Congressman Chabot, and a lot of students, hit by mistaken identity requirements

This morning, Congressman Steve Chabot went to his Ohio polling place to vote and was turned away by the local registrars. They claimed he did not have an ID with his proper voting address on it.

Chabot went into the polling place at Westwood First Presbyterian Church about 9:30 a.m. and pulled out his Ohio driver’s license to show the poll workers. They looked at his license, and told the congressman that, even though they know perfectly well who he is, his driver’s license was issued to his business office, not his home, which is his voting address.

Chabot ran home and got a Social Security statement and some other documents and returned to vote. Afterwards he said, “I guess this just shows the poll workers are really doing their job.”

In fact, the registrars were WRONG.

The same thing happened to students at the University of Ohio – Columbus. Reports came in from the field that they were being turned away for not having ID’s with their current address on them. Young Voter Strategies, which had an intrepid staffer on the ground there, jumped into action, contacting the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights, which went out to talk to the registrars. By 11AM, everything had been straightened out.

But how many young voters had already been turned away? According to MASS-PIRG, by 11AM, in one student dominated precinct they had already broken their previous mid-term turnout record for the entire day!

Ohio’s new laws say you must have a current identification. It does not say that your identification must have your current address. Those are two different things.

Imagine, for example, students who have an OH drivers license from the home where they grew up, but registered to vote from their home at school. They’re not required to get a new drivers license, and their license is in fact current. But the registrar would have turned them away.

If you hear about any of these kinds of problems at the polls, call 866 OUR VOTE to get help and post your story at our Facebook page and at VoterStory.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 7th, 2006 at 4:01 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.