So folks - what happened in Ohio?

[LynneSin]

Across the country Democrats picked up major victories from Defeated Republican referendums, State Governors and removal of a school board that wanted Intelligent Design.

And yet in a state where Charles Manson could probably get a more favorable rating than their own governor, somehow all of the Democratic Referendums went down in major flames - despite polls showing them winning or at least in a close race.

Kenneth Blackwell is the biggest scum I have ever seen (and although I have never called anyone ever before an Uncle Tom she surely comes across as one). Is Ohio too corrupt in its voting system to be fixed? And how can we win this state if Blackwell is running the election and sticking with the defective/corrupt voting systems.

What can we do?

[SHRED]

1. Based on polling compared to results...

it looks rigged...as usual.

[Botany]

6. Bingo

Issues 2 & 3 were way up in the polls but lost by huge margins.

But the same poll had Issue 1 dead on.

Funny it was only the election reform issues that did not match the polls
kinda like exit polls last year in the presidential race.

Although I think in a way it is good .... it lays naked the level of
corruption in Ohio. Only a matter of time before Blackwell and
crew get outed.

Issue #1:
Poll: 53% YES, 27% NO, 20% Don't Know
Actual: 53.7% YES, 46.3% NO

Issue #2:
Poll: 59% YES, 33% NO, 9% Don't Know
Actual: 35.7% YES, 64.3% NO

Issue #3:
Poll: 61% YES, 25% NO, 14% Don't Know
Actual: 32% YES, 68% NO

Issue #4:
Poll: 31% YES, 45% NO, 25% Don't Know
Actual: 29% YES, 71% NO

Issue #5:
Poll: 41% YES, 43% NO, 16% Don't Know
Actual: 28.8% YES, 71.2% NO

[s-cubed]

14. Where's TIA? We need him to crunch these numbers? n/t

[Kukesa]

2. We can't go on blaming Diebold.

These four issues were too wordy and were amendments to our constitution. Most people didn't even understand them.

Several of our major newspapers did NOT endorse the issues.

There were very few TV/radio ads and the ones shown/heard were confusing.

I never received one piece of print advertising at my house.

The Ohio Dem party didn't endorse the issues.

It just didn't work, folks. It was our fault they didn't pass and we have to do better.

[cmd]

3. Exacty right

You cannot blame Diebold. In my county we still used punch cards. The results were consist with the counties using electronic voting. It was the number and length of the issues, not Diebold.

Everything Kukusa said is accurate.

[beaconess]

29. True - I was familiar with them and knew how I wanted to vote and STILL

had trouble deciphering them on the ballot to make sure that I was actually voting the way I wanted to.

The initiatives are drafted by their proponents so if they're too confusing for people to understand, its the fault of the drafters.

[formernaderite]

32. my brother in Ohio thinks people perceived these reforms

as being pushed by out of staters. Perhaps thats why the Ohio dems didn't endorse?

[doc03]

35. I agree my county used punch cards and is heavily

Democratic but these issues went down in flames. The were in the paper last week they covered several pages in fine print. The adds ran against claimed it was outsiders pushing the issues. If people don't understand the issue they figure the safest vote is no.

[asthmaticeog]

4. Reform Ohio Now wasn't a Dem issue.

In fact many Dem leaders endorsed a "no" vote. The opposition was incredibly organized and well funded. The R.O.N. people amounted to hippies with handbills. Pretty much every daily paper in the state endorsed a "no" vote. The specific proposals were complicated and long to read on the ballots. There are a million reasons these measures failed. And NO reasons to go crying "Diebold!" about it. There's no evidence that anything here was outside the Norm.

[Epiphany4z]

5. I had my doubts before the vote and I live in very heavy Dem area.

I think people just didn't have a clear idea of what Reform Ohio was all about and the rebubs had just enough info out there to confuse them. I was out talking to people and they where confused and scared to pass them.

I just don't think people read. They go with what they hear and what they heard in ohio was that RON would cost 90 mill and LIBERALS where out to steal elections. They heard Mail in votes always have problems and are to easy manipulate. One guy I talked to actually thought it was somehow about eminent domain..another was against voting by mail..lol mind you he had already voted NO by mail.

Ohio needs to better organize our Dems I really believe this. People are just not involved enough yet.


On the up side people are talking about these things more now.

[INdemo]

10. What happen to Gov. Deans grassroots effort there

[truth2power]

13. And what they heard in Ohio

was that hideous ad with someone yelling about "the DEVIL" and describing the amendments as "horrible". Scared people to death, probably.

Some "vote no" flyers, in polling booths, as I found in mine and the one next to it, left there "by accident" I'm sure, didn't help.

[farmbo]

7. Don't sweat it...RON's loss in Ohio means nothing.

First, RON was OPPOSED by many Democrats. Jimmy DiMora, the Cuyahoga County Democratic Chairman was actually making Robo calls AGAINST RON. Granted, DiMora is a knucklehead, but RON was flawed in a number of ways.


The Initiatives were far too complicated for consideration on a ballot. In Ohio (and other states, I suspect) the default vote for a confusingly- worded issue is "no".

The initiatives were developed "top down", literally written by labor attorneys behind closed doors in February then presented to the grass roots organizations like Moses down from Mt Sinai. This was just the opposite of how it should have played out. This package could have been streamlined into two simply worded initiatives which left the big picture rules for lawmakers...and blunted the later criticism as "costing $90 million."

This is not to suggest that we would not have faced well-funded negative 'no' campaign, but streamlining would have generated at least some newspaper support. As it was, Ohio's papers were nearly unanimous in their vocal opposition to RON.

This means nothing.
On to Victory in 2006!

[Epiphany4z]

9. I agree

I think it will make a 2006 win a bit more work. People should be prepared to be involved but I think there is great potential.

People are talking and even republicans I know are pissed at what is going on in ohio they just did not trust and in many cases understand the RON issues.

I am disappointed I thought 2 might get passed but I am not all that surprised they didn't.

[iconoclastNYC]

17. Ohio newspapers are all Republican owned.

I don't know how simple we need to make these things.

How complicated is it to lower campaign contribution limits?

How complicated is it to have a non-partisan redistricting process.

The truth is the GOP knew it would lose 3 congressional seats so they pour in tons of money for deceptive ads saying "Vote NO to hold politicains accountable"

And I think low turn out was a big problem too.

[OzarkDem]

34. Hopefully Dems will finally learn

Organized labor ideas and money haven't won Dems any Ohio elections in the last decade.

Nice folks, but they're hopelessly uninformed about politics, policy, and average voters. And they suck at running campaigns.

[sinkingfeeling]

8. I am a Buckeye and lived in Columbus most of my life, so I'm going

to say this. What the hell happened to the intelligence and reading ability there? Maybe we need a book like, "What's the Matter with Ohio". I'm ashamed that people there are voting against their own interests.

[Kukesa]

12. Against their own interests?

That's exactly what's happening, sink. They're voting against their own interests, economic and otherwise.

Why don't you come back to Ohio and help us hit them over their heads? That may be what it takes.

"What's the matter with Ohio?" Probably the same thing that's the matter with Kansas. Can we fix it? Probably, but we have to work very hard . . . now, who's gonna do that?

We need grassroots and netroots.

Help.

[iconoclastNYC]

18. What's the matter with Ohio and a lot of these red states?

All the liberals move to go to college or seek culture on the coasts and they never come back.

[Kukesa]

22. Ain't that the truth! n/t

[Marie26]

27. About right.

I'm a native Ohioan, & almost all my friends from high school have moved out of state. There's simply no opportunities there. Especially in the northern part of the state, it can boil down to getting out or unemployment. There's still lots of parts of Ohio that are VERY Democratic, but these tend to be the blue-collar districts that are overwhelmed by the wealthier Republican districts in Cinncinnatti & Columbus. The state is stagnant & the corruption keeps out innovation or change. I hope things get better, but this election is making me wonder if it ever will.

[HughBeaumont]

28. Probably because they're sick of growing up in

cornpone, culturally stagnant white-bread towns with racists, fundies and morans, as I was. I still live in Ohio, just in a more liberally-friendly area.

[Guy Whitey Corngood]

23. I've been here for 14 yrs. I couldn't agree with you more. n/t

[Zodiak]

11. Last night, the State Elction webpage

showed us ahead by the same margin that we lost. I went to bed thinking things were okay only to wake up this morning to find the numbers as the exact opposite. This is fucking impossible!!!

I did not take a screen shot, but I SWEAR the numbers were the opposite at around 9 PM last night. Please tell me someone else got a screen-shot.

[OhioBlue]

26. I was checking the SOS website from 7:30 - 10:30

I didn't take a screen shot, but it consistently had RON issues losing. I even checked the "by County" results and when it showed that it was not looking good in Cuyahoga County, I pretty much knew they were going down. :shrug:

[Zodiak]

31. I swear I saw it

but then again, some swear they see UFO's. I certainly HOPE that I misread the results last night, but ohhhhhh did it make me mad!!

It has become apparent today that I am the only one on DU who saw the results the other way last night. My eyes be deceiving me!

[kentuck]

15. It's the Florida Syndrome..

The Repubs are very self-conscious of their last vote in the last election. They do not like to be called stupid. They are attempting to validate their last vote.

[second edition]

16. Republican talking points and to much change to soon.

IMO, people didn't know what to think. The Republicans played it like A commie infiltration with George Soros being mentioned then there was the little ditty about the nonpartisan board being able to raise taxes. Raising taxes- the Rebub magic word equal to terror in effectiveness.

[Silent Tristero]

19. It wasn't Diebold

It wasn't Diebold, areas with paper ballots shot issues 2-5 down in comparable numbers to machine counted precincts. The reform efforts were very poorly funded and very poorly organized. If people want to look for a conspiracy look into why R.O.N.(Reform Ohio Now) believed that the election outrage that is coin of the realm here was common enough currency in the many parts of Ohio where people are more swayed by Pastors than pundits.

Most of their ideas made a lot of sense but didn't make sense was selling these reforms as "anti Bob Taft/Tom Noe" and not as Pro democracy. The democrats as a party did not endorse these amendments (some officials even lent their voice publicly in it's opposition), stupid as that may have been it should have been used as a selling point. Instead of trying to carry the parties water with anti-Taft adds they should have cast themselves as non-partisan, when so many newspapers came out against them they should have cast themselves as servants of the people not beholding to big business.

The primary advantage of a direct democracy ballot initiative, the fact that the people can act themselves unimpeded by the political parties was wasted when too many of the adds for the initiatives sounded partisan particularly when the party that would have benefited more from their passing couldn't be troubled to endorse them.

[Kukesa]

20. Welcome to DU, Silent T.

And I agree, it wasn't Diebold, it was the way the issues were presented.

[newyawker99]

37. Hi Silent Tristero!!

Welcome to DU!! :toast:

[ikri]

21. Post from very early today:

by rucky:

RIP: Ohio Election Reform - It's OUR Fault.

It wasn't fraud or corruption, it was crap campaigning.

[OzarkDem]

24. Not surprising

Badly developed election reform issues poorly defined and poorly explained to the public developed without public input by anonymous people who tricked lots of people into supporting them and giving them money.

The post-mortem should be interesting.

[cassiepriam]

25. Big money repug sleaze/fear ads. Big blitz of TV ads.

[Kolesar]

30. The Ohio Democratic Party was lying in the weeds on this one

They could have campaigned on this or a similar reform package.

[rexcat]

33. No major newspapers endorsed the measures and...

the attack ads were really negative. The Cincinnati paper was extremely negative towards the amnedments and the letters to the editor were mainly negative, including the editorial board response to the amendments.

[leftofthedial]

36. Ohio is a third-world oligarchy

test bed for the new Murka

there hasn't been a decent day for democracy in Ohio since Reagan.