Half a million people were removed from Ohio’s voter rolls by Republican Secretary of State Jon Husted in the past two years. If any of those people who lived in the 12th district found their names missing, they got a provisional ballot. Indeed, there are 3,435 provisional ballots in play.
And here’s the bad news: If you were wrongly removed from the voter rolls they still won’t count your provisional ballot (that’s why we call ’em “placebo” ballots). Now, whose ballots are they? We know that they are overwhelmingly from Franklin County, from the urban area, which is overwhelmingly Democratic.
The Supreme Court heard the case and voted 5/4 to allow Ohio to remove these people from the voter rolls, and so there’s not much speculation, we know that those are Democratic votes in the throwaway pile, in the electoral dumpster.
In addition to the 3,435 provisional ballots, we have 5,048 absentee ballots, and there’s a lot of what they call “spoiled” ballots. A lot of votes get cast and not counted again, overwhelmingly in the urban, that is Democratic, areas around Columbus and in Franklin County.
So the congressional race is being determined by the votes NOT counted, not by the votes cast.
Greg Palast (Rolling Stone, Guardian, BBC) is the author of The New York Times bestsellers, Armed Madhouse, Billionaires & Ballot Bandits and the book and documentary, The Best Democracy Money Can Buy.
His latest film is All Washed Away: The Untold Story of the Drowning of New Orleans and Texas. Palast is currently working on a new documentary Long Knife, exposing the Koch Brothers' theft of Osage oil, to be released in 2025.
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