Purged from voting rolls while deployed, Ohio vet demands answers

[workinclasszero]

Purged from voting rolls while deployed, Ohio vet demands answers
By Derek Hawkins January 11 at 5:02 AM WP

Every year, Ohio officials scrub an untold number of names from state voter rolls under an aggressive and, some argue, unconstitutional policy that purges people who fail to vote in consecutive elections.

Joe Helle, the Democratic mayor of Oak Harbor, a small village near Lake Erie, says he was once among the disenfranchised. On Wednesday, in a dramatic exchange at the steps of the U.S. Supreme Court, he confronted the man he says was ultimately responsible for twice barring him from casting ballots.

The moment was more than six years in the making. In 2011, Helle, an Army veteran, returned home from tours in Iraq and Afghanistan and tried to vote in a local election, only to be told that poll workers couldn’t find his name. A couple of months later, in the general election, he was blocked again. This time, board of elections officials revealed he had been removed from the state’s roll due to “inactivity.”

“I started crying,” Helle told The Washington Post. “To come home after defending that fundamental right and to be told that I couldn’t exercise it, that was heartbreaking.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2018/01/11/an-army-vet-was-purged-from-ohios-voter-rolls-now-a-mayor-he-confronted-the-official-in-charge/?tid=sm_fb&utm_term=.ad30bf3788b4

[GarColga]

1. Here in the deep red state of Idaho

we have the same policy of purging inactive voters. However if you show up at the polling place and find you are not in the poll book, you can register right then and there and get a ballot. Easy peasy.

[workinclasszero]

2. That's way better than Ohio

Looks like.

[Roland99]

3. I looked but could not find the *use it or lose it* reference in the constitution

[workinclasszero]

4. Yeah go figure

Red states making up BS to disenfranchise citizens as they go.

[rainin]

5. And yet, these stories aren't heard by active duty, their families

or veterans. I am the lone dem in my circle of military families. They are largely Trump supporters, Fox viewers, and outraged that someone would not stand for the Anthem.

I would love to see the truth finally reach the military. We can't wait until something happens personally to each one of them.

Curious, is Rush Limbaugh still on Armed Forces Radio?

[Farmer-Rick]

6. When I was in the Navy, maybe 50% of the time my absentee ballot would qualify

I voted absentee in PA and either the mail was too slow for the registration to make it there in time or the actual ballot never arrived in time. They changed the rules so often that it was difficult to meet the deadlines.

This was back in the late 1980s. Since then, I don't let the the government stop me from voting. I get hassled because I insist on using my military ID but we vote here in TN on those broken voting machines so no telling if my votes are ever counted. But I go through the pretense, just in case.