OH Sen. Rules Cmtte. Approves Anti-Democratic Bill

From CASE (Citizens' Alliance for Secure Elections)
www.caseohio.org

COLUMBUS, OH - The Rules Committee of the Ohio Senate approved H.B. 3 December 7, 2005, despite two days of strong opposition testimony. The four Democrat committee members refused to take part in the final vote as a protest to the Republican steamrolling the public and their colleagues as well.

HB3 requires a current, government issued ID with a current address and this requirement alone will affect several hundred of thousand voters and disenfranchise many tens of thousands of them. Students, the elderly, youth, and recently moved families will have to produce alternate forms of ID. The result will be confusion, frustration, discouragement, and possibly anger directed toward the Ohio Senators who forced this bill into law.

HB 3 makes it impossibly difficult for voting advocacy organizations to register new voters by making the process extremely slow and expensive and punishing workers who make a mistake with the threat of a felony penalty. Workers who could be working state-wide are now required to register with every Board of Elections in the state, take a test from every board, and return any registration to the board of the newly registered voter. This makes registration drives at gatherings like the Ohio State Fair and similar events impossible.

HB 3 removes a process to audit the black box machines which are prone to errors and susceptible to hacking as recognized by the recent GAO report (see below)

HB 3 cancels our right to challenge election results.

The Ohio legislature, while focusing their efforts on prohibiting access to voting, failed to address a more serious concern: Electronic voting Machines. The General Accounting Office, (GAO) recently released a 107 page scathing report* on electronic voting machines in our country. The report supports what CASE has been claiming, that electronic voting machines are not secure, not accountable, not transparent, not accurate, and not certifiable. A bipartisan panel which included both Republican Congressman James Sensenbrenner (R-WI) and Democratic Congressman John Conyers (D-MI) released a joint news release regarding this report. Most community news sources have not made these important findings widely available to the public yet.

* GAO 05-956 Federal Efforts to Improve Security and Reliability of Electronic Voting Systems Are Under Way, but Key Activities Need to Be Completed

http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d05956.pdf

If you cannot come to the statehouse, contact your State Representative....or ANY State Representative

http://www.house.state.oh.us/jsps/SearchbyName.jsp

Contact: Phil Fry (937) 362-4493 phil @ ctcn.net or Pete
Johnson (614) 846-4018 pjohnso6 @ insight.rr.com

ENDS

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