The beautiful weather in Ohio Tuesday may seal the fate of Senate Bill 5, the state’s new anti-collective-bargaining law that was placed on the ballot via the state referendum Issue 2. Poll workers in Central Ohio are reporting much higher turnout than is usual for an off-year election, especially for a ballot with three state issues and only local candidates.

Poll workers are also expressing confidence in their training and readiness to handle last-minute surprises, said Jarvis Carr, a election worker in Columbus.

“In fact, the training emphasizes problems and challenges, but 95-percent of voters are ready to vote,” noted Carr.  “They have their IDs, they’re at the right polling location and they are ready to go.”

A casual look at the lists of voters that had already cast ballots, required to be posted in a public place at all precincts, showed that even before noon, the columns were filling up with ‘X’s, indicating that many in the precinct had found time to make it to the polls.

Alesia Richardson, polling precinct manager of a polling station in the relatively affluent Victorian Village neighborhood of Columbus (The American Independent is headed out to more polling locations as the day goes on), said she found herself working harder than usual this year.

“We’ve been very busy, unusually so,” she said. “It must be the issues that’s bringing them in.”

Ohio voters are deciding on SB5 through Issue 2, which has placed a spotlight on the Midwestern state as labor’s last stand. Laws that severely curb public employee unions’ rights to negotiate have passed in Wisconsin and New Jersey, states that don’t have Ohio’s constitutional ability for citizens to reject unpopular laws in referendum.

Other issues on the ballot include an increase in the age limit for new judges and Issue 3, a tea party-led initiative to prevent the individual mandate of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act through an amendment to the state’s constitution. Recent polls show Issue 3 is headed for defeat, although there’s some indication of voter confusion about the language, as Republicans polled more negatively towards the issue than they had polled positively for “Obamacare,” the tea party’s derisive nickname for the law, while Democrats polled more favorably towards passing the issue than they had ever polled negatively toward the act.http://www.publicpolicypolling.com/main/2011/11/senate-bill-5-headed-for-resounding-defeat-tuesday.html#more

Unlike Wisconsin, where tens of thousands appeared to protest the law, Ohio’s SB5 provided no exemption for public-safety workers, which helped to galvanize public opinion against the law. Recent polling suggests Ohioans are opposed to SB5 59 percent to 36 percent, a margin of 23 points. The favorable weather has a positive effect on liberal candidates and issues, as urban areas are both more likely to vote left and have more obstacles to overcome when they try, such as lower vehicle ownership and long lines at the polls.

“We’ve had a steady stream, with a line first thing this morning,” said Richardson in Columbus.

In spite of the line, she estimated no voter had waited more than three to five minutes to vote.

“We’re moving them through pretty quickly,” she said.

Early and absentee voters, on the other hand, were less enticed this year than any election in the last five, as new directives from the Ohio Secretary of State, Jon Husted, restricted county boards of elections from mailing out unsolicited applications for absentee ballots, and shut down early voting over the weekend.  Both were part of the elections reforms former Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner put in place as a result of the 2000 and 2004 elections debacles.

This year, poll workers indicated that while some voters had been confused by the new rules, they had been able to vote provisionally anyway.

“A couple people said they just got their absentee ballots yesterday, so they weren’t able to mail them in on time,” said Carr, a poll worker in the Victorian Village precinct, adding that they were, however, eventually able to cast absentee ballots successfully.

Update, 7:10 p.m. EST: In Columbus’s Milo-Grogan neighborhood, voters are still turning out in unexpectedly high numbers, even in spite of some confusion as to the location of the polling station.

Milo-Grogan, a largely blighted area on the city’s east side, saw an estimated 200 voters by 5 p.m., which the precinct’s presiding judge called “almost twice as many as last year’s election,” when John Kasich was elected governor.

“I think it’s from Issue 2,” said Alison Thornton in a confiding whisper. “It’s from the push. Firefighters and police and teachers — there was just a huge push for Issue 2.”

Thornton added that churches and other organizations had been busing voters to the polls all day.

Polls close at 7:30 p.m. in Ohio.

Helping lead the charge on those topics is Houston tea party group King Street Patriots, who jumped in the public spotlight last year with allegations of irregularities in voter registration applications submitted by the Houston Votes organization, who intend to recruit 1 million poll watchers across the U.S. for the 2012 presidential elections, and whose poll watchers sparked controversy and allegations of voter intimidation during the 2010 elections.

On Monday, the House Elections Committee heard testimony on House Bill 1926 by state Rep. Bill Zedler (R-Arlington). The bill would allow poll watchers — who represent parties, groups or candidates — to videotape in polling places if they believe something illegal is occurring (and without compromising individual ballot secrecy). The bill also makes it a Class B Misdemeanor for someone to reveal poll watchers’ identities without their permission, punishable by a max $2,000 fine and/or six months in jail or less.

Representatives of counties and county officials said the proposed rights to record video and remain anonymous would be the creation of unique privileges for poll watchers, and cautioned against unintended consequences, such as voter intimidation and inability for poll workers to maintain order in polling places.

“Poll watchers are special ops. They have been sent into polling places by an activist campaign to watch over or seek out any aberrations from what they perceive as the smooth operation of the polling place and then to act immediately to try to intervene on that,” Travis County Clerk Dana DeBeauvoir said. “To give that person any extra recording devices would have a chilling and sort of extraterritorial power that I don’t think is appropriate inside a polling place, and county clerks are extremely concerned about them not being on a reasonable footing with everybody else.”

DeBeauvoir also expressed skepticism that poll watchers would have a special need to remain anonymous, when other people at polling places — election judges, poll workers, etc. — do not have that kind of protection.

The King Street Patriots’ Robert Antill disagreed with DeBeauvoir’s characterization of poll watchers, saying, “Poll watchers are not special ops. They are not appointed by activists to be there. They represent a party, candidate or ballot initiative.”

State Rep. Marc Veasey (D-Fort Worth) pointed out that, by definition, that makes poll watchers biased toward one option on the ballot over another.

Ed Johnson with the Harris County Clerk’s Office testified in favor of the bill, saying that everybody working at polling places — not just poll watchers — has partisan affiliations.

Antill claimed poll watchers need to be able to record video in polling places to prevent later disagreements over whether irregularities took place or not. He said poll watchers can receive training beforehand to instruct them on when and what is appropriate to record.

“There’s no statutory requirement for training to be a poll watcher,” said Tarrant County Elections Administrator Steve Raborn, representing the Texas Association of Elections Administrators. “We as a county don’t usually know who they are until they arrive at the polling place with paperwork. They may have undergone some sort of training by a party, but they certainly have not been trained by the county.”

State Rep. Dan Branch (R-Dallas) said Veasey had expressed valid concerns about the effect of anonymous poll watchers videotaping inside polling places.

“I would feel uncomfortable if some young watcher or an old watcher starts filming me while I’m standing there voting,” he said.

However, Branch did say that the law needs to be changed to allow poll watchers to bring their handheld devices (such as cell phones with cameras) inside the polling places, so long as they don’t use them inside the polling places.

Johnson said, if lawmakers aren’t going to empower poll watchers with videotaping ability, he liked the recommendation of allowing counties to set up their own recording devices to document polling place irregularities.

However, Michael Vasquez of the Texas Conference of Urban Counties said that would be a “very large unfunded mandate on counties. We would certainly be opposed to that idea.”

Though he had registered as “neutral” on the bill, Vasquez said he has “serious concerns” about its provisions creating “a huge mess” on Election Day. He also said that “serious concerns about voter intimidation have to be addressed or you could be opening election officials up to lawsuits.”

Registered against the bill were the Texas NAACP, Texas Democratic Party, League of Women Voters of Texas, Texas AFL-CIO, ACLU of Texas and Coalition of Texans with Disabilities. Those in favor of the bill included the chair of the Travis County GOP, Texas Conservative Coalition and GOP county chairs.

Bill author Zedler said people have “no expectation of privacy” inside a polling place, as long as their ballot choices aren’t revealed.

“In my opinion if I’m not doing anything wrong, I don’t care if someone is taking videos,” he said.

The committee put the bill on hold for future consideration and did not take a vote.

It did, however, pass out another bill by Zedler, HB 1925, that creates new requirements and training standards for deputy voter registrars. The bill also makes it a state jail felony for a noncitizen to register to vote or compel someone else to register to vote, carrying a penalty of six months to two years in jail and a maximum $10,000 fine.

The committee also passed HB 239 by state Rep. Tan Parker (R-Flower Mound), making it a Class A Misdemeanor to pay or accept compensation based on the number of voter registration a person successfully facilitates. Additionally, the “officer, director or other agent” of the registering entity would also be held equally liable if an offense occurred.

A Class A Misdemeanor is punishable by a max fine of $4,000 and/or a jail term of one year or less.

The Dallas Morning News reported:

“Efforts to register voters – which often focus on poor, elderly, disabled and minority voters who typically back Democrats – could be made much more difficult by legislation picking up steam in the GOP-controlled Legislature.

The bills would effectively shut down national voter registration drives, create felonies around some registration activities and prohibit people from being paid to register voters.

Republican leaders say the measures would help boost confidence in voting integrity, close “loopholes” that may allow fraud and ease the burden on county elections offices.”

(Image by Matt Mahurin)

Harris County’s election administrator, Beverly Kaufman has scrambled to fill the void, borrowing machines from 15 other Texas counties — and even one in Colorado — as well as printing paper ballots and buying other equipment. Kaufman predicts that by Election Day, Harris County will have up to 5,000 of the usual 5,700 machines they typically field, meaning that each of the county’s 730 polling stations will be one machine short.

Not surprisingly, in the wake of the fire, rumors concerning voter fraud are flying. Voter fraud is actually quite uncommon, so as a rule fears of tampering can be chalked up to paranoia.

But confusion about voting procedures can impact elections, and as TWI sister publication The Texas Independent reported this week, the hubbub in Harris County is rippling over into other counties as well. After Travis County lent Harris a number of its voting machines, an independent group that distrusts voting machines announced that paper ballots would be made available. Not true, reported The Texas Independent:

Travis County had purchased surplus machines to handle large numbers of voters during the 2008 elections (when turnout was above 60 percent), and that the county would be able to accommodate a smaller gubernatorial election (when turnout is typically between 40-50 percent) without the extra machines.

But this kind of false information is exactly what creates false expectations among voters, gins up tension on election day, and leads to accusations of election tampering.

I’m told that around 150 conservatives are in town, armed with cameras, looking for fraud–mostly in Boston. Conservative bloggers and activists are also making the rounds looking for fraud–or at least “fraud.” Eric Odom of the American Liberty Alliance and Ali Ackbar, who did some work for Doug Hoffman’s campaign in NY-23, are both here, and Odom informs me that there’s a lot of focus on the more poor, Democratic-leaning parts of Boston, like Dorchester.

They’re getting some results. A #voterfraud hashtag has been popping on Twitter to promote the bloggers’ scoops, like a video of Lawrence, Mass., community activist Isabelle Melendez showing off a copy of an absentee ballot as she explains how she told listeners of her radio show how to use them. Election Journal is pushing the video hard as evidence of “blank absentee ballots being handed out”–an eerie echo over the panic a sample ballot caused during the 2000 Florida Recount. Here’s how active the video is, after being promoted by Michelle Malkin.

And then there’s Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa), who’s in the state volunteering for Brown and tweeting about it.

“I urge the House Judiciary Committee to report this resolution out favorably and to demand that the attorney general answer the questions surrounding this case,” said Wolf. “The career attorneys and Appellate Division within the department sought to demonstrate the federal government’s commitment to protecting voting rights by vigorously prosecuting any individual or group that seeks to undermine this right.”

After the jump, read the Resolution and Wolf’s full statement.

Wolf Nbpp Roi

“I rise today to introduce a Resolution of Inquiry directing the attorney general to transmit to the House all information relating to the decision to dismiss an important voter intimidation case, United States v. New Black Panther Party. The case sought to enforce Voting Rights Act statutes against members of the New Black Panther Party that threatened Philadelphia voters — both verbally and physically — last year.

“This case was inexplicably dismissed earlier this year — over the ardent objections of the career attorneys overseeing the case as well as the department’s own appeal office.

“I regret that Congress must resort to oversight resolutions as a means to receive information about the dismissal of this case, but the Congress and the American people have a right to know why this case was not prosecuted.

“As ranking Republican member of the House Commerce-Justice-Science Appropriations Subcommittee that funds the Justice Department, I take oversight of the department very seriously.

“I also strongly support voting rights protections. In 1981, I was the only member — Republican or Democrat — of the Virginia delegation in the House to vote for the Voting Rights Act and was harshly criticized by the editorial page of the Richmond Times Dispatch, and when I supported its reauthorization in 2006, I was criticized again by editorial pages.

“Time and again over the last year, the department has stonewalled any effort to learn about the decision to dismiss this case. I have written Attorney General Holder on six occasions asking for an explanation for the dismissal of this case. To date, I have received no response from him.

“I wrote the DOJ inspector general to request a review of this decision. He deferred to the Office of Professional Responsibility – which reports directly to the attorney general. I have written the Office of Professional Responsibility seeking information on its investigation. The Office has refused to share any information.

“In fact, the only response I have received – from a legislative affairs staffer – was woefully incomplete and – in places – inaccurate.

“Two months ago, I met with House Judiciary Chairman Conyers to ask for his assistance in obtaining this information, but he has yet to take any action. This is a shameful failure to provide necessary congressional oversight.

“It is not only Congress that is being stonewalled by the attorney general. The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights has repeatedly sought this same information, in fulfillment of its statutory responsibility to ensure the enforcement of civil rights law.

“After being similarly rebuffed, the commission filed subpoenas with the department for this information as well as to interview the career attorneys that handled the case.

“However, we understand that the attorney general has instructed his department to ignore these subpoenas. The nation’s chief law enforcement officer is forcing these career attorneys to choose between complying with the law and complying with the attorney general’s obstruction.

“At least one of the attorneys has been compelled to obtain private counsel.

“I urge the House Judiciary Committee to report this resolution out favorably and to demand that the attorney general answer the questions surrounding this case. The career attorneys and Appellate Division within the department sought to demonstrate the federal government’s commitment to protecting voting rights by vigorously prosecuting any individual or group that seeks to undermine this right.

“This House must not turn a blind eye to the attorney general’s obstruction. He has an obligation to answer the legitimate questions of the House and the Civil Rights Commission. It is imperative that we protect the right of all Americans to vote — the sacrosanct and inalienable right of any democracy.”

At the heart of the New Black Panther case was Section 11(b) of the Voting Rights Act, which offers legal protections against voter intimidation. It had only been used once prior to the Bush administration — in 1992 to prevent a statewide voter suppression effort initiated in South Carolina by then Sen. Jesse Helms. In this case, the Bush administration wanted to use Section 11(b) against several New Black Panthers who had stood in front of a polling place in a black neighborhood, one of whom wielded a baton.

“There was no pattern and practice, no concerted effort to cage thousands of voters like in the [1992] Jesse Helms case.” said Gerry Hebert, a former senior Voting Rights Section attorney who has served under multiple administrations. “That strikes me as the kind of large-scale voter suppression case that would be more appropriate for Justice Department resources to be spent on.”

The Bush administration filed two Section 11(b) cases, both on behalf of white voters, both supervised by Coates: The Black Panther case and a separate case in Noxubee, Mississippi. The Voting Rights Section had gone from ensuring voting rights for all Americans to focusing on the conservative bugaboo of “reverse racism.”

Conservative Party candidate Doug Hoffman at his campaign headquarters Tuesday (David Weigel)

Saranac Lake, N.Y. – Jim Kelly walked into the lounge of the Hotel Saranac, his red tie undone and flapping against his shirt. He sighed. He plopped into a chair.

“Four thousand votes,” he said. “That couldn’t fill up one side of seats at Shea Stadium.”

[GOP]For two weeks back in the summer, Kelly had campaigned to be Conservative Party’s candidate in NY-23, the sprawling upstate district that opened up when Republican congressman John McHugh became Barack Obama’s secretary of the Army. Kelly dropped out when Doug Hoffman, a self-made millionaire and small businessman, decided to go for the party’s nomination. Things moved fast from there. In September, Hoffman won the support of the Club for Growth, the deep-pocketed 527 that typically funds conservative challengers inside, not outside, the GOP. That started an avalanche of support from conservative groups and politicians who spent half of their time backing Hoffman and the other half attacking Dede Scozzafava, a pro-abortion rights, pro-stimulus package assemblywoman who’d won the GOP nomination. On Saturday, when Scozzafava dropped out of the race, conservatives heralded a victory for their movement over the political establishment, and national Republican figures raced to support Hoffman.

Slightly before midnight on Tuesday, reality reared its ugly head. Hoffman lost to Democrat Bill Owens, who became the first member of his party to represent this region of New York in Congress since the 1870s. The margin when Hoffman conceded was slightly more than 4,000 votes. Nothing went right. Owens won his base in the northeastern part of the district, and he won or held his own in the parts of the district that Scozzafava–who endorsed Owens after leaving the race–represents in the assembly. Hoffman underperformed in the Syracuse, N.Y., suburbs that neither candidate had political ties to, even though polls had him leading by a 2-1 margin there.

It was a sour note in a night of mostly good news for Republicans. The party’s slate in Virginia, a state where it had lost ground for eight years, was so dominant that it pulled seven Republican candidates into the state House of Delegates. In New Jersey, where several election cycles had seen Republican leads collapse in the final days, former U.S. attorney Chris Christie handily defeated incumbent Gov. Jon Corzine. Conservatives rallied to overturn a same-sex marriage law in Maine, and Republican candidates won surprise, under-the-radar victories in local races in New York and Connecticut.

The problem for conservatives now is their definition of success, in the intoxicating run-up to the election, wasn’t based on a multi-state win. Instead, it was all about Hoffman.

“Hoffman is likely to win,” said Bill Kristol, the editor of the Weekly Standard, during a Monday appearance on Fox News. “This is a classic swing congressional district. If a conservative Republican can win in this district with all the disadvantages of the chaos on the Republican side and the official Republican candidate pulling out and endorsing the Democrat, what does that say to the moderate Democrats in the House?” As late as 10:13 on Tuesday night, the National Review writer Victor Davis Hanson referred to the Democrats’ “three candidates” who looked like they would go down to defeat in a referendum on Barack Obama. Two were defeated–one, Bill Owens, was not.

In the last, frantic 72 hours of the race, conservatives focused on NY-23 as an all-but-sure win for the unlikeliest of candidates, a conservative triumph that would put an exclamation point on a great Republican night. After a Monday night campaign appearance for Hoffman, Jeri Thompson told TWI that a victory for the Conservative “would mean the Blue Dog Democrats stiffen their spines and say ‘no way, there’s no way we’re going to vote for health care.’” In his campaign appearances on Monday and Tuesday, the preternaturally low-key Hoffman began predicting victory. Asked if Scozzafava’s endorsement of Owens would hurt him, he said he’d “win without her.” Asked about the implications of a possible win, Hoffman eschewed the typical “too soon to say” response and talked about what “this victory” would mean for conservative, low-tax and anti-spending values.

If Hoffman and staff were too optimistic, they had their reasons. In the final stretch of the campaign, they welcomed in a surge of anti-abortion and Tea Party activists who hit the streets to canvass and get out votes. On Election Day, the anti-abortion Susan B. Anthony List coordinated more than a hundred activists to hand out sample ballots at polling stations. And at polling places visited by TWI, turnout was just what Hoffman’s campaign hoped for–high in the right areas–and voters who chose either candidate picked up on aspects of his message.

“We need jobs,” said Pat Kubli, a Plattsburgh voter who went for Owens. “Right now there’s a lot of focus on business and not enough focus on the middle class.”

Gary Barber, a voter from Ausable Folks, said he connected with Hoffman’s rhetoric about the size of the national debt, even though he hoped Hoffman would steer money to stimulus projects in the district. “I’m not blaming Obama for everything,” said Barber. “He inherited this shit from Bush, but he’s continuing everything that Bush did, starting with the bailouts.”

The levels of enthusiasm in both campaigns seemed to give an advantage to Hoffman. While reporters swapped rumors about the trouble Owens was having in turning out votes, At the candidate’s Plattsburgh campaign office, Owens’s direct mail–showing the president right next to the congressional hopeful–was taped to the door, an out-and-out mockery of the Democrats’ strategy of capitalizing on the president’s popularity here. Inside, volunteers phone-banked under the cover of a giant “Don’t Tread on Me” flag and eight posters ripped from a calender of Ronald Reagan photos. One message the phone-bankers deployed: “Send a CPA to Congress!” Another message: “Send a message to Pelosi!”

All of that stoked the impression that Hoffman was headed for a win. On election night, national reporters from The Wall Street Journal and Politico who’d come to NY-23 to cover the race headed to Hoffman’s event in Saranac Lake instead of Owens’ event in Plattsburgh, about an hour away. The initial mood was infectious. “This is a real win,” said one Hoffman organizer in an email to conservative bloggers who were about to jump on a 9:30 p.m. conference call about the race. “This may be short and sweet. I hope to delivery the message of: Victory.”

But as the night dragged on, the mood got sour. Hoffman backers sat or stood glumly in a ballroom, watching local TV reports that never seemed to let Hoffman get above 45 percent of the vote. A heaping catering table remained mostly full as activists talked amongst themselves and offered scenarios for what might be going wrong.

“The unions came out for Owens after Dede went for him,” said Hank Ford, the Conservative Party chairman in St. Lawrence County. “She transferred all that. Plus, her husband is a union guy.”

Sandy Caligloire, one of several Hoffman spokesmen, suggested that the conservative push that got Scozzafava out of the race might have doomed Hoffman. “We were strategizing for a three-way election,” he shrugged.

As the activists talked and drank, Hoffman’s spokesman Rob Ryan worked the ballroom floor, talking to reporters about the inconclusiveness of early results and the meaning of outstanding absentee ballots. At one point, he got local reporters to avoid going along with a short-lived MSNBC call for Owens. But as the night went on, more and more Hoffman allies poured cold water on their candidate’s chances. Owens, who ran a subtle campaign, benefited from a long-term Democratic canvassing and GOTV effort. He had the backing of powerful unions like SEIU 1199, who worked the district. Hoffman didn’t have access to Republican resources until it was too late. Some Hoffman workers suggested that the conservative effort that did come out was inexperienced, and failed to make the extra step to really pull out voters.

Hours before the polls closed, Hoffman backers were echoing the pundits’ spin–this race would be a referendum on President Obama, and a victory for Hoffman would put the brakes on health care reform by making Democrats worry about challenges to their re-elections in 2010. As a Hoffman victory became more and more remote, the rhetoric changed. The message became the message of two weeks ago. This election wasn’t about showing Republicans that conservatives could win. It was about showing Republicans that they couldn’t win without conservatives.

“People are fed up,” said Saranac Lake activist Russ Finley. “The Tea Party people are serious. The 9/12 people are serious. I’d hate to say that a loss is a good thing, but this is a good thing.”

Fox News’ disputed the Black Panther report, saying that Philly’s not exactly a Republican stronghold. Talking Points Memo has an alternative account of what happened — and here’s the video the McCain campaign is distributing.

But the McCain campaign’s supposed litany of problems hasn’t pointed up any serious wrongdoing. Where poll-watchers were supposedly forced to leave precincts, judges have ordered them back in. In Virginia, where Republicans complained that military ballots were not going to be counted, a judge ordered elections officials to hold onto them past Election Day.

GOP complaints in Missouri come down to opposing Democratic calls to extend polling hours there to ease long wait times at the precincts.

Finally, the McCain camp claims that people identifying themselves as Democrats are calling Republicans in Lancaster County, Pa., and falsely telling them that their polling places have changed location. There’s no indication of how many calls have been made or if anyone has been duped by them.

To sum up: While there are some glitches — and there could be more, as I noted last night — long lines, not fraudulent voting or intimidation, are what’s hindering this election. Victory is likely to go to the party and its members who turn out in the greatest numbers — and who are the most persistent.