Guilty Pleas in Ohio Voter Fraud - A Warning to States, Parties and Candidates
From the Columbus Dispatch, three staffers for Vote Today Ohio have plead guilty to illegally registering and voting in Columbus during the so-called Golden Week - a seven day period when Ohio residents could register to vote and cast a ballot at the same time.
This will likely be a footnote it what was a monumental disaster perpetrated by the Ohio Secretary of State and supporters of Barack Obama. But it highlights three important realities:
- The extreme vulnerability of Election Day Registration
- The enormous influence one highly partisan election official can have on the process
- The need to invest in ballot security programs
For those who have forgotten, Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner unilaterally re-interpreted Ohio Election statutes governing the overlap of the voter registration deadline and the start of early vote to create a de-facto seven day window of Election Day Registration whereby residents could fill out an application and immediately cast a vote.
She ordered the unprepared and understaffed County Election Boards to set-up voting centers that would ensure a massive turnout. Then Brunner amazingly banned all pollwatchers from the vote centers. Chaos without witnesses.
Many County Election Boards balked and the Ohio Republican Party unsuccessfully sued to stop her, but it was too late.
From the beginning, stories of fraud and misconduct were widely reported. The Obama Campaign, ACORN, Vote Today Ohio, and Vote From Home were all linked to voter fraud during Golden Week. See here, here, here, here here here here here here here here
But, as is the case when elections aren’t close, Obama’s victory overshadowed the widespread fraud of Election 2008. But it happened in Ohio and it happened on a much larger scale then what is being reflected by three guilty pleas. It will be interesting to see if any of the other groups named above will face similar charges.
This should be a wake up call to any state that is considering EDR without significant safeguards in place, any political party that isn’t heavily investing in Secretary of State races, and any campaign that doesn’t have a ballot security program.
The three who plead guilty are:
Amy Little, 50, of New York. (Ms. Little was a consultant for Congressman John Hall (D-NY) until news broke in October that she illegally voted).
Daniel Hausman, 32, of New York.
Yolanda Hipplesteele, 30, of California.
