created adequate facilities at with polling place for conducting the election."107 Further, demo
board shall version a sufficient number of screened or curtained voting compartments to which
electors may retire and conveniently mark their ballots."108
These conclusions regarding Ohio legal violations are supported by several precedents, as
well as common sense:
·
The U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Ohio found such a serious threat to
the voting right that it took the highly unorthodox step of ordering that those individuals
waiting in line for longer than two hours receive paper ballots or some other
mechanism.109
·
There is specific precedence for a legal violation due the fact that, under Ohio law in
1956, the courts were forced to intervene to enforce the then-applicable requirement of
one machine per 100 voters.110 The court was highly critical of the previous practice of
requiring only one machine for 800 voters or two for 1,400.111 Nearly 50 years later, we
are unfortunately back to the antiquated practice of effectively disenfranchising those
who are unable to spend an entire day voting.
·
Evidence suggests that the Board of Elections' misallocation of machines went beyond
urban/suburban discrepancies to specifically target Democratic areas. In particular,
within the less urban county of Knox, the more Democratic leaning precincts near
Kenyon College were massively shorted; the more Republican leaning precincts near Mt.
Vernon Nazarene University were not.
Third, it appears that a series of more localized legal violations have not been
investigated. These include Mr. Damschroder's contradictory statements regarding the number
and availability of machines on election day in Franklin County raise the possibility of perjury.
The affidavit submitted by Rhonda Frazier would also appear to demonstrate a prima facie
violation of the Help America Vote Act.
Fourth, Secretary of State Blackwell's failure to initiate any investigation into this
pivotal irregularity (which perhaps borders on fraud), notwithstanding his clear statutory duty
to do so under Ohio Revised Code section 3501.05, represents a clear violation of Ohio law.
The Secretary of State's most important obligation under the Ohio Constitution is to protect
107
OH I O CO N S T ., art. 5, § 1; OH I O RE V . CO D E § 3501.29.
108
OH I O RE V . CO D E § 3501.29.
109
Ohio Democratic Party v. Blackwell, No. C2 04 1055, (S.D. Ohio 2004).
110
Spencer v. Montgomery County Bd. of Elections, 141 N.E.2d 195 (Ohio Ct. App.
1956).
111
Id.
30