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According to the article, moderate Republicans in Ohio insisted on transparency for purging voter rolls. They sent out the proposed list to various voter advoca

According to the article, moderate Republicans in Ohio insisted on transparency for purging voter rolls. They sent out the proposed list to various voter advocacy groups across the political spectrum, which reviewed the proposed changes and flagged mistakes. 80% were purged correctly. 20% were not. Rather than condemning Ohio, they should be praised for bringing transparency to the process (as long as the mistakes are corrected).

pknopf 7y ago
I still don't think it's a coincidence that the 20,000 were in a democratic strong-hold.
- biomcgary 7y ago
  Possibly not, but if they were trying to be nefarious, they shot themselves in the foot with transparency. More likely to be a mistake OR the conspiracy of a single individual.
- Spivak 7y ago
  It's not a coincidence but I don't think it's super malicious. it's not because it's a "democratic strong-hold" it's because Franklin county is Columbus, dense, and more populated than the surrounding areas.
microtherion 7y ago
They should be both praised for bringing more transparency, AND condemned for purging nearly 50k eligible voters.
- biomcgary 7y ago
  Did they purge eligible voters? My reading of the article was that they proposed purging voters, but got input from advocacy groups first. Did I misread it?
  - microtherion 7y ago
    They did get input, but it's not clear to what extent that input was respected in the purges: https://radio.wosu.org/post/ohio-voter-purge-will-remove-thousands-registrations#stream/0 https://radio.wosu.org/post/ohio-voter-purge-will-remove-tho... Besides, if those checks showed that a large number of people were included in the purge for demonstrably wrong reasons, it would be prudent to assume that a lot of additional purges would also be suspect.
jorblumesea 7y ago
What? So, you're willing to engage in unethical activity, with a modicum of lip service to transparency? The entire idea of purging voters rolls is antithetical to voting freedoms and transparency.
- biomcgary 7y ago
  It is grossly unethical to purge valid voters in secret, but how is limiting voter rolls to those with a legal right to vote unethical? Should people be allowed to vote and have a say in the government of places they don't live? The reductio ad absurdum of this is allowing the whole world to vote for your local school board. Transparency and community engagement (through advocacy groups) helps ensure that valid voters are kept on the voter rolls. Don't knock Ohio for trying to take steps in the right direction.
  - jorblumesea 7y ago
    When people talking about voting rolls, it's really just a dog whistle for suppressing the votes of minority and underprivileged groups. The debate about "legal right to vote" and all of those arguments are mostly smoke screens for disenfranchisement. While it's true that we should have voting roles and ensure only people who are in the state should vote etc, that's absolutely not what people are doing or talking about when implementing voting systems. When the Republican party talks about these ideas, the end goal is skewing the voter turnout in their favor.
- Spivak 7y ago
  That's a extreme. Unless you want the government to track every citizen's whereabouts using activity to figure out if you actually still live here isn't unreasonable at all.
howard941 7y ago
The condemnation is in order. Notifying the disenfranchised voters would have been praiseworthy.
crispyambulance 7y ago
No one should be praised other than the people who discovered "the mistakes". The tactic here is voter disenfranchisement. It's a tried and true tool of the Republicans and has been around since forever. The thing is inactive voters are just that, inactive. There is very small risk that some of their names might get used for voter fraud. But every time this is researched, only a handful of incidents are discovered and it takes thousands to swing an election. Those thousands can _easily_ be achieved, however, with sloppy aggressive and unnecessary purging. I wish there existed the political will to issue "citizen ID" cards (or other mechanisms) to all citizens, like they do in civilized countries. These could be used for residency and authentication for voting, banking, taxes, and other functions. This authentication mechanism would instantly remove the phony concern of voter fraud amongst republicans while not disenfranchising voters.
- andrewla 7y ago
  > The thing is inactive voters are just that, inactive. There is very small risk that some of their names might get used for voter fraud. But every time this is researched, only a handful of incidents are discovered and it takes thousands to swing an election. You claim the risk is small, but I'm not aware of anything that actually supports this assessment. This form of manipulation is nearly impossible to detect in a meaningful way. All the studies I'm aware of [1] have used prosecutions for voter fraud as a measure of the extent of fraud, but that is obviously contingent on the fraud being discovered. I'm part of an apparently nonexistent group of people who both believe in Voter ID laws and believe very strongly in maximizing potential voter turnout. People have ID -- opponents of voter ID have deliberately exaggerated the number of people without ids [2]. [1] https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/debunking-voter-fraud-myth https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/debu... has a good set of articles attempting to debunk the notion that various types of voter fraud occur. They all rely on "credible allegations" [2] https://www.brennancenter.org/sites/default/files/legacy/d/download_file_39242.pdf https://www.brennancenter.org/sites/default/files/legacy/d/d... -- just look at the first footnote and the description of the methodology, and if you buy their results then you're a sucker.
  - 7y ago
vkou 7y ago
No, this does not mean every single one of those 80% were not purged correctly. It means that nobody has found errors... Yet.
pedasmith 7y ago
Good to know your threshold for major fuck-ups is 20%. Would you accept a grocery store that overcharges you 20% of the time? Would you accept a car that doesn't start 20% of the time? A reasonable process would do a spot-check, discover that they are horrifically off, and then implement a second-level check.

pknopf 7y ago

I still don't think it's a coincidence that the 20,000 were in a democratic strong-hold.

biomcgary 7y ago
Possibly not, but if they were trying to be nefarious, they shot themselves in the foot with transparency. More likely to be a mistake OR the conspiracy of a single individual.
Spivak 7y ago
It's not a coincidence but I don't think it's super malicious. it's not because it's a "democratic strong-hold" it's because Franklin county is Columbus, dense, and more populated than the surrounding areas.

microtherion 7y ago

They should be both praised for bringing more transparency, AND condemned for purging nearly 50k eligible voters.

biomcgary 7y ago
Did they purge eligible voters? My reading of the article was that they proposed purging voters, but got input from advocacy groups first. Did I misread it?
- microtherion 7y ago
  They did get input, but it's not clear to what extent that input was respected in the purges: https://radio.wosu.org/post/ohio-voter-purge-will-remove-thousands-registrations#stream/0 https://radio.wosu.org/post/ohio-voter-purge-will-remove-tho... Besides, if those checks showed that a large number of people were included in the purge for demonstrably wrong reasons, it would be prudent to assume that a lot of additional purges would also be suspect.

jorblumesea 7y ago

What? So, you're willing to engage in unethical activity, with a modicum of lip service to transparency? The entire idea of purging voters rolls is antithetical to voting freedoms and transparency.

biomcgary 7y ago
It is grossly unethical to purge valid voters in secret, but how is limiting voter rolls to those with a legal right to vote unethical? Should people be allowed to vote and have a say in the government of places they don't live? The reductio ad absurdum of this is allowing the whole world to vote for your local school board. Transparency and community engagement (through advocacy groups) helps ensure that valid voters are kept on the voter rolls. Don't knock Ohio for trying to take steps in the right direction.
- jorblumesea 7y ago
  When people talking about voting rolls, it's really just a dog whistle for suppressing the votes of minority and underprivileged groups. The debate about "legal right to vote" and all of those arguments are mostly smoke screens for disenfranchisement. While it's true that we should have voting roles and ensure only people who are in the state should vote etc, that's absolutely not what people are doing or talking about when implementing voting systems. When the Republican party talks about these ideas, the end goal is skewing the voter turnout in their favor.
Spivak 7y ago
That's a extreme. Unless you want the government to track every citizen's whereabouts using activity to figure out if you actually still live here isn't unreasonable at all.

howard941 7y ago

The condemnation is in order. Notifying the disenfranchised voters would have been praiseworthy.

crispyambulance 7y ago

No one should be praised other than the people who discovered "the mistakes". The tactic here is voter disenfranchisement. It's a tried and true tool of the Republicans and has been around since forever. The thing is inactive voters are just that, inactive. There is very small risk that some of their names might get used for voter fraud. But every time this is researched, only a handful of incidents are discovered and it takes thousands to swing an election. Those thousands can _easily_ be achieved, however, with sloppy aggressive and unnecessary purging. I wish there existed the political will to issue "citizen ID" cards (or other mechanisms) to all citizens, like they do in civilized countries. These could be used for residency and authentication for voting, banking, taxes, and other functions. This authentication mechanism would instantly remove the phony concern of voter fraud amongst republicans while not disenfranchising voters.

andrewla 7y ago
> The thing is inactive voters are just that, inactive. There is very small risk that some of their names might get used for voter fraud. But every time this is researched, only a handful of incidents are discovered and it takes thousands to swing an election. You claim the risk is small, but I'm not aware of anything that actually supports this assessment. This form of manipulation is nearly impossible to detect in a meaningful way. All the studies I'm aware of [1] have used prosecutions for voter fraud as a measure of the extent of fraud, but that is obviously contingent on the fraud being discovered. I'm part of an apparently nonexistent group of people who both believe in Voter ID laws and believe very strongly in maximizing potential voter turnout. People have ID -- opponents of voter ID have deliberately exaggerated the number of people without ids [2]. [1] https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/debunking-voter-fraud-myth https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/debu... has a good set of articles attempting to debunk the notion that various types of voter fraud occur. They all rely on "credible allegations" [2] https://www.brennancenter.org/sites/default/files/legacy/d/download_file_39242.pdf https://www.brennancenter.org/sites/default/files/legacy/d/d... -- just look at the first footnote and the description of the methodology, and if you buy their results then you're a sucker.
- 7y ago

vkou 7y ago

No, this does not mean every single one of those 80% were not purged correctly. It means that nobody has found errors... Yet.

pedasmith 7y ago

Good to know your threshold for major fuck-ups is 20%. Would you accept a grocery store that overcharges you 20% of the time? Would you accept a car that doesn't start 20% of the time? A reasonable process would do a spot-check, discover that they are horrifically off, and then implement a second-level check.