As part of a group “working to restore faith in public elections,” two former Ohio elected officials are urging Ohioans to trust the process and accept its results.
Former U.S. Rep. Zack Space and former Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell participated in a panel discussion Wednesday at the University of Cincinnati about election integrity and trust in the electoral process.
Space, a Democrat, said he and Republican Blackwell disagree on their choice of presidential candidate in November’s election, or their choice of U.S. Senate candidate in Ohio, or even on some policies.
“But we agree on this: If you cast your vote… you can be sure it will be counted,” Space said.
Blackwell – who served in the George H. W. Bush administration, was an honorary co-chair of George W. Bush’s 2004 campaign and participated in former President Donald Trump’s campaign transition syndrome in 2016 – said that we should believe in the strength of the electoral system in Ohio.
“We need to raise the volume to make people believe their voices matter,” Blackwell said. “We can detect system flaws and fix them. It’s something we do well in Ohio.”
While serving as Ohio’s secretary of state from 1999 to 2007, Blackwell dealt with his own controversies and election questions. Regarding the investigation into “irregularities reported during the 2004 Ohio presidential election”, United States House of Representatives Representative John Conyers Jr.the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, said that “there were massive and unprecedented voting irregularities and anomalies in Ohio.”
In several counties, problems included broken voting machines, an insufficient number of voting machines, and Blackwell’s directive on provisional ballots.
“In many cases, these improprieties were caused by willful misconduct and illegal conduct, much of it involving Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell, co-chairman of the Bush/Cheney campaign in Ohio,” Conyers wrote.
State Democrats filed the lawsuit over a directive issued by Blackwell for this election that prevented boards of elections from returning ballots to voters who were in the wrong precinct. A U.S. district judge blocked the directive, but the appeals court ruled in Blackwell’s favorby throwing out some provisional ballots.
On Wednesday, Blackwell addressed criticism about the long lines, saying the problem, especially in Montgomery County, is a campaign in which university students participated in voting to such an extent that polling places were not prepared with enough machines and therefore long queues formed.
Although he faced a lot of criticism at the time, he changed the narrative on Wednesday.
“It was actually a very positive sign,” Blackwell said, saying the increased voter turnout and student engagement success was a good thing.
This election year, Blackwell and Space are teaming up as part of the Democracy Defense Project, a bipartisan coalition of former elected officials from Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Ohio.
“The erosion of faith in our democracy and the proliferation of politicians questioning the integrity of elections to bolster their own campaigns, reputations or party influence have allowed false narratives of a ‘stolen election’ to take root,” the project’s website says. “The distrust of many voters in our electoral system puts our democracy at grave risk.”
According to the DDP website, the group’s goals include increasing confidence in election results and improving voter turnout.
While Ohio DDP members agree that America is unlikely to know the results of the presidential election next Tuesday night amid close calls and litigation, they urged the public to have faith in the election through the work being done by local election boards and the safeguards in place votes.
“There comes a point where challenges are resolved and if things aren’t going your way, you have to accept it,” Blackwell said.
YOU MAKE OUR WORK POSSIBLE.
