Voters make selections at their voting booths inside an early voting site. (Photo by Melissa Sue Gerrits/Getty Images)
As part of a group “working to restore faith in public elections,” two former Ohio elected officials are urging Ohioans to trust the process, and accept the results.
Former U.S. Representative Zack Space and former Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell participated in a Wednesday panel discussion at the University of Cincinnati on election integrity and trust in the electoral process. The discussion was part of UC’s “Digital Futures Flashpoint” series.
Space, a Democrat, said he and the Republican Blackwell don’t agree on their choice of presidential candidate in the November election, or their choice in Ohio’s U.S. Senate race, or even on certain policies.
“But we agree on this: if you cast your vote … you can rest assured that it will be counted,” Space said.
Blackwell – who served in the George H.W. Bush administration, was an honorary co-chair of the George W. Bush campaign in 2004 and was a part of former President Donald Trump’s transition team in 2016 – said the strength of the elections system in Ohio should be believed.
“We need to turn up the volume to help people believe their vote does matter,” Blackwell said. “We can detect flaws in the system and fix flaws in the system. That’s something we do well in Ohio.”
In Blackwell’s tenure as Ohio’s secretary of state from 1999 to 2007, he dealt with his own share of election controversies and questions. With regard to an investigation into “irregularities reported in the Ohio presidential election” in 2004, U.S. House Rep. John Conyers, Jr., the ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, said “there were massive and unprecedented voter irregularities and anomalies in Ohio.”
Several counties were hampered by broken voting machines, not enough voting machines, and a directive by Blackwell on provisional ballots.
“In many cases these irregularities were caused by intentional misconduct and illegal behavior, much of it involving Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell, the co-chair of the Bush/Cheney campaign in Ohio,” Conyers wrote.
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State Democrats sued about a directive issued by Blackwell for that election that kept ballot boards from giving ballots to voters who were in the wrong precinct. A U.S. District judge blocked the directive, but an appellate court ruled in favor of Blackwell, throwing out certain provisional ballots.
Blackwell addressed the criticism over the long lines on Wednesday, saying the problem, particularly in Montgomery County, was a campaign that had engaged university students to vote, to the point where polling places were not prepared with enough machines, and long lines ensued.
Though he faced much criticism at the time, on Wednesday, he changed the narrative.
“The reality was it was a very positive sign,” Blackwell said, saying the increased voter turnout and the success of the student engagement was a good thing.
For this election year, Blackwell and Space are putting their heads together as part of the Democracy Defense Project, a bipartisan coalition of former elected officials from Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Ohio.
“An erosion of faith in our democracy and the proliferation of politicians undermining election integrity to bolster their own campaign, reputation or party’s influence have caused false narratives about ‘stolen elections’ to take root,” according to the project’s website. “The mistrust that many voters have for our electoral system puts our democracy at grave risk.”
The targets of the group include boosting confidence in election results and improving voter participation, according to the DDP website.
While the Ohio members of DDP agree that it is unlikely America will know the results of the presidential election next Tuesday night, with close calls and litigation anticipated, they urged the public to have faith in the election through the work that local boards of elections do and the protections in place for votes.
“There is a point by which the challenges are resolved and if it doesn’t go your way, you have to accept it,” Blackwell said.
