Jennifer Brunner

From the Columbus Dispatch, three staffers for Vote Today Ohio have plead guilty to illegally registering and voting in Columbus during the so-called Golden Week - a seven day period when Ohio residents could register to vote and cast a ballot at the same time.

This will likely be a footnote it what was a monumental disaster perpetrated by the Ohio Secretary of State and supporters of Barack Obama.  But it highlights three important realities:

• The extreme vulnerability of Election Day Registration
• The enormous influence one highly partisan election official can have on the process
• The need to invest in ballot security programs

For those who have forgotten, Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner unilaterally re-interpreted Ohio Election statutes governing the overlap of the voter registration deadline and the start of early vote to create a de-facto seven day window of Election Day Registration whereby residents could fill out an application and immediately cast a vote.

She ordered the unprepared and understaffed County Election Boards to set-up voting centers that would ensure a massive turnout. Then Brunner amazingly banned all pollwatchers from the vote centers.  Chaos without witnesses.

Many County Election Boards balked and the Ohio Republican Party unsuccessfully sued to stop her, but it was too late.

From the beginning, stories of fraud and misconduct were widely reported.  The Obama Campaign, ACORN, Vote Today Ohio, and Vote From Home were all linked to voter fraud during Golden Week. See here, here, here, here here here here here here here here 

But, as is the case when elections aren’t close, Obama’s victory overshadowed the widespread fraud of Election 2008.  But it happened in Ohio and it happened on a much larger scale then what is being reflected by three guilty pleas.  It will be interesting to see if any of the other groups named above will face similar charges.

This should be a wake up call to any state that is considering EDR without significant safeguards in place,  any political party that isn’t heavily investing in Secretary of State races, and any campaign that doesn’t have a ballot security program. 

The three who plead guilty are:

Amy Little, 50, of New York. (Ms. Little was a consultant for Congressman John Hall (D-NY) until news broke in October that she illegally voted).

Daniel Hausman, 32, of New York.

Yolanda Hipplesteele, 30, of California.

crossposted at www.electionjournal.org

Yesterday, a very important piece of information popped. The fundraising consultant for the Ohio Secretary of State in her 2006 election, Jennifer Brunner, is the Director of Development for Project Vote, Karyn Gillette.

It is easy to see how Brunner's strategy of turning of HAVA checks (and then suing to keep them off) melds nicely with ACORN/Project Vote's strategy to flood the voter rolls with fake people.

This suggests that Brunner is probably a creature of ACORN in some form. One wonders how many more Democratic Secretaries of State were backed by ACORN.

UPDATE: Brunner's office contacted me with a correction. I didn't mean to suggest that Gillette was still a consultant and I have clarified that.

Jeff Ortega, flack from Ohio Secretary of State's Jennifer Brunner's office, was just on WTAM-AM in Cleveland. After six minutes of trying to explain why you aren't actually "voting" when casting an early vote, he says "I have to go now" and hangs up on host Bob Frantz:

Listen to the absurdity below:

Fox is covering the voting issues in OH:

Transcript after the jump:

Early voting is taking place in Ohio. Through the end of the week, people can register and vote on the same day. The Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner argues that they are merely "casting their ballot" rather than "voting" so the fact that Ohio statute requires 30 days between registering and voting would not interfere.

 So here is what is happening today. People are showing up to register and vote. There is no affirmative evidence that these people have not registered or voted somewhere else. There is no control. Normally in an election, partisan election monitors are allowed into polling places so that they can police each other. But not in two counties, Franklin and Montgomery, in Ohio. Brunner also issued an advisory opinion to counties saying that they are not required to allow election monitors. Watch an election observer be turned away.

Now if you want to see what is actually happening on the ground? This video shows interviews with people who are voting in Franklin County, where Republican election monitors are not being allowed into polling places.

 My favorite is the quote:

It's a perfect opportunity for them to come in, register at a temporary address like a homeless shelter or a YMCA or something like that. They can register at that address because they don't know where they're going to be tomorrow or next week."

The registrar also doesn't know where they will be. And there is nothing stopping that person from registering at a different location tomorrow (or later today).

Note that Brunner cannot be said to be simply trying to protect the franchise. After all, she directed county officials to discard absentee ballot applications. These are just partisan hacks interested in winning elections. If that means stealing votes... I wonder how much that bothers her?