Care about your vote? Watch the secretary of state race
Barb ShellyThink that secretary of state’s race in Missouri is just another boring contest to install a bureaucrat in an elected office?
If so, you need to read this piece in the Atlantic, which details the checkered career of the man who may determine the outcome of the national election in Ohio. And as Ohio goes, chances are so goes the nation.
As the writer, Andrew Cohen, relates, Ohio’s Republican Secretary of State, John Husted, has tried to limit early voting, especially in Democratic-leaning urban areas. Husted has also been pushing the notion that people who vote in the wrong precinct should have their votes disqualified, even if it’s the poll worker who has made the mistake.
Husted has been fighting with the courts for the past year on these two fronts. Cohen writes:
Given his public pronouncements and litigation over the past year, what confidence should minority voters in Ohio have that their votes will be counted under Husted’s direction? Think of all the time and energy he has spent in the state trying to make it harder for people to have their votes counted. Now think of what Ohio’s election might look like if the state’s chief elections officer had devoted that time and energy to ensure broad voting rights.
The takeaway: Secretaries of state play a big role in decisions over who votes, and whose votes get counted. I’d like to think the nation would lean toward expanding the franchise as much as possible. Unfortunately, we’re moving in the opposite direction, with Republicans raising the specter of nearly non-existent voter identity fraud to require government-issued ID’s, which can be hard for low-income and elderly people to obtain.
In Missouri, a secretary of state’s race between Democrat Jason Kander and Republican Shane Schoeller is in full throttle. Schoeller wants to make the contest all about requiring voter ID. That platform has a lot of appeal in Missouri. But there are reasons why Schoeller is the wrong person for the secretary of state’s job.
He also has accepted nearly $500,000 from St. Louis multimillionaire Rex Sinquefield, who is fond of bankrolling initiative petitions, which must be vetted by the secretary of state.
Also, Schoeller apparently violated a state statute when his wife operated a lucrative fee office while Schoeller served as a state representative. Matt Blunt awarded the contract on a no-bid basis, and Missouri law forbids forbids members of the General Assembly or their spouses from performing any service for the state ‘for any consideration” of more than $1,500 a year, unless the contract is gained through a public competitive bidding process.
In other words, Schoeller is inclined to suppress votes, and he has shown he’s willing to press the limits of the rules.
Kander investigated corruption in Afghanistan and has pushed relentlessly for ethics reform in Missouri. I’d have a lot more confidence in his ability to ensure fair and honest elections.
William R. Nelson
6 months, 3 weeks ago**Missouri SECRETARY OF STATE: Shane Schoeller(R).
Why? The Secretary of State Project. What’s that, you ask? Click here.
Matt Henry
6 months, 3 weeks agoWhy is it we have to be lectured about people like Sinquefield and the Kochs and what they do and never about people like Soros and his Secretary of State Project, a project not-so-subtly designed to give Dems control over state elections? The baseline thumping through Barb’s work is that this is okay because they are the “good guys” while Sinquefield and the Kochs are “bad guys.” It’s a joke.
Even the New York Times has pointed to Kander as someone who has received most of his money from “unions and trial lawyers.” Makes you all warm and fuzzy inside, doesn’t it?
Move on to moveon, Barb. It’s where you belong.
John Stolte
6 months, 2 weeks agoYeah, I agree about voting all the Dems out. Today’s Democrat Party is not the same thing as it was in the day of JFK. It would be better named the National Demokrat Socialist Party. Now, on to some real meat; Why aren’t you talking about how Obama got four of our men killed in Benghazi Barb? Try to tackle a real issue for a change!
Phil Cardarella
6 months, 2 weeks agoTime was that the Parties both agreed on one principle: Every citizen should have the right to vote, and every vote should count.
Then came the 2000 election and Karl Rove, etc. Gore won the popular vote, but Bush was able to win Florida (more or less) because — based on a GOP “citizens group” list — 4000 eligible citizens had been stricken from the rolls as “felons”, nearly all of whome were not. What were they? Blacks & Hispanics likely to vote Democratic. They were struck by the GOP Secretary of State. Without striking those legally eligible voters from the lists, no one would have ever cared about “hanging chads” or recounts.
Think that is important? Does anyone think a President Gore would have ignored Afghanistan to invade Iraq? Or given a trillion dollars of tax cuts to multimillionaires while putting a war on credit card?
Phil Cardarella
6 months, 2 weeks agoOh, and Jason Kandor fought for this country in Afghanistan. His opponent fought to get his wife a sweatheart deal with the state.
Easy choice.