<< Front page News April 30, 2004

Importance of Ohio vote stressed
Author gets voters “pissed” about election

D.C. spring trade protest: Students participated in World Trade Organization and World Bank protests last Saturday in the capital.
 

Co-author of How to Get Stupid White Men Out of Office Jackie Bray believes that Oberlin College can play a key role in the 2004 election. “You could organize two or three of your co-ops and swing an election,” she told the small and loud crowd that gathered to hear her speak last Friday about the importance of voting in Ohio.

Born in New York City in 1982, Bray counts herself among a generation of non-voters. In 2000, only 42 percent of 18 to 24-year-olds voted, while 70 percent of citizens 25 and older voted. Bray wants to change this pattern.

She will graduate from the University of Michigan this May with a Bachelor of Arts in United States History and a plan to mobilize voters. “You could wake up on Nov. 3rd and say that my university swung the election,” she said at her talk last Saturday, the first event of Oberlin League of Pissed Off Voters.

In recent months Ohio has emerged as the swing state to watch. Like many political analysts, Bray believes that the state’s partisan split, Republican administration and an ongoing controversy over polling methods will turn it into another Florida. As she puts it, Ohio will be ground zero the morning after Election Day.

“At the polls we are 50-50 Democrat-Republican, but 78 percent of the money we donate goes to Republicans,” Bray said. Bray believes that Democrats could take some lessons from Republican supporters. Gesturing a hypothetical pocket, she points out that Republicans receive double what Democrats get in donations below $50. They also vote.

“In Ohio, people 18-29 support Democratic nominee John Kerry. People 45-54 plan to vote for President George Bush. High school dropouts support Kerry. College graduates support Bush but people 18-29 don’t vote. College graduates are likelier to vote,” Bray said. She reminded her audience that in 2000, Bush carried the state by a miniscule four percentage points.

Exempting the question of Bush, the 2004 election promises to be hot in Ohio. Opponents of gay marriage have gathered signatures to put a citizen initiative on the ballot urging Congress to pass a federal constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage. 18 percent of Ohio’s population identifies as Christian and 40 percent of those Christians identify as Evangelical. In Cincinnati and other towns in the traditionally Republican southwestern region of the state, the Christian right has mobilized significant support for the measure.

Even the polling means are contested. The voting machines that many districts, including Lorain, have ordered may be faulty or sponsored by Republican interests. One of Ohio’s biggest Bush backers, Canton-based Diebold Electoral Systems, manufactures the electronic voting system that has come under fire from electoral officials in two states and activists nationwide, including OLPOV.

“The League aims to build sustainable relationships with voters and regardless of the election turnout, bring people into politics,” Bray said.

OLPOV expects to hold its first voter registration drive later this month, a pre-emptive attempt to gather the names of students who will be studying abroad next semester and register them for absentee ballots.


 
 
   

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