The Columbus Institute of Contemporary Journalism (CICJ) has operated Freepress.org since 2000 and ColumbusFreepress.com was started initially as a separate project to highlight the print newspaper and local content.
ColumbusFreepress.com has been operating as a project of the CICJ for many years and so the sites are now being merged so all content on ColumbusFreepress.com now lives on Freepress.org
The Columbus Freepress is a non-profit funded by donations we need your support to help keep local journalism that isn't afraid to speak truth to power alive.
I went to vote this morning. I made sure that I looked respectable, tamed
my ethnic hair,
put on nice clothes and wore my good coat. I had decided to try to vote
using a form of ID available to
someone who does not have a drivers license or state ID, and I didn't want
to inadvertently set off any red flags
among the poll workers by looking like... a scary Mexican? Anyway, I
reread the card sent out by the Lucas Co.
Board of Elections spelling out what I needed to do to comply with the new
voter ID law. I put that in my purse
along with my water/sewer bill, one of the only utility bills that I have
which comes in my name in addition to my
Husband's, since according to the notice is sufficent identifiaction. It
has both my name and my husband's and
our address. Of course I also had my Ohio drivers license but was
committed to not using it.
I got to my polling location and first observed that a campaign worker for
one of Bob Vasquez,
(one of our Democrat Toledo City Council candidates) was passing out
litrature well within the flags posted as the
boundry for that type of activity. It was raining and he was trying to
stay dry and I didn't say say anything to the poll workers.
But I shouldn't have had to it is their job to enforce the law.
As I entered the polling place and stepped up to the table they asked me
for my drivers license.
I gave them my water bill and they seemed confused until the election
judge said it was an accepatble form of
ID. So they found my name in the book and one of the poll workers asked
what to put in this little rectangular
box next to my name. The other worker then said that they needed to put in
an ID number and asked If I didn't
have my drivers license on me, because they needed to put in an ID number.
I told her," yes", I had my license
but that I had presented an acceptable form of ID and wasn't going to show
my license. She then told me that
she still needed a photo ID because "I don't know who you are".
A second election judge approached and told the poll worker to use the
last for digits of my Social Security no. and
have me cast a provisional ballot. I refused and read aloud the "Notice of
Election and Identification Requirments"
that I had brought with me. And stated that I wanted to cast my vote on
the voting machine.
The election judge told me that they had "so many new rules to figure out"
and explained that
I only had to give them the last 4 digits of my Social Security number. I
handed her the ID requirements and
told her that if she could show me where it stated that I had to provide
that in addition to an acceptable form of ID,
they had agreed that my water bill was an acceptable form of ID, that I
would give them the last 4 digits of my Soc.
Sec. no..
At that point they told me to take a seat and it appeared that they might
not let me vote. My neighbor happened to be
waiting for her son to finish voting and volunteered to vouch for me...
I sat there for several minutes and then they just let me vote.
The voting machines were all set up in a row and did not provide any
privacy so I asked if I could move mine back
so that I could have some privacy. The election judge said, "do whatever
you want".
As I left the polling place the first election judge thanked me for my
patience.
But all I could think about was what would have happened if I had not been
so willing to press the issue,
and didn't have a drivers license in my purse to pull out if needed.
