Letters to the Editor
RichEmery
Published Letters: 840 Editor's Choice: 191
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Blackwell update from Ohio
[Read the article: For the GOP in Ohio, despair and a glimmer of hope]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]According to AP reports, the dispute over Ted Strickland's residency has been kicked back to the county level. It doesn't APPEAR that there is an effort to disqualify him as a legal candidate for governor; just to embarrass him and his wife by preventing them from voting.
As I'd said in an earlier post, Ken Blackwell scraped the bottom of the political barrel in his last debate with Strickland, when he attempted to link the Democrat with NAMBLA, the North American Man/Boy Love Association. Of the "God, guns and gays" mantra of the GOP, only "gays" might still work on Strickland, since he's an ordained Methodist minister and a long-time NRA member; look for more trash from Kenny Boy in coming weeks. See this article from today's Cincinnati Enquirer:
"Governor's race turns ugly -- Blackwell campaign links Strickland to predators, hints he's gay"
http://news.enquirer.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20061018/NEWS01/610180374
More on the residency challenge from today's newswire:
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Strickland residency challenge sent back to county
Associated Press
COLUMBUS, Ohio - The secretary of state's office sent a challenge of Democratic governor candidate Ted Strickland's residency back to the Columbiana County Board of Elections on Tuesday.
The challenge alleges Strickland does not live at the Lisbon address where he is registered to vote. If successful, it could keep him from voting in the Nov. 7 election.
The elections board voted 2-2 along party lines last week over whether to hold a hearing to decide the complaint and referred the matter to the secretary of state's office.
The board failed to conduct proper investigation into Strickland's residency before voting and therefore must hold a hearing to determine the issue, Assistant Secretary of State Monty Lobb wrote in a letter to Columbiana Board of Elections Director Lois Gall.
Lobb handled the issue because Secretary of State Ken Blackwell, the state's chief elections official, is the Republican candidate opposing Strickland in the governor's race.
The challenge, filed by Jacquelyn Long, a registered Democrat who supports Blackwell for governor, charged that Strickland and his wife only rent an apartment in Lisbon and have declared permanent residency for tax purposes in Columbus, where they have a condominium.
At the time the complaint was filed, Strickland campaign spokesman Keith Dailey said the congressman maintained the Columbus address because it afforded him easy travel to and from Washington and convenient access to his district, which winds along the Ohio border from northeast to southern Ohio.
A determination against the Stricklands would prevent them from voting in the upcoming election because the deadline to change their residency passed last week.
Blackwell campaign spokesman Carlo LoParo declined to comment on Lobb's letter.
Messages seeking comment were left Tuesday night for Dailey and for James Lee, a spokesman for the secretary of state's office.
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Ohio voter registration...
[Read the article: For the GOP in Ohio, despair and a glimmer of hope]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]...as explained on Ohio Sec. of State Ken Blackwell's own official website:
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How is voting residency determined?
Ohio election officials use rules set forth in law (R.C. 3503.02) to determine a person’s qualifying voting address. Under those rules, your voting residence is the place in which your habitation is fixed and to which, whenever you are absent, you intend to return. You must intend your residence in the county to be permanent, not temporary. You will not lose your voting residency in Ohio if you leave temporarily and intend to return, unless you are absent from the state for four consecutive years.
(Exception: You will not lose your residency after four years if your absence from Ohio is due to your employment with the government of this state or the United States, including military service, unless you vote in, or permanently move to, another state.)
If you do not have a fixed place of habitation, but are a consistent or regular inhabitant of a shelter or other location to which you intend to return, you may use that shelter or other location as your residence for purposes of registering to vote.
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If memory serves, there was a similar dispute over Bush41's legal residence in 1992, right? He claimed a Houston TX apartment as his residence when running for President, ignoring their family compound at Kennebunkport, Maine. (I aspire to be rich enough someday to have an actual "family compound" somewhere!) That dispute was tossed as frivolous, and conventional wisdom at the time held that you essentially can choose ANY residence you own or rent, if you live there part of the time.
There would seem to be a HUGE amount of wiggle room in the word "intend" -- how hard would it be to have the Stricklands sign an affidavit confirming that they "intend to return" to Lisbon full-time whenever he leaves public service? Much ado about nothing!
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Bush41 and Texas vs. Maine as his legal residence
[Read the article: For the GOP in Ohio, despair and a glimmer of hope]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]This old article clears up my foggy memory of the earlier controversy over then-Vice Pres. Bush's legal residence for taxes and voting:
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June 4, 1985
AROUND THE NATION;
Bush Becomes a Texan As Residency Is Affirmed
UPI
Vice President Bush, who long has boasted of being a Texan but who has tried to save on taxes by asserting that his home is in Maine, had his right to vote in Texas affirmed today.
The County Tax Assessor-Collector, Carl Smith, who oversees voter registration in Harris County, ruled that Mr. Bush could now legally vote in Houston.
Mr. Smith decided the question of the Vice President's residency largely on an Internal Revenue Service ruling that Mr. Bush could not use the purchase of a home in Kennebunkport, Me., to avoid capital gains taxes on the sale of his house in Houston.
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And this month's winner of the "well-turned phrase" award is...
[Read the article: Bogged down on earth, Bush looks to the heavens]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]...Tim Grieve, for this gem:
"With habeas corpus gone now, space isn't the only place where no one can hear you scream."
EXCELLENT!!!