Well this may be another long year... I can't believe that a judge can overule the law & allow people who sign up within the 30 day period to vote the same day. Even before the person qualifies as a legit voter??? This should be enough to question the intergirty of DEMS running for office.


Voting for president begins in pivotal Ohio

CLEVELAND (AP) - Five weeks before the election, Ohioans started casting their ballots Tuesday in the perennial battleground that tipped the election to President Bush four years ago and may determine his successor.

Republican John McCain and Democrat Barack Obama are focusing intently on Ohio as they seek to pile up state-by-state victories to reach the 270 Electoral College votes needed to win the White House.

Both visit often while spending millions of dollars flooding TV and radio with advertisements, mailboxes with literature and even voicemail with automated phone calls to get supporters to the polls, particularly during the one-week window that began Tuesday in which people can register and vote in one swoop.

Early participation appeared light.

"I wanted to avoid the traffic and the people," said Charlene Glass, 49, of Cleveland Heights, as she voted for Obama at the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections, where about 230 people had voted by midday. At one site in Toledo, 15 people were waiting before the doors opened and about 200 had passed through in four hours. Abdulla Abdi, age 24 and an Ohio State University student, cited convenience in casting his vote early for Obama in Columbus, saying: "I don't want to have to come back when I'm having exams.

At stake: 20 electoral votes—perhaps, the presidency itself.

Most recent state polls show a dead heat; others give McCain a slight edge. National surveys show Obama ahead. The disparity underscores the difficulty Obama is having in closing the deal in this pivotal state. He's a first-term senator from Chicago with a liberal voting record and would be the country's first black president.

Ohio is crucial to McCain's electoral strategy. Bush won Ohio, and a loss for McCain here would be very difficult to make up with victories elsewhere given that the political landscape favors Democrats and several other key states are tilting toward Obama.

Obama, however, now leads McCain in enough other states Bush won in 2004 that he could lose Ohio and still reach the 18 electoral votes he would need if he carries all the states Democrat John Kerry did in 2004. Still, winning Ohio itself could do the trick.

Every factor is at play in Ohio.

Among them: Can Republican McCain overcome his links to the deeply unpopular Bush and a weakened state party and prevail in a state that suffered large losses of manufacturing jobs and large numbers of Iraq war deaths? Can Democrat Obama overcome voter concerns about his voting record and race among the many blue-collar workers in this culturally conservative, deeply divided state?

Obama got shellacked here by Hillary Rodham Clinton in the Democratic primary: She carried 83 of 88 counties as white working class voters flocked to her economic populist message. Thus, Obama is copying Gov. Ted Strickland and Sen. Sherrod Brown, Democrats who went into Republican areas and boosted turnout to narrow GOP margins.

"Democrats too often have forgotten about places like this," said former Mississippi Gov. Ray Mabus, an Obama supporter who recently met with some two dozen rural voters in London in western Ohio. "They have forgotten about small-town America, rural America, agricultural America and taken it for granted that we're going to vote the other way."

Linda Ward, a nurse from western Ohio, has tried to persuade others to take a critical look at McCain but hasn't had much luck. "Not my neighbors, not my friends. This area is a very conservative one," she said.

Diane Ferguson, a nursing home director in southeast Ohio, says she likes Obama but isn't sure she can vote for him. She's troubled by his early resistance to wearing a flag pin, his race, and a resume that looks thin to her.

"It's a hard decision," she said. "I don't know if we're ready for that one."

Aware of such skepticism, Obama's campaign is using its financial and organizational muscle to boost turnout among his core supporters—blacks and the youth. His campaign long planned for this early voting period and organized car pools from college campuses to early voting sites across the state.

Independent groups seeking to increase poor and minority participation also transported voters from places like homeless shelters, halfway houses and soup kitchens.

"We've had mediocre response," Matt Stone, an organizer of the group Vote from Home, said at the Franklin County Veterans Memorial in Columbus, where voting was but a trickle. "We hope the effort will snowball over seven days as people talk about it."

Outside the voting site, Republican lawyers apparently concerned about voter fraud snapped photographs of vehicle license plates.

On Monday, the state Supreme Court and two federal judges upheld the ruling by Democratic Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner that allows new voters to register and cast an absentee ballot on the same day from Tuesday through Oct. 6. Republicans argued that Ohio law requires voters to be registered for 30 days before they cast an absentee ballot.

The Ohio GOP asked the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati on Tuesday either to stop same-day voting or require elections official to separate those ballots so the registrations can be verified. But Brunner already has instructed election officials to segregate those ballots and verify the registrations before counting them.

I see that this one is about their state Supreme Court and the two federal judges that approved the process.

SO GET A LAWYER AND SUE THE BASTARDS!!

The point is these agencies are too partisan & that's the problem.

Get a liar for hire...they're the problem too.

THAT'S THE POINT OR ARE PEOPLE TOO PARTISAN TO SEE THAT IT'S NOT ONE SIDED!!!!!

Partisanship is what's causing the lack of justice & balance in the country. It's people who are too partisan & look the other way instead of voting people out, that are also the problem. when people take the blinders off we might get the spine to vote these bums out. That means DEMS too.

You don't say...

Thanks for the post Quickstepper!

There were, according to many, widespread voter discrepancies in the last presidential election in Ohio.

The head of the states elections section was on Bush's reelection committee!

Problems included not enough voting machines in minority areas where people wait sometimes longer than eight hours to vote, voting machines supplied by a company who's owner said he would do what ever it took to reelect Bush,discrepancies with voter registration, whole voting machines that went missing and unaccounted for and more.

Guess what??? It's going to happen again.

Last I heard in a report approximately three days ago there had been five new lawsuits filed in Ohio over election issues.

Voting has already started in Ohio by the way. Plenty of time to fix the results there.

if enough people do not vote they can do whatever they want

in any state

I live in Ohio and work in cleveland I can assure you that the lower income districts in cleveland did not have enough voteing machines or working machines and the wait was for hours and hours to cast a ballot. This was discrimination my co workers who live in cleveland described the fiasco many votes could not be cast Ohio was stolen by the republicans last election

Republicans prevented more than 350,000 voters in Ohio from casting ballots or having their votes counted -- enough to have put John Kerry in the White House.
http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/10432334/was_the_2004_election_stolen

That's just wrong.

this is kind of ironic

as the ohio government is run by the demms this time around

so if obama takes ohio it is because of voter manipulation by the ruling party of the state

and if mccain takes it what will be the reason this time

after all they have done everything possible to keep third party candidates off the ballot in ohio

.R. KROPKO - Associated Press

CLEVELAND - Two election workers in the state's most populous county were convicted Wednesday of illegally rigging the 2004 presidential election recount http://www.bbvforums.org/cgi-bin/forums/board-auth.cgi?file=/1954/46508.html

Just to keep people's feet to the fire... how about voter fraud in OHIO... dem judges siding with DEM politicians running for office.

Is it no wonder why Kerry & Kennedy keep getting elected???

So tell me again why to vote for a DEM?

do you remember Clinton and how great the economy was? take a look around now

everything is rosy when kiting scams are not found out.

But making excuses for the facts of the matter regarding the failures surrounding the manipulations of regulations regarding mortgage instruments only speaks to a house of cards created by manipulating lenders requirements for qualified borrowing.

Further changing accounting rules to pretax inventories and capital growth through the use of "mark to market" only works in an inflationary economic environment. Another manipulation of Clintonomics to enhance revenues and give the appearance of managing a sound budget, without actually doing so.

Raising the ceiling of taxpayer's annual contributions to SSI also enhanced revenue, without the appearance of raising taxes ; a ploy successfully engineered by the Clinton regime to raise revenue not meant for government spending on things other than SSI related liabilities funded by taxpayers, but plundered to pay for exhorbitant and grandiose spending plans by the federal government. Clinton did not invent that practice but did in fact greedily increase the misuse of SSI contributions, bar none.

The fallout that has brought the US to the door of the most reckless underwriting of public liability made incumbent on the future earnings of US taxpayers and their children has been perpetrated as a fraud upon the American taxpayer with further indebtedness being legislated into the bailout which is not 700 billion, assumed to exist when it does not, but 700 billion plus 1.7 trillion in earmarks.

That package deal is at a cost of 2.4 trillion, plus interest, over a five year period.

Judging by the record of the US Government to NOT pay down the National Debt, that number will be twice that in five years to the tune of 5 trillion US Dollars.


Anybody that doesn't see the horror of this reality is insane.

Anybody tha excuses the reasons for how we got here as Bush's fault, because oit happened on his watch, is ignoring how the National Debt has been growing and accelerating its total indebtedness through compounding interest alone.

Washington just made the national debt rise from 10 trillion, at present, to 15 trillion in the next five years without any consideration being given the interest due on the 10 trillion itself.

add the compounding interest to the 10 trillion itself and the interest accruing is worth almost 10 trillion more in the next five years.

10 trillion today, at $80,000 cost to the average American family.

25 trillion Dollar National Debt can be expected to be the outstanding balance on account in the next five years given the trend of the US Government borrowing to make the interest paYMENTS ALONE ON THE PRINCIPAL.

25 TRILLION IS $200,000 FOR THE AVERAGE FAMILY IN aMERICA TO PONY UP.



Now, what is Obama going to do with a complicitous Congress but add further to that mess?

can we say 50 trillion? or more?

Do you know wwhat the interest/yr is on 50 trillion US Dollars @ 5% ???????

It is 2.5 trillion.




keep drinking that KOOL AID.



I am sitting this sh!t out.



man your battle stations kids.

war is coming.

Maybe this is why:
http://www.statemaster.com/graph/edu_bes_edu_ind-education-best-educated-index

listen up brainiacs.

Calipornicopia has more democrats in Congress than any other state of the union, and is the least educated of the lot, except for Arizona, perhaps.

Calipornicopia has the 7th largest economy in the world. It is also the most liberal state in the USA. Demographically, it is a direct micrcosm of the composite trend of democrats and their socialist agenda, and is in debt to the tune of 7 billion Dollars and cannot borrow from the Federal Reserve Bank.

It has 1/6 of the total population PAYING MORE TAXES THAN ANY STATE IN THE UNION.

Perhaps as high as 25% of all tax receipts come from Calipornicopians.

Yet, the east coast is the most educated?

These statistics are tainted if they reflect the demographic delusion of liberals wishful thinking that republicans are the real dumbsh!ts.

No wonder a junior Senator with no record of achievement is oggled by liberals as the messiah of liberation from backwater republicans.


keep drinking that KOOL AID!!!!

keep washing down them thar free lunches.

lovingly brought to you be a calipornicopian in comrade peloshki's district.


Needless to say, the democrats control the state budget and are driving it into red ink without any help from Bush.

and this state is a world class economic engine of prosperity.

and for all that, the state government is imploding under the weight of runaway liberal free lunch programs.

Struck a nerve, eh woody?

The Dems have only had the house 2 years out of 8.