Attention Ohio Absentee Ballot Voters
When I filled out and mailed my absentee ballot this morning, I noticed something that may or may not be cause for concern. I'm generally not a "tinfoil hat" sort of person, but I am at least aware that the Republicans are going to try a plethora of different ways to steal this election, so I thought I'd bring this to everyone's attention.
The ballot is 3 pages long, and consists of two sheets of paper (a front-and-back sheet and a front-only sheet). The "identification" envelope (which you put your ballot into before putting the identification envelope into the mailing envelope) has some printed words on the front of it, and as you go down the left half of the envelope, you'll see some printed words, then a large gap with no printing, and then more words at the bottom (I'm not good with inserting graphics into message boards, otherwise I'd take a picture to show you what I'm talking about). If you fill out your absentee ballot and reassemble it in the traditional way (with Page 1 on top of Page 2, and then re-fold it the same way it was folded when you received it), I noticed that when you place the ballot into the first envelope (the one where you have to write in your identification information), if you've voted for Obama, the black circle you make next to his name is pretty clearly visible through the paper, as it happens to fall right in the aforementioned gap. If you turn the ballot around the other way, there's nothing printed on the back, and you can pretty much see everything through the paper that way too.
Maybe I'm an alarmist, but when I saw this, I thought it couldn't possibly be a coincidence, so I tried every which way to place the folded ballot into the envelope so that nobody could see the vote through the envelope. I just envisioned scenarios in which lackeys from Jon Husted's Republican-controlled Secretary of State's Office were given secret instructions to look for the appearance of dark circles in the gap and then "lose" those ballots, accidentally-on-purpose.
So here's what I did, and if you're as paranoid as I am, I would encourage you to do the same thing. If you reverse the folds (i.e. fold the ballot along the creases it already has, but pushing the paper backwards against the way it naturally wants to fold), your vote for President will be hidden until the identification envelope is opened. I considered reversing the order of the 2 pages of the ballot (putting Page 3 on top of Page 1), but then I thought it might violate some obscure rule about having the pages in the wrong order and then not get counted, so I decided to reverse the folds instead.
Again, maybe I'm just being paranoid or am prone to an overabundance of caution, but we all know for a fact that the Republicans are GOING to resort to dirty tricks in the election, so I figured if there was a possibility, why not do everything possible to head it off?
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