Storm boosts early voting turnout in parts of Ohio

JULIE CARR SMYTH

Asso­ci­ated Press

COLUMBUS — Dam­ag­ing super­storm Sandy jeop­ar­dized labor unions’ ambi­tious get-out-the-vote efforts in blue-collar areas of north­east­ern Ohio on Tues­day but con­tributed to record early vot­ing turnout in other parts of the bat­tle­ground state.

Weather con­di­tions in the state are con­sid­ered less crit­i­cal to Repub­li­can Mitt Rom­ney than to Demo­c­ra­tic Pres­i­dent Barack Obama because the GOP has focused more heav­ily on mail-in bal­lots than on in-person early voting.

Demo­c­ra­tic state Rep. Bob Hagan of Youngstown said Team­sters pres­i­dent James Hoffa advised press­ing for­ward despite the weather, feel­ing the union’s grass­roots efforts couldn’t spare a day or two to wait out the storm.

Hagan said unions have sent out-of-state helpers to the cru­cial swing state.

“I’m wor­ried about any excuse for peo­ple not to par­tic­i­pate in our great democ­racy,” Hagan said. “This election’s very close. We’re talk­ing to a lot of peo­ple who don’t need to be con­verted — Team­sters, labor peo­ple. We’re con­vinced 95 per­cent of them are vot­ing for Obama, but we need to make sure they don’t decide to stay home.”

Hagan said any storm-related decline in turnout could hurt Obama’s chance of win­ning Ohio, where the face­off with Rom­ney is neck-and-neck.

In Franklin County, home to Colum­bus, a record 4,700 early votes were cast Mon­day — before the storm made land­fall in New Jersey.

Early votes cast in Cuya­hoga County — home to Cleve­land and Ohio’s largest pop­u­la­tions of both Democ­rats and Repub­li­cans — jumped from 1,879 last Thurs­day to 2,388 on Fri­day and 2,432 on Mon­day, accord­ing to fig­ures from the Board of Elec­tions. No week­end vot­ing hours were held.

Bet­tye “Mama” Neal, a 73-year-old Colum­bus sto­ry­teller, braved wind, snow and sleet in Colum­bus on Tues­day with a foot cast and walker to vote for Obama.

“I’ve got to get out early because it’s not easy for me to move around and my vote’s impor­tant to me,” Neal said.

Demo­c­rat Don Klco and Repub­li­can Fred Strat­mann, who jointly man­age the Franklin County early vot­ing cen­ter, said they didn’t antic­i­pate the storm caus­ing any problems.

“Maybe it will slow the pace a lit­tle for a day because it’s pretty nasty out there,” Klco said. “But I don’t think it’s going to affect Ohio.”

“Not Ohioans,” chimed in Strat­mann. “They’re used to chang­ing weather. It’s not going to affect their behavior.”

Ohio Repub­li­can Party spokesman Matthew Hen­der­son said the state’s 88 county boards of elec­tions all had elec­tric­ity, mak­ing the party con­fi­dent that peo­ple who wanted to vote early wouldn’t be impeded. The GOP says it’s seen a sig­nif­i­cant increase among Repub­li­cans over 2008 in early vot­ing — an option the Obama cam­paign dom­i­nated four years ago.

Early vot­ing began Oct. 2. Sec­re­tary of State Jon Husted said more than 1.2 mil­lion Ohioans had voted early as of Fri­day, based on an infor­mal sur­vey of county elec­tion boards. That includes 950,000 mail-in bal­lots — or 72 per­cent of the 1.3 mil­lion requested — and 306,000 in-person early voters.

On Wednes­day, Gov. John Kasich and U.S. Sen. Rob Port­man, both Repub­li­cans, planned to ride the Early Vote Express, a bus criss­cross­ing the state encour­ag­ing early votes for Rom­ney and other Republicans.

The bus plans stops in Clark, Union, Franklin and Fayette coun­ties. It’s vis­ited 70 coun­ties so far.

Posted by AP News on Oct 30 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.