Editorial: Relaxed voting rules good for Ohio

In an interview with National Public Radio on Thursday, Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner predicted Ohio would see 80 percent of registered voters cast a ballot in this year's general election.

If true, that is something of which Ohioans should be proud.

Part of the reason is the state's relaxed absentee voting laws. Officials expect some 20,000 to 25,000 people in the state's four largest counties to cast their ballots before Nov. 4.

Allowing voters the convenience of voting early was a welcome change to Ohio law. Admittedly, there is a chance that a person could engage in election fraud because of this early voting. For example, a student could cast an absentee ballot here in Ohio, then go home and cast a second ballot on Election Day. There is no national database of voter registrations so that could happen, either intentionally or accidentally.

Still, the possibility is remote enough and the punishment is so severe for anyone engaging in such a nefarious practice that it is unlikely to happen on a wide enough scale to color any election.

Regardless, the eyes of the nation will be on the state this election. The winner of Ohio, and its 20 electoral votes, will likely be the winner of the election.

There will also be close scrutiny because of voting irregularities in the 2004 election, including a dearth of voting machines in urban areas (where Democrats tend to live) and too many machines in suburban areas (where Republicans tend to live).

In fact, many lawsuits have already been filed in Ohio.

One event that is still fueling court battles stems from a scheduling quirk. There was an overlap of one week of registration and absentee voting. That meant for one week, a person was able to register and vote on the same day.

By all accounts, that was a successful week, though turnout was less than expected.

Still, Ohio Republicans are fighting those votes. In fact, a federal judge late Thursday ruled that Brunner violated federal election laws by not taking adequate steps to verify those new voter registrations and ordered her to take action to remedy that situation.

Brunner is appealing that decision.

In her NPR interview, Brunner said those votes cast on the same day as registration have been segregated and will not be counted until the registrations are verified.

Regardless, same-day voting, what is known as election day registration, is something to applaud, not fight in court. Every state that adopts election day registration sees an increase in turnout.

Unfortunately, Ohio Republicans have bought into the old adage that high voter turnout helps Democrats. In reality, high voter turnout helps everyone.

In fact, same-day voting has been successfully practiced in several states for years. Eight states offer election-day registration.

The idea that one should have to register 30 days or more before an election is an archaic leftover from the days of Jim Crow. In fact, there were no pre-election registration requirements in this country before 1870. You showed up on Election Day and if you were not registered, you did so and then you voted.

The move to pre-election registration was, in many cases, meant to keep black, working-class, immigrant and poor voters from casting ballots.

Restrictive pre-election deadlines are actually tools of tyranny. Even today, such registration deadlines tend to disenfranchise voters unnecessarily. There are many reasons a voter could find himself or herself disenfranchised because of the 30-day registration requirement: a registration application could be lost; the elections staff could err in entering the registration information; the voter could have moved and did not update registration information; or the voter was simply unaware of the pre-election registration requirement. Besides, not many people are thinking of an election 30 days out, especially in off years.

That states such as Idaho, Iowa, Maine, Minnesota, Montana, New Hampshire, Wisconsin and Wyoming successfully have election day registration tells us it can be done.

It has long been an American tradition that voting regulations should be as lax as possible in order to facilitate as large a turnout as possible. With the exception of Ohio's identification requirements, the state has moved in the right direction.

The next step should be abolition of the pre-election registration requirement and the adoption of election day registration. This election proved that Ohio's boards of elections have the ability to handle that process.

Listen to the Brunner interview at www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=95560387.