Voting Rights

“We are definitely getting a lot of reports of intimidation out of Dallas County,” said Anthony Gutierrez, executive director of the Texas branch of the nonpartisan lobby Common Cause. At one precinct, he added, “people are just kind of yelling at voters as they are trying to approach the polls.” ... In Okaloosa and Taylor counties in northern Florida, reports arrived of voters getting text phone messages that their absentee ballots had not been received, when in fact they had, said Liza McClenaghan, board chair for Common Cause Florida.

Common Cause, the civil rights organization, for instance, helped recruit 6,500 monitors this year — double the number in 2016, a presidential election year.

"It's like a domino effect," said Sara Henderson, executive director of Common Cause Georgia, about the voting issues in Georgia. "We expect lots of problems at the polling places because there has been a complete lack of voter education."

The good government group Common Cause is monitoring voting concerns around the country. Its president, Karen Hobert Flynn, said most of the problems reported to date are fairly typical. "We are waiting to see what else will come out," she said.

The result of purging voter roles is many inactive voters, who had not moved, being removed from voter rolls. This approach is not an efficient way to update voter rolls because it results in a large number of eligible voters being purged from the voter rolls. Fortunately, the federal appeals court later ruled that the Ohio boards of elections must count provisional ballots in the 2018 midterm elections for certain individuals who were previously purged from the voter rolls.

Today, the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals returned a ruling that empowers more Ohioans to make their voices heard at the ballot box. The ruling addresses the voters who were aggressively purged from the voter rolls, granting them the right to vote provisionally and have their ballots counted. This ruling will give more Ohioans an opportunity to help chart the course for our state in the future. With so much at stake in this year’s election, I’m heartened knowing that more eligible voters will have the option to take part in our democracy.