Relaxed Politics

Today in Ohio, ACORN won their 2006 lawsuit in which they challenged the voter suppression by Ohio Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell (R). The story is over at The Brad Blog, and is written by Ernest A. Canning, a long time California attorney.

The Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) has won a substantive victory on behalf of the voters of Ohio — perhaps hundreds of thousands of them — via a court case filed in 2006, challenging a number of voter suppression tactics employed by the state’s then Sec. of State, J. Kenneth Blackwell (R).

In September 2006, ACORN filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court alleging that Blackwell and officials from Ohio’s Department of Job and Family Services (DJFS) had systematically violated the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 (NVRA), which Act, by its express terms, was intended to “increase the number of eligible citizens who register to vote in elections for Federal office,” “protect the integrity of the electoral process,” and “ensure that accurate and current voter registration rolls are maintained.”

Specifically, the lawsuit, Harkless v. Blackwell, which later became, Harkless v. Brunner, alleged Blackwell and officials from the DJFS violated Section 7 of the Act which mandates that state agencies which “provide public assistance” furnish voter registration forms, assist in their preparation and accept completed applications.

The suit, initially dismissed by the District Court, was reinstated by the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeal on Oct. 28, 2008, following ACORN’s appeal. The Sixth Circuit decision was issued after the U.S. Department of Justice filed a brief [PDF] in which it agreed that the District Court decision was unsound.

On Monday, the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights, issued a press release in which it announced a settlement which their co-counsel, Lisa Danetz, estimates will lead to the registration of “hundreds of thousands of voting-eligible low-income Ohioans”.

The Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights reported that as a result of the settlement, “the provision of voter registration services will be institutionalized within the office procedures at county DJFS offices, and both the SOS [Secretary of State] and ODJFS will make sure such services are provided.”

There is an intriguing irony. Where the Right has gone out of its way to smear ACORN, it turns out that it was the government, under the control of a Republican Secretary of State, which had violated U.S. election law.*** Where the District Court had based its dismissal, in part, on ACORN’s alleged lack of standing because ACORN was not allegedly damaged by Blackwell’s violations of federal election law, the Sixth Circuit noted that ACORN had suffered a loss because it was forced to expend funds on voter registration activities that it would not have expended had Blackwell and the DJFS complied with federal election laws; that ACORN’s Ohio members were directly injured by those violations.
***Note, while Blackwell’s and the DJFS’s systematic failure to register low income voters is significant, there remains the still unresolved, yet potentially far more serious allegations of a possible link of both Blackwell and Karl Rove to “a classic Man in the Middle’ cyber hack” of the 2004 Presidential election in Ohio, an allegation that Rove personally threatened GOP IT Mike Connell if he would not “take the fall,” and Connell’s mysterious death that followed shortly after Connell was ordered to testify in a deposition on the subject.

Good for ACORN and every single eligible low income disenfranchised voter – not just in Ohio, but all over the United States.

Like Mr. Canning, I won’t be holding my breath while I wait for this news to hit the main stream. But I won’t give up waiting. I hope this gets more coverage. ACORN is still under attack, as I posted back on September 26, 2009. Maybe this win will provide some momentum to win in the current battle for election and voter registration integrity and honesty.

posted on Thursday, December 3rd, 2009 at 11:21 am under Courts and Justice, Relaxed Politics.