{"id":4912,"date":"2008-03-09T10:06:14","date_gmt":"2008-03-09T10:06:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/reformedchicksblabbing\/2008\/03\/crossover-voting-was-heavy-and.html"},"modified":"2008-03-09T10:06:14","modified_gmt":"2008-03-09T10:06:14","slug":"crossover-voting-was-heavy-and","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/reformedchicksblabbing\/2008\/03\/crossover-voting-was-heavy-and.html","title":{"rendered":"&#8220;Crossover voting was heavy &#8212; and maybe illegal&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/blog.cleveland.com\/openers\/2008\/03\/crossover_voting_was_heavy_and.html\">OOPS<\/a>! Ohio Republicans you may be in trouble with the law:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p> Anyone who crossed lines was supposed to sign a pledge card vowing allegiance to their new party. In Cuyahoga County, dozens and dozens of Republicans scribbled addendums onto their pledges as new Democrats.<br \/>\n&#8220;For one day only.&#8221;<br \/>\n&#8220;I don&#8217;t believe in abortion.&#8221;<br \/>\nA Plain Dealer review of thousands of records showed few of those who switched were challenged by poll workers.<br \/>\n[&#8230;]<br \/>\nLying on the pledge is a felony, punishable by six to 12 months in jail and a $2,500 fine.<br \/>\nElection watchers said they don&#8217;t know any cases that have been prosecuted in Ohio. And it&#8217;s unlikely the Republican crossovers influenced the outcome since Clinton handily defeated Obama, said Edward Foley, an election-law professor at Ohio State University.<br \/>\n[&#8230;]<br \/>\nIn a nutshell, here how it&#8217;s supposed to work: Ohio voters are allowed to switch party affiliations on the day of a primary election but only if they sign a pledge vowing to support their new party &#8211; and mean it.<br \/>\nIf a majority of poll workers at a precinct doubt a voter&#8217;s sincerity, they can challenge the voter even if the voter signed the pledge.<br \/>\nIn the days following the election, The Plain Dealer interviewed more than two dozen voters &#8211; most of them Republicans who crossed over to Democrats last week.<br \/>\nNone &#8211; including five who acknowledged lying about supporting the Democrats &#8211; were challenged. And several said poll workers never asked them to sign a pledge, but gave them a Democratic ticket. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Some have been saying that it isn&#8217;t right that Republicans crossed over and messed with the Democrats&#8217; primary (Hewitt was really against it and keep playing &#8220;Baby Did a Bad Bad Thing&#8221;) and some talk about holding elections in a &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.evangelicaloutpost.com\/archives\/2008\/03\/super-tuesday-t.html\">kind of reverence<\/a>.&#8221; I&#8217;m sorry but I don&#8217;t. I look at it as my civic duty (nothing more) and believe that I owe a responsibility to society to vote for the best candidate for the job but our nominating process is messed up and the Democrats try to influence our primaries (I was really ticked off when McCain made an appeal to Democrats and Independents to vote for him in the SC primary in 2000) and now we are returning the favor.  I believe that if enough mischief is made, the states will take a hard look at their primary systems and close them.<br \/>\nI agree with this Republican:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\n&#8220;I don&#8217;t mind being deceptive to politicians,&#8221; she said. &#8220;They are deceptive to us.&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>(<a href=\"http:\/\/www.freerepublic.com\/focus\/f-news\/1982718\/posts\">via<\/a>)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>OOPS! Ohio Republicans you may be in trouble with the law: Anyone who crossed lines was supposed to sign a pledge card vowing allegiance to their new party. In Cuyahoga County, dozens and dozens of Republicans scribbled addendums onto their pledges as new Democrats. &#8220;For one day only.&#8221; &#8220;I don&#8217;t believe in abortion.&#8221; A Plain&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":119,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[399],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4912","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics-2"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>&quot;Crossover voting was heavy - and maybe illegal&quot; - Reformed Chicks Blabbing<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/reformedchicksblabbing\/2008\/03\/crossover-voting-was-heavy-and.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"&quot;Crossover voting was heavy - and maybe illegal&quot; - Reformed Chicks Blabbing\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"OOPS! Ohio Republicans you may be in trouble with the law: Anyone who crossed lines was supposed to sign a pledge card vowing allegiance to their new party. In Cuyahoga County, dozens and dozens of Republicans scribbled addendums onto their pledges as new Democrats. &#8220;For one day only.&#8221; &#8220;I don&#8217;t believe in abortion.&#8221; A Plain&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/reformedchicksblabbing\/2008\/03\/crossover-voting-was-heavy-and.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Reformed Chicks Blabbing\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2008-03-09T10:06:14+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Susan Johnson\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"\"Crossover voting was heavy - and maybe illegal\" - Reformed Chicks Blabbing","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/reformedchicksblabbing\/2008\/03\/crossover-voting-was-heavy-and.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"\"Crossover voting was heavy - and maybe illegal\" - Reformed Chicks Blabbing","og_description":"OOPS! Ohio Republicans you may be in trouble with the law: Anyone who crossed lines was supposed to sign a pledge card vowing allegiance to their new party. In Cuyahoga County, dozens and dozens of Republicans scribbled addendums onto their pledges as new Democrats. &#8220;For one day only.&#8221; &#8220;I don&#8217;t believe in abortion.&#8221; A Plain&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/reformedchicksblabbing\/2008\/03\/crossover-voting-was-heavy-and.html","og_site_name":"Reformed Chicks Blabbing","article_published_time":"2008-03-09T10:06:14+00:00","author":"Susan Johnson","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/reformedchicksblabbing\/2008\/03\/crossover-voting-was-heavy-and.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/reformedchicksblabbing\/2008\/03\/crossover-voting-was-heavy-and.html","name":"\"Crossover voting was heavy - and maybe illegal\" - Reformed Chicks Blabbing","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/reformedchicksblabbing\/#website"},"datePublished":"2008-03-09T10:06:14+00:00","dateModified":"2008-03-09T10:06:14+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/reformedchicksblabbing\/#\/schema\/person\/b4e41455e911277a4681a65e81271065"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/reformedchicksblabbing\/2008\/03\/crossover-voting-was-heavy-and.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/reformedchicksblabbing\/2008\/03\/crossover-voting-was-heavy-and.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/reformedchicksblabbing\/2008\/03\/crossover-voting-was-heavy-and.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/reformedchicksblabbing"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"&#8220;Crossover voting was heavy &#8212; and maybe illegal&#8221;"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/reformedchicksblabbing\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/reformedchicksblabbing\/","name":"Reformed Chicks Blabbing","description":"Politics and current events from a Reformed perspective, by Michele McGinty","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/reformedchicksblabbing\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/reformedchicksblabbing\/#\/schema\/person\/b4e41455e911277a4681a65e81271065","name":"Susan Johnson","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/reformedchicksblabbing\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/reformedchicksblabbing\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/020\/02041661cf28a19369e083191c05c819x96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/reformedchicksblabbing\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/020\/02041661cf28a19369e083191c05c819x96.jpg","caption":"Susan Johnson"},"url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/reformedchicksblabbing\/author\/sjohnson"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/reformedchicksblabbing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4912","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/reformedchicksblabbing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/reformedchicksblabbing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/reformedchicksblabbing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/119"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/reformedchicksblabbing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4912"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/reformedchicksblabbing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4912\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/reformedchicksblabbing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4912"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/reformedchicksblabbing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4912"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/reformedchicksblabbing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4912"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}