Blackwell revising voter registration handling requirements

http://www.cleveland.com/newsflash/cleveland/index.ssf?/base/politics-1/115038805794030.xml&storylist=cleveland

CLEVELAND (AP) — 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.
The previous rule made no such mention, and critics complained that omission suggested voter-registration forms had to be dropped off at county elections offices, which they felt would be a burden.

"We had said all along it was perfectly acceptable for people to mail in voter-registration forms," Blackwell spokesman James Lee said Thursday. "We simply decided to use different language to clarify the point."
more..........

Liar.

either this election cylcle or the next. Just because Whitewell was caught on this doesn't mean there will be voting machines in the Dem precincts on Nov 7. If you think it can't get uglier, just wait.

election victory at this point is just icing on the cake.

House Bill 3, the election-reform law Ohio legislators passed last year, makes it clear that the law "permits a voter registration applicant to return the applicant's completed registration application in person or by mail to the Secretary of State's office, to the office of a board of elections, or to specified other locations . . ." However, the law is silent on the issue of whether a person "who receives compensation for registering a voter" can return the application by mail, saying only that the paid registrar must "return any registration application entrusted to that person by an applicant to any board of elections or the Secretary of State's office."

Blackwell's office subsequently published rules that included this definition: "(D) 'Returning' a voter registration form does not include any service or act of the U.S. Postal Service or employees of the U.S. Postal Service or a common carrier acting in an official capacity."

Teresa James, Ohio election administration coordinator for Project Vote, says that's clear evidence that Blackwell -- not the Ohio legislature -- was saying voter-registration groups could not mail in registration forms.

No, it's not, responds James Lee, a spokesman for Blackwell. The reference to the Postal Service, he says, merely exempted postal employees from having to register and receiving training as registrars because, technically, they would be the people who were "returning" the forms to elections officials.

http://www.cleveland.com/weblogs/openers/index.ssf?/mtlogs/cleve_openers/archives/2006_06.html#151688