[EL] Nothing unusual here?
Mark Griffin
mgriffin at thllaw.com
Wed Oct 31 13:58:55 PDT 2012
>From the HuffingtonPost:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/10/31/voter-fraud-false-sighting-ohio_n_2050768.html
Right-wing activists bent on exposing the nonexistent epidemic of in-person
voter fraud suffered a major misfire over the weekend when anonymous
pollwatchers set off alarms over groups of Somalis getting rides to a
central Ohio early voting center.
Many members of the large Somali community in and around Columbus are U.S.
citizens and therefore have the constitutional right to vote. But that
didn't stop the conservative Human Events website from warning of
"troubling and questionable activities" -- or the Drudge Report getting its
readers exercised about "Vanloads of Somalians driven to the polls in Ohio."
The Human Events
story<http://www.humanevents.com/2012/10/26/is-voter-fraud-being-committed-in-ohio/>
quoted
two anonymous pollwatchers complaining of "Somalis who cannot speak
English" arriving in groups, being given a slate card by Democratic party
workers outside the polling place, then coming in and being instructed by
Somali interpreters on how to vote. The article also raised the question of
"whether a non-English speaking person is an American citizen."
One regular contributor to the right-wing American
Thinker<http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2012/10/are_somali_pirates_voting_in_ohio.html>
website
likened the voters to "Somali pirates" being used by Ohio Democrats to
"hijack the election."
Somali leaders in central Ohio said the charges in the article were
upsetting as well as unfounded.
"They shouldn't single out the Somalis," said Hassan Omar, head of the
Somali Community Association in Ohio. "That's the American dream;
exercising the freedom of voting."
Omar said that only those Somalis who are citizens register to vote.
"There's no cheating. This is scare tactics, to be honest with you," he
said.
Ben Piscitelli, a spokesman for the Franklin County Board of Elections,
mocked the concerns expressed in the Human Events story. "'Gee, all these
Somalis, who knows if they're U.S. citizens? Who knows what Somali
pollworkers are saying to them? Gee, we saw Democrats outside that were
giving them slate cards.'
"The answer to all of that is: So what?" Piscitelli said.
Somali voters have been a "very visible presence" at the early voting
center, which happens to be smack dab in a heavily Somali part of town
where many of the older women still wear traditional dress. "They stand
out," Piscitelli said. "But that doesn't mean there's anything wrong with
it. As far as we're concerned, we think everything's okay."
People who register to vote have to affirm their citizenship under penalty
of perjury, and "we haven't had any instances in my memory or in recent
years of somebody trying to vote who wasn't a citizen," Piscitelli said.
"There's no more reason to suspect someone with a Somali name than there is
to suspect someone with a name like Piscitelli."
Members of either party are allowed to campaign and give voters slate cards
as long as it's more than 100 feet from the polling place, he noted, and
voters are allowed to bring those slate cards into the voting booth.
The article claimed there were no Republican Somali speakers at the polling
place. Piscitelli said the very first Somali speaker they hired was, in
fact, a Republican.
And those pollworkers often help voters understand how the touchscreen
machines work, he said. "Yes, they're speaking Somali, and we don't know
what they're saying to voters, but then again we don't eavesdrop on our
English-speaking pollworkers either."
Omar said his association estimates there are about 45,000 Somalis in the
area. Most entered the country in the early 1990s as refugees from the
civil war in their country, and were ultimately drawn to places like
central Ohio and Minnesota for economic reasons. Many -- Omar thinks more
than 40 percent -- have become naturalized American citizens.
Most applicants<http://www.uscis.gov/portal/site/uscis/menuitem.eb1d4c2a3e5b9ac89243c6a7543f6d1a/?vgnextoid=d84d6811264a3210VgnVCM100000b92ca60aRCRD&vgnextchannel=d84d6811264a3210VgnVCM100000b92ca60aRCRD>
for
naturalization -- though not
all<http://www.uscis.gov/portal/site/uscis/menuitem.eb1d4c2a3e5b9ac89243c6a7543f6d1a/?vgnextoid=ffe2a3ac86aa3210VgnVCM100000b92ca60aRCRD&vgnextchannel=ffe2a3ac86aa3210VgnVCM100000b92ca60aRCRD>
--
need to pass a test of very basic
English<http://www.uscis.gov/portal/site/uscis/menuitem.749cabd81f5ffc8fba713d10526e0aa0/?vgnextoid=b51777f48e73a210VgnVCM100000b92ca60aRCRD&vgnextchannel=4982df6bdd42a210VgnVCM100000b92ca60aRCRD>,
but that's a far cry from being fluent. That's why polling places with
large immigrant populations are generally required by federal
law<http://www.justice.gov/crt/about/vot/sec_203/activ_203.php> to
provide language assistance. In this case, Franklin County recruited
Spanish and Somali speakers to work the polls.
Omar said that even for some Somalis who have been in this country a long
time, when they have a question about something like how voting machines
work, they are more comfortable doing so in their native language.
Mussa Farah, president of the Columbus-based Horn of Africa Rescue
Committee, said he was shocked when he read the Human Events article. "That
was crazy," he said. "I wish they would have to show why they believe that.
Just because you see two vehicles of Somalis, doesn't mean there is voter
fraud."
Omar said his household has six registered voters, and his brother's has
nine. "So if we take the same bus or the same van and we vote and we want
to have lunch together, is that cheating?"
The Franklin County Democratic Party, meanwhile, will take anyone to the
polls if they want a ride, said spokesman Chuck Ardo.
"We have taken many vanloads of Somalis," he said. "We have also taken
older folks, we have taken disabled folks, we have taken -- in fact, we
just now took five women from the local Y to vote. Clearly the Somalis are
more obvious because of their dress, but they are simply part of our
greater ride to the polls campaign," he said.
"I think that given the Republicans' efforts to suppress Democratic turnout
overall, this comes as no surprise. It's just part of their scare tactics,"
Ardo continued. "I think part of the concern is that early voter turnout
here in Franklin County is setting new records. And I think that concerns
the Republicans, because the folks turning out in large numbers are
supporters of the president."
One obvious concern raised by this incident is that it could foreshadow
what will happen when uninformed, overvigilant, possibly even racist
pollwatchers descend on unfamiliar minority precincts all over the country
on election day, on behalf of right-wing groups.
Some Democrats fear that voter intimidation by pollwatchers will be the
crowning element of a GOP-led campaign that has already restricted
registration drives, purged voter rolls, rolled back early voting, and
pushed new voter ID laws. Republicans say such measures are necessary to
stop voter fraud, though they have no evidence that voter fraud is anything
but a theoretical problem. By contrast, the measures they've advocated have
the distinct effect of depressing the vote among minorities, the poor and
other generally Democratic constituencies.
Voter ID advocate J. Christian
Adams<http://electionlawcenter.com/2012/10/27/someone-in-ohio-doesnt-understand-the-voting-rights-act.aspx?ref=rss>,
who supports sending "armies of citizen
volunteers<http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/10/11/voter-id-supporters_n_1958935.html>"
to the polls, nevertheless waved his blog readers off the Somali story.
"People who do not speak English are allowed to vote," he wrote. "This is a
diversion that carries the danger of people overreacting."
On Mon, Oct 29, 2012 at 10:06 AM, Thomas J. Cares <Tom at tomcares.com> wrote:
> I've just looked at the Human Events article.
>
> From the following paragraph, couldn't we deduce that there would be at
> least 6,750 Somali US citizens in Ohio, with poor English skills; therefore
> surely several busses could be filled with legitimate Ohioan
> Somali-American voters, who appear unable to speak English.
>
> "According to the Somali Community Association of Ohio’s web site, over
> 45,000 Somalis live in Ohio. Only 40 percent have become citizens of the
> United States, and only 25 percent speak English well enough to get a job."
>
>
> Thomas Cares
>
> Sent from my iPhone
>
> On Saturday, October 27, 2012, Bill Maurer wrote:
>
>> That was utterly uncalled for.
>>
>> Sent from my iPad
>>
>> On Oct 27, 2012, at 5:50 PM, "Fredric Woocher" <fwoocher at strumwooch.com>
>> wrote:
>>
>> Yeah, right, Steve: You're just "[t]rying honestly to determine
>> what's going on here." And then you get huffy when Justin provides you
>> with the answer.
>>
>> If I remember correctly, there were allegations of voter fraud made
>> against Somali voters in the last Presidential election ( was it in
>> Missouri?) and they were thoroughly investigated by law enforcement
>> officials and found to be as much without merit as these appear to be.
>> Some people, it seems, don't seem to understand that not all U.S. citizens
>> look like them, or even like Canadians.
>>
>> Fredric D. Woocher
>>
>>
>> Sent from my IPad
>>
>> On Oct 27, 2012, at 10:34 AM, "Steve Hoersting" <hoersting at gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>>
>> Yes, Richard: My Mom is a Canadian. She "works for", such as it is,
>> "the Republican side."
>>
>> She doesn't vote, however. And no one picks her up in a van.
>>
>> Trying honestly to determine what is going on here... in a State
>> everyone agrees is the battleground... voting under new and relaxed voting
>> laws,
>>
>> Steve
>>
>> On Sat, Oct 27, 2012 at 1:16 PM, Richard Winger <richardwinger at yahoo.com>wrote:
>>
>> The Ohio Republican Party or the Romney campaign probably has the
>> resources and ability to find Somali-speaking persons who would work for
>> the Republican side, especially if there are that many Somali-speakers in
>> Ohio.
>>
>> Richard Winger
>> 415-922-9779
>> PO Box 470296, San Francisco Ca 94147
>>
>> --- On *Sat, 10/27/12, Steve Hoersting <hoersting at gmail.com>* wrote:
>>
>>
>> From: Steve Hoersting <hoersting at gmail.com>
>> Subject: [EL] Nothing unusual here?
>> To: law-election at uci.edu
>> Date: Saturday, October 27, 2012, 10:09 AM
>>
>>
>>
>> http://www.humanevents.com/2012/10/26/is-voter-fraud-being-committed-in-ohio/
>>
>> --
>> Stephen M. Hoersting
>>
>>
>> -----Inline Attachment Follows-----
>>
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>>
>>
>> --
>> Stephen M. Hoersting
>>
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--
Mark Griffin
Tel: 216.621.3500 | Fax: 216.621.3422
mgriffin at thllaw.com
www.thllaw.com
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