With the presidential election looming and Ohio emerging as the crucial state in the final Electoral College vote count, some Democrats and activists are looking warily at Secretary of State Jon Husted, the man some say could decide the election in the state, and therefore in the country.
In fact, some Democrats are preemptively comparing Husted, 45, to Florida’s infamous Secretary of State during the 2000 election, Katherine Harris, who simultaneously served as a state co-chair for President George W. Bush’s re-election campaign; or to a previous Ohio Republican secretary of state, Ken Blackwell, who many Democrats believe presided over the manipulation of election results in 2004, when Sen. John Kerry narrowly lost Ohio and with it, the presidency.
In raising questions about Husted’s capacity to run a non-partisan election, critics both inside and outside Ohio point to Husted’s appearances at Tea Party events and his brief flirtation with the “poll watching” group True the Vote.
Husted has had a quick rise in Ohio politics. The Michigan native served in the Ohio state house from 2001 to 2009, the last four years as speaker. He then won a state Senate seat, where he served for two years before winning the office vacated by Democratic secretary of state, Jennifer Brunner, who ran an ill-fated U.S. Senate primary campaign.
He was described this way in an article by Andrew Cohen in The Atlantic:
Over the past year, in one election-related fight after another, Husted has proven to be a relentless partisan, the national face of voter suppression. Now, with one week to go before a close election, an election which many political observers believe could come down to Ohio, Husted is about to become something else: an unabashed local partisan who could very well decide who wins by deciding which rules apply. Is America ready for this? Ready for this man to be the one supervising the vote counting in the only state left that seems to matter?
Husted took his fight to curtail early voting hours in Ohio all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, after first defying a federal judge’s order that he reinstate voting on the weekend before election day and then backing down and apologizing the the court after the judge ordered him to appear and explain himself.
As MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow reported in August, the dispute began when Husted stepped in to break a series of ties in counties with two Democratic and two Republican election officials, on the question of whether to hold extended voting hours. Husted routinely sided with the Republicans in rural, GOP-heavy counties that wanted to extend voting hours to the weekends, but voted to break ties in largely urban, Democratic leaning counties in favor of Republicans, who wanted to hold early voting only during weekdays from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.
Democrats and voting rights advocates argued that Husted’s actions would have resulted in Republicans in Ohio having more days and hours to vote than Democrats. Husted ultimately ordered uniform voting hours across Ohio, with limited hours the weekend before Election Day, and even fired two Democratic elections officials who pushed to open their early voting location on weekends. Under Ohio law, county elections boards are permitted to set their own voting hours.
And while earlier in his tenure he resisted the idea, Husted has recently hinted the he might reverse his opposition to passing a strict photo ID law in the state — a Tea Party priority.
Most recently, he successfully fought in the U.S. 6th Circuit Court to stay a lower court’s order that so called “wrong-place/wrong-precinct” ballots be counted. Thursday’s ruling means that voters who cast provisional ballots at the wrong table in a polling place that houses multiple precincts, or voters who vote on provisional ballots at the wrong polling place altogether, will have their votes thrown out, even if the mistake was the fault of a poll worker.
Democrats say Husted’s unsuccessful effort to curtail early voting are just part of the problem.
An apparent “glitch” in the forwarding of information from the state’s Department of Motor Vehicles to local elections offices has jeopardized potentially 33,000 absentee voters’ ballots. From the Cleveland Plain Dealer:
A small fraction of Ohio voters’ absentee ballot requests may have been mistakenly rejected due to a recently discovered glitch in the transfer of change-of-address records.
Even though the deadline for voters to register or change their address was three weeks ago, Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted just this week sent about 33,000 updated registration records to local elections officials. The local boards had to immediately process the records to ensure those voters could properly cast a ballot in the Nov. 6 election.
An unknown number of absentee ballot applications across the state have been rejected due to the delay because election officials did not have some voters’ current addresses.
And state Democratic officials and voting rights advocates are faulting Husted’s office for falling to reinstate thousands of voters wrongly removed from the rolls, including in Democratic strongholds like Franklin and Cuyahoga Counties, before Election Day. Ironically, Husted had been under pressure since early in the year from the right-wing group Judicial Watch and True the Vote to purge Ohio’ voter rolls. The two even sued Husted’s office claiming it wasn’t purging voters fast enough.
The revelations about voters being wrongly removed prompted a letter to Husted from Dr. Norman Robbins, the Director of Research at Northeast Ohio Voter Advocates and a professor emeritus at Case Western Reserve University. Robbins’ data on the 93,000 voters who voted during the final three days of early voting in 2008 was used by the Barack Obama campaign in its successful lawsuit to prevent Husted from slashing the number of early voting days.
In his November 1st letter, Robbins expressed concern about the failure of the state to notify potentially disenfranchised voters in a timely manner:
As I wrote you on Oct 30 and you well know, this is an extremely important matter, especially if the election is close. Even so, if the searches are not fairly exhaustive, a large number of voters who sent in absentee applications and were found as “not registered” will be definitely discouraged from voting. Unless they are informed of the mistake immediately, it will be too late to rectify this unintentional disenfranchisement after the election. In addition, as you note in your bulletin, the same care to find registered voters must be exerted with respect to provisional ballots.
Meanwhile on Thursday, a liberal independent newspaper revealed that Husted had allowed a private elections equipment vendor, ES&S, to install “untested, unverified” software packets on electronic vote tabulating systems in several counties, according to the Columbus Free Press, in what they say is a breach of Ohio law.
During the 2004 presidential election, the Free Press reported that election officials observed technicians from the ES&S voting machine company and Triad computer maintenance company installing uncertified and untested software patches on voting machines in 44 Ohio counties prior to the election. Software patches are usually installed to “update” or change existing software. These software patch updates were considered suspect by election protection activists, in light of all the voting machine anomalies found during the 2004 election in Ohio.
The Free Press has learned that Election Systems and Solutions (ES&S) installed the software patches that will affect 4,041,056 registered voters, including those in metropolitan Columbus and Cleveland (click here for spread sheet from verifiedvoting.org).
… The contract calls for ES & S technicians and county poll workers to “enter custom codes and interfaces” to the standard election reporting software just as was done with the controversial 2004 Ohio presidential election.
Last minute software patches may be deemed “experimental” because that designation does not require certification and testing. Uncertified and untested software for electronic voting systems are presumably illegal under Ohio law. All election systems hardware and software must be tested and certified by the state before being put into use, according to Ohio Revised Code 3506.05. By unilaterally deeming this new software “experimental,” Secretary of State Husted was able to have the software installed without any review, inspection or certification by anyone. ES & S, for their part, knows that this software will not be subject to the minimal legally required testing as stated in the contract on page 21 (Section 6.1).
Reached for comment by theGrio, Husted spokesman Matt McClellan said the software was not a “patch” at all, but rather a “reporting tool software to assist counties and to help them simplify the process by which they report the results to our system.”
McClellan said the tool serves to cut down on the amount of information precinct workers would have to key in by hand by allowing the results to be output onto a thumbdrive and uploaded at once into the Secretary of State’s system.
“It basically just creates a one-way flow of information — and that is simply from their system, out,” McClellan said. “So at no point in time are we going into their system and messing with anything.”
When asked why the reporting tool was labeled experimental, McClellan responded, “It is a pilot project that we’re doing with about 25 counties or so. So it’s not statewide, but it is a pilot project we’re trying.”
Whether or not that explanation is enough to satisfy worried Democrats, what is clear is that for many of them, Husted is viewed as a partisan, first and foremost. Neither Husted nor his spokesman responded to questions regarding Democrats’ perception of his running of the office of secretary of state.
“From working to curb early voting to pursuing unfair elections policies, Secretary Husted has helped sow this environment of frustration and mistrust among Ohio’s voters,” said Ohio State Sentor Nina Turner, who represents the Cleveland area. “As the state’s chief elections official, it is incumbent upon him to do the exact opposite.”
Unfortunately, even this close to November 6, there are still chinks in the armor. Were it not for the diligence of officials in Cuyahoga County, for instance, at least 865 voters would have been disenfranchised due to a computer glitch. The thought that even one voter could unjustly lose their rightful voice should cause us all to pause.”
Turner and other elected Democrats remain cautiously optimistic that the Ohio election will be trouble free, but the state and national parties aren’t taking chances. Hundreds of lawyers will descend on Ohio in the days leading up to the election, to observe what goes on at the polls and potentially assist voters who feel they’re being disenfranchised.
“We must keep politics on the campaign trail, and let the people vote,” she said. “Secretary Husted must work with local elections officials and voter advocates throughout Ohio to ensure that every registered voter who is willing to cast a ballot is able to and to ensure that those votes are counted accurately.”
Whatever happens on November 6th, it’s clear that the eyes of the nation will be on the vote count in Ohio, with Husted very much in the spotlight.
Follow Joy Reid on Twitter at @thereidreport.