OhioNews Bureau

ONB COLUMBUS: Even though Ohio is not among the 24 states whose collective primaries are called Super Tuesday, which some say constitute a national primary, voting news related to the Buckeye State’s primary on March 4th is in the headlines.

OhioNews Bureau

ONB COLUMBUS: Former two-term Ohio Secretary of State Kenneth J. Blackwell, who made headlines in 2004 for serving as state co-chair of the Bush/Cheney campaign and who many defenders of democracy and voting activists believe was complicit in throwing Ohio to President Bush, was sent a letter Tuesday asking him to appear before the US House Committee on Judiciary to provide testimony on “Voter Suppression.”

OhioNews Bureau

ONB COLUMBUS: The label “battleground state” generally refers to a state whose Electoral College votes can make or break a race for the White House. Ohio, the nation’s 7th largest state with 20 such votes, has been so designated in previous election cycles and is predicted to again defend that title this year.

This year the moniker "battleground state" may more aptly describe the breakout of intra-state battles taking shape over the budget, voting systems and energy. These battles are creating fissures between Republicans, who still rule the roost at the legislature and office of auditor, and Democrats, who for the first time in 16 years control the executive branch and offices of attorney general, treasurer and secretary of state.

OhioNews Bureau

ONB COLUMBUS: Just when you thought the confab and controversy over Ohio’s problem-plagued system of voting was over, a new stew is brewing pitting election-law experts and voting-rights advocates against Ohio’s new chief elections officer, who recently decided to scrap expensive, hackable touch-screen machines in favor of expensive, temperamental optical scanners in the hotspot of Ohio election failures just a few short months before the Buckeye State’s March primary.

OhioNews Bureau

OhioNews Bureau

ONB COLUMBUS: Last Friday Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner presented the controversial findings of her $1.8 million dollar EVEREST study of Ohio’s election system showing vulnerabilities abound.

OhioNews Bureau

ONB COLUMBUS: Ohio Governor Ted Strickland, responding to the findings in a report released last Friday that confirmed serious vulnerabilities exist with Ohio’s pervasive and costly system of electronic voting, said he hopes changes can be made before next year’s race for the White House so it doesn’t turn out to be as flawed and open to criticism as were the two previous elections.

OhioNews Bureau

ONB COLUMBUS: With $100 million in federal Help America Vote Funds having been spent already to purchase thousands of electronic voting machines used in Ohio’s 88 counties, the $1.9 million more in federal funds just spent by Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner to perform a comprehensive review of voting systems used in the state seems only to have further muddied the waters of what to do for the 2008 March primaries and the fall general elections, when a massive turnout is expected for the race for the White House.

ePluribus Media OhioNews Bureau

ONB COLUMBUS: When earlier pioneers floated downstream on the Niagara River, they saw the billowing streams of rising mists from the monstrous falls that lay ahead of them. For the boatmen who failed to heed the message of the mists, their future was indeed bleak. For the smart ones who understood the peril below the mists, they had time to portage around the death-defying falls.

ePluribus Media OhioNews Bureau

ONB COLUMBUS: An Ohio common pleas court judge struck down a Republican-pushed campaign finance bill Thursday because the wrong version of the legislation was signed by former Gov. Bob Taft and then filed with the secretary of State, making it the law of the land.

The controversial campaign finance bill was rammed through a lame-duck session of the legislature in 2006 by the GOP, which at the time enjoyed veto-proof margins in both chambers of the legislature and had a Republican governor willing to sign the bill.