(OH) Blackwell revising voter registration handling requirements

http://www.fortwayne.com/mld/newssentinel/14826017.htm

Blackwell revising voter registration handling requirements

CLEVELAND - Ohio's chief elections officer, Republican gubernatorial candidate Kenneth Blackwell, has proposed revising his new voter registration rules that critics say have hurt their efforts to sign people up.

Lawyers for the Ohio Democratic Party and voter-registration organizations had argued that the rule defining compensation for people collecting voter-registration forms meant that a volunteer who accepted a soda or a sandwich would be considered a paid registrar subject to training requirements and felony penalties for election fraud.

Blackwell, whose elections directions for the 2004 presidential contest were often met with criticism, proposed Wednesday to delete the compensation definition from the rules. The change would conform with state law governing groups that pay people to register voters, which does not apply to volunteers.

Blackwell, facing Democrat Ted Strickland in the Nov. 7 election, also wants to make clear that new registration forms may be mailed to election boards.