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In Ohio, a spelling error could cost you your vote - especially if you live in a Dem-leaning area
In Ohio, a spelling error could cost you your vote
By John Whitesides and Andy Sullivan, Reuters, November 1, 2016
https://www.yahoo.com/news/ohio-spelling-error-could-cost-vote-101441748.html
Laws passed by the Republican-led Ohio state legislature in 2014 require voters to accurately fill out their personal information on absentee or provisional ballots or they will be rejected - even if the votes are otherwise valid. The laws are being applied in a presidential election for the first time this year.
A Reuters analysis found that where a voter lives can determine whether their provisional or absentee ballot counts in Ohio. The law requiring a perfect match on information such as name, address, birthdate, signature and ID number has been enforced unequally county to county, federal data and court documents show, with local officials sometimes using wide latitude in applying the standards.
The disparity could hurt Democrats in Ohio, a vital battleground in the Nov. 8 election between Republican Donald Trump and Democrat Hillary Clinton. The 14 Ohio counties with the most restrictive enforcement accounted for 53 percent of Ohio's total vote in 2012 and gave Democratic President Barack Obama 60 percent of the votes he won in Ohio. ... More than half of the provisional and absentee votes discarded for minor errors in 2014 came from five large, Democratic-dominated urban counties.
...
Many smaller, heavily Republican rural counties did not reject any ballots for those reasons. In Wyandot County, ballots examined for the lawsuit found officials approved ballots without a valid street address, city or zip code, a wrong or missing birthdate, or a misspelled name.
It's a long article but a very interesting read ... the picayune errors that got one rejected like misspelling a street “Cuthberth” rather than “Cuthbert". Or writing some information in cursive instead of print. Or or or....
kind of a modern-day literacy test by requiring voters to read, write and understand voting forms without making any errors or leaving out information.
Also, Wisconsin and Georgia also has a similar laws, although less strict thanks to court action.
[hr]
I early-voted in-person at a voting center (in Minnesota) where they validate one's application before one gets a ballot. I'm not sure what happens to people who vote by mail who have a mistake on their application....
Crossposted in General Discussion 2016 http://www.democraticunderground.com/12512571391
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