For a dozen years, Aimee Alessi never felt the urge to vote, until now.
“I do not want another Clinton in office, especially Hillary Clinton,” said Alessi, who last cast a ballot in 2004 for George W. Bush.
Having lived in Cuyahoga Falls and Akron and now Barberton, Alessi knew her address needed to be updated. So she pulled a voter registration card back in July while waiting in line to renew her driver’s license.
In October, weeks before the election, she went online to check her polling location. “Nothing was coming up,” she said. “So I called down to the Summit County Board of Elections. And they told me I was not registered to vote.”
That was strike one.
Undeterred, Alessi got documentation (which she showed the Beacon Journal) from the BMV proving she had registered. Then she headed back to the Board of Elections.
“They said that because I hadn’t voted since [2004] that I had been deleted from the voter roll.”
Strike two.
“I’m extremely angry that I was removed from the voter rolls,” said Alessi, referencing the purging of perhaps hundreds of thousands of registered Ohio voters. “And I’m upset that my registration was lost. And I know that I’m entitled to cast a provisional ballot.”
It’s unclear how many voters in Summit County and Ohio will be denied their franchise this election because of mishandled paperwork or a decision by Republican Secretary of State Jon Husted to unregister thousands and thousands of voters because they — like Alessi — have not voted more often.
Thousands discounted
Last year, the Summit County Board of Elections canceled 22,994 voter registrations, mostly from urban dwellers who move around a lot.
The disenfranchised voters, with last known addresses, included 11,748 from Akron (51 percent of the total), 1,805 from Cuyahoga Falls; 1,534 from Stow; 1,314 from Barberton and 1,170 from Hudson, according to records from the Summit County Board of Elections.
Husted ordered the removals to keep the state’s voter database free from the names of the deceased or residents who have moved out of a county or state. But Husted’s guidance also forced the removal of voters who hadn’t cast ballots in about nine years.
That included Alessi, who also may have been removed because she moved and didn’t update her information for four years. Either way, she’s one of more than 1 million voters purged, some legitimately so, since Husted took office in 2011.
Vote provisionally
In late September, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit overturned the purge.
But the voters weren’t immediately returned to the rolls. Some still are unable to use their names to find their polling location and others are unsure if and how they can vote.
Having provided evidence of her attempt to register and still told that she could not vote, Alessi called the Ohio chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union for advice.
They advised that she is entitled to cast a provisional ballot.
Alessi cast her provisional ballot Sunday during early voting in Summit County. It took her two hours, start to finish.
“It is critically important that any voter who may have been wrongfully purged from the voter rolls knows that they may still cast a provisional ballot in the 2016 presidential election and it will count,” the ACLU advised after the court decision overturning the purge. “If voters arrive at their polling place on Election Day and they do not appear in the poll books, they should firmly but respectfully insist they have the right to cast a provisional ballot.”
For the ACLU’s full guidance on how purged voters may participate this election, visit http://www.acluohio.org/archives/press-releases/aclu-voter-alert-october-2016.
Unregistered voters may still find their respective polling location by typing in their address at most board of elections websites or by calling a local board of elections.
Provisional results
The postelection counting of provisional ballots takes time.
With Ohio expected to be one of the closest presidential contests, the nation could be waiting on the results of that longer process before declaring a clear winner.
After the polls close Tuesday, elections staff will open and report the absentee ballot results, then tally and report votes cast throughout the day. More absentee ballots can trickle in for up to 10 days after the election and be counted, as long as they’re postmarked by Monday.
In the weeks that follow, provisional ballots will be checked against lists specially created for this election. The lists include names of purged voters purged because they’ve been idle or moved within a county, not dead, incarcerated or deemed incompetent to vote.
Husted Communications Director Matt McClellan said Thursday that the state does not have a universal list of voters who were illegally purged. He’s mailing a CD to the Beacon Journal containing a list that combines the reasons why voters may have been removed, making it impossible to tell with absolute certainty how many people were illegally purged.
McClellan did say, though, that all 88 county election boards have assured the state that they are able to tell. In Summit County, officials are working with TRIAD GSI, a Xenia-based elections software developer, to compile the provisional ballot checklist.
Doug Livingston can be reached at 330-996-3792 or dlivingston@thebeaconjournal.com. Follow on Twitter: @ABJDoug .