Ohioblog: A Swing State Journal

With rules for voting set, the emphasis is on following them 

Could there be peace at the polls? (Naw.) The Democrats have begun to act to help their voters to get to the correct polling place, and Republicans have withdrawn some of their registration challenges in Hamilton County while many of their other challenges have been thrown out due to a glitch in the computer program used to prepare the filings.

On a Sunday swing that took him fromm Cincinnati to Dayton to Lima, Sen. John Edwards, the Democratic vice presidential candidate, told reporters the voting issue swings, as the Dayton Daily News' Jim Bebbington put it, on whether the effort is to stop fraudulent voting or to deter legitimate voters. ``My gut feeling has always been that the more people who vote, the more likely it is that John Kerry will be president,'' Edwards said. ``They think that, too. We're doing
everything we can to make sure people get to vote legitimately. They are certainly engageed in some efforts in the opposite direction.''

In Dayton at the Allen Temple, Edwards promised churchgoers that ``We are going to make sure that if you want to vote, you're going to be able to cast your vote. Democracy is going to work in this election.''

Regardless their political side, Ohio election officials experssed relief at knowing which rules to follow with provisional voting. ``We're happy there's been a decision, whether people like it or not,'' Michael Sciortino, president of the Ohio Assocaition of Election officials, told The Columbus Dispatch's Mark Niquette. Sciortino, director of the Mahoning County Board of Elections, could have phrased it a little eloquently but we get the point. We all know what we have to do: Find our precinct and vote there. (Most of us actually does this on a regular basis.) The remaining flaw is that in some states voters don't have to do this so the federal Help America Vote Act hasn't quite accomplished what was intended. Maybe our lawmakers could revise it so we all vote under the same rules. Is that asking too much?
posted by Ohioblog: A Swing State Journal at 10:13 AM