional ballots then were disqualified at higher rates than in nearby precincts that were mostly white, the plaintiffs allege.

"The court should appoint someone that everyone will say is honest and competent and will ensure that the appropriate security measures are in place and we don't have this kind of vulnerability in the next election," said attorney Cliff Arnebeck, who represents the plaintiffs.

Blackwell, a Republican running for governor this November, said he sees the lawsuit not as an attack on him, but on Ohio's elections process, run by 88 bipartisan county elections boards.

"They're frivolous, they're off-base, and they're political," he said.

Randy Borntrager, a spokesman for the Ohio Democratic Party, said the party wants Blackwell to stop setting rules that affect his own campaign.

"We just want him to do his job," he said. "It wouldn't be an issue if he would give clear directions to the boards of elections in the counties."

Blackwell also said he would do what he could to keep ballots from the 2004 presidential election beyond their scheduled destruction date. Federal law requires the ballots be saved for 22 months following a federal election. That time period ends next week.

Arnebeck had asked for the records to be preserved longer because the individuals and public interest groups he represents have found irregularities and anomalies among the ballots they have reviewed so far, and they want to keep digging.

Arnebeck's sweeping lawsuit accuses Blackwell of violating state and federal laws and the U.S. Constitution by "inequitably distributing voting resources, suppressing votes, and spoiling ballots" in 2004, the letter said.

President Bush prevailed over Democrat John Kerry by 118,000 votes in Ohio.

Blackwell will not interfere with the group's review, spokesman James Lee said, though he emphasized that county elections boards have the final say regarding what happens to the records.

Lee said that the lawsuit is based on a faulty understanding of Blackwell's statutory duties as the state elections chief.

"Anyone who is objectively looking at the election system in Ohio knows that we have a bipartisan voting system that is run primarily at the county level, that bipartisan boards determined whether to place individual voting machines," he said. "It's amazing that there are still those conspiracy theorists out there who refuse to accept the facts."