Hmmm. My eyebrows are up, but I have to say that this really doesn’t bother me all that much. I would assume that the Board of Elections has copies of the voter registration cards, seeing as how they should have been the ones who issued them in the first place, no? My suspicion is that the Republicans are worried that people who go to the historically black colleges are registered to vote in Greene County, and they’re going to try to toss those votes by arguing that these voters don’t “really” live in Greene County.

This shouldn’t be an issue, as the law should be fairly clear on WHERE you can register to vote. If college students can register at their university address, there’s no issue. (I’m assuming that they can. bmaz, can you clarify?) And if I were a college student from New York or Texas or some other state where my vote doesn’t really count, and I went to school in Ohio, then I’d register to vote in Ohio, where my vote DOES count.

My take on the whole thing: It’s a PR ploy by the Republicans to claim that black people who aren’t “real” Ohioans are “sneaking” into Ohio to vote for Obama. Good luck making that stick. And I PRs stunts go, I’d have a hard time coming up with one that wouldn’t be more likely to unite an entire university against you. Hope you’re ready for a sit-in, Mister Sheriff!

Might be a beta test or might be the real deal. In the exceedingly, exceedingly unlikely event that I were attacking golden-week-registered votes, I would get a whole bunch of my plants to fraudulently register in a way not traceable back to themselves, then audit golden week registrations, and of course find the many many frauds that I caused to have planted, and finally use the high fraud rate to justify a legal challenge to the entire class of ballots cast by golden-week-registered voters. Once it works you’ve got a precedent and it spreads like wildfire on a per-jurisdiction basis.

(BTW Golden Week in Japan is usually the first week of May, when the school & work year starts and there is an awful lot of milestone/achievement oriented ceremony.)

Not that I agree with everything in this article, it may give some insight:

http://www.ohio.com/news/willard/30480624.html

EOH and Sara have hit on some of the issues as well.

One thing that should be clear. Mike DeWine in Ohio and the GOP nationally are not fighting to count every legitimately cast vote. They are fighting not to count as many as possible that might be cast for a Democrat.

As pointed out above, the county sheriff typically has no role in overseeing the proper registration of voters and the proper casting of ballots. That’s the function of county and state election officials. Even if he did, the article indicates no probable cause to suspect criminal acts that should precede the start of any “investigation”. This is fishing expedition, the trawling for data, ostensibly for voting patterns, but more likely to intimidate both voters and under-trained, under-staffed and overworked election officials. Among other things, absent probable cause reasonably to suspect a crime has already occurred, responding to this request is not an out-of-pocket cost or use of staff time that Ohio election officials should bear.

Mike DeWine enforcing voter rights is like your health insurer enforcing your medical insurance contract. There’s an inherent conflict of interest. The insurer prospers only when you don’t take advantage of your right to health care and reimbursement for its costs. In today’s polity, economy and society, Republicans prosper when you don’t examine whether the GOP has enhanced the resources needed by your community or those needed by its wealthiest members. It has chosen to prosper by dividing, by exacerbating racial or economic tensions, rather than promoting the interests we have in common. There’s an alternative, but you’ll have to fight for it.

It’ll be interesting to see where Sheriff Fischer parks his county patrol cars on election night: outside polling booths frequented by students and farm or factory laborers, or outside those next to the country clubs.

There is a new more informative article about all this — appeared in my mail from a good observant Antiochian, on the ground in YSO.

See: http://www.ohio.com/news/ap?ar…..4&c=y

It is interesting how the notion of “Preventitive War” and the use of Law Enforcement less to actually investigate real crimes than to prevent potential crimes, has migrated into the actions of the Greene Country Sheriff assuming he has a function in preventing ‘voter fraud’.

At any rate, given the article it is clear that he does not have any cause of action for obtaining the data he has requested — and the Sec. of State and the Greene County Elections Commission are on the same page here. As with many FOIA requests, he will get blanked out copies — unless he has probable cause and can get a judge to issue a subpoena.

Anyhow, given this article, it appears the response is what I am calling “Obama Cool.”

I actually watched the Antioch Graduation this year, streamed on the net — and yes it was very very sad.

Will we come back — plans are afoot. The Board of the University has agreed to “convey” the campus to the Alumni, and the Alumni Association has been busy organizing a new Board of Trustees, and under the sponsorship of the Great Lakes Consortium, negotiations on the $$$$$$$ are underway. There is a conference at Earlham this month focused on long term planning, envisioning the 21st Century Antioch, which hopefully will come up with a master plan. Quite soon all 17 thousand of us Antiochians may become the “owners” of a down at the heels campus, about 50 million in working Capital, and one hell of a tradition. As you can imagine, there are 17 thousand of us somewhere in the world, and 17 thousand ideas of how to recreate the place. But it is going to be hard to accomplish. First step will be to hire a President who can deal with “the culture”, can raise money, and has the strong program development and administrative skills to put what needs to be put back together, but also can focus everyone on common goals. Then we need an agreed master plan benchmarket to available finance, and with time-lines. A Faculty needs planning and hiring — and a curriculum developed in association with a probable new faculty. But moving on this is underway. I suspect about 2010-11 Antioch will be ready to admit new students.

I was elected to two terms on the Alumni Association Board between the late 80’s and 90’s, so made many trips to YSO gradually watching the decline of the College, and the failure of leaders to deal with reality. So I was not surprised with the closing, but that doesn’t mean I was not very sad about it. There are about a hundred of us in Minnesota, and we have another meeting scheduled for Early November.

Anyhow, while I was driving down for all those Alumni Association Meetings, I also visited around Kettering and Dayton, trying to get a full picture of things. I am from the generation of Antiochians who were more beat or bohemian, Pre-Hippy, and certainly not the Pierced Generation — but the distance between Kettering and YSO was always huge.

I think I have met your cousin, Barbara Roberts. I went with Barry Hollister to an AFSC meeting in the late 80’s when I was in YSO for another meeting. I was fairly involved with AFSC back in the 60’s, just leaving YSO about the time the Dayton Office was established. But yes, AFSC would be a good group to do some “observing” of election details. (Except the Pentagon and Homeland Security have them on various “lists” and all — Driving to a Quaker Meeting is about like Driving while Black.)

In the mid 60’s, as the SND’s were changing their ways, I took my former teacher and a couple of her friends to YSO for an afternoon — when they first could leave the convent for just enjoyment. We hiked out to the waterfalls in the Glen, had lunch, walked around campus, and then went to a play. The SND’s had been “told” the place was so subversive they really should be frightened of it — but I think what changed them was the Library. It was the Hippy Generation — so the scene was hundreds of hippies on chairs and even sprawled on the floor deep into the books, and a little pot being smoked on the steps out front. Sadly that kind of day was an “adventure” for them, at least as of that time.

Anyhow, I still say it is interesting so many like minded and similarly experienced landed in this space in the blogosphere.