Interfering with the polls could mean jail
With early voting starting Wednesday, elections were front and center on the minds of Columbus City Council members Monday, as they resurrected a 2018 advertising campaign to raise awareness of the election and also passed a new ordinance making threatening an election worker a mandatory three-day jail sentence.
Citing a rise in political tensions that increasingly are being taken out on poll workers, the Council unanimously put in place new punishments for “election interference” in the city.
Anyone who threatens, intimidates, menaces, coerces, abuses or harasses an election worker, or any member of an election worker’s immediate family or household − including parents, grandparents and grandchildren − or who encourages another person to do the intimidation concerning any past, present or future election, could be found guilty of a first-degree misdemeanor. The punishment: at least three consecutive days in jail, a sentence which a judge couldn’t suspend or reduce to probation, house arrest or community service, the code language says.
And it doesn’t matter whether the intimidation is in person or electronically transmitted. The new code also prohibits anyone from recklessly attempting to hinder or interfere with the work going on at polling locations in the city.
“In recent years the role of voting location workers has become increasingly challenging for a variety of reasons, including (the) COVID-19 pandemic, changes in election law and, of significant concern, a dramatic increase in harassment of election officials,” said City Councilman Emmanuel Remy.
The new environment is taking a toll on the election workers, and threatens the future of free and fair elections, Remy said. At a church that was serving as a local voting location during an election, Remy said a person who argued with poll workers threatened to return and harm them later in the day, requiring police to be called.
Antone White, director of the Franklin County Board of Elections, said his agency needs 5,000 poll workers for the Nov. 8 election countywide, with almost 3,400 at precinct locations across Columbus.
“This legislation is important,” White said. “It protects the vast number of our poll workers” by giving law enforcement a proactive tool to effectively deal with those inclined to threaten or interfere with the important work of poll workers.”
Bexley is considering similar protections, which officials said mirrors state law in mandating three days in jail for anyone convicted of poll worker harassment. Bexley modeled its ordinance on one recently passed by Upper Arlington.
Also Monday, the all-democrat City Council passed a no-bid, $400,000 contract to a Democratic-linked media and communications firm, Triumph Communications, located in Marble Cliff village. The money is to raise awareness about the upcoming election and inform residents about advance voting opportunities by absentee ballot or early in-person voting.
Triumph’s CEO and co-founder Antoinette F. Wilson was a former director of training and talent for the Democratic National Committee in Washington, D.C., and development/political director of the Ohio Democratic Party. One of the firm’s partners, Donald Spicer, is former director of the Franklin County Board of Elections and a former chairman of the Franklin County Democratic Party. Another partner, Brian Rothenberg, has worked as a press secretary or communications director for the Ohio Democratic Party, the Ohio Senate Democratic Caucus and numerous elected officials.
A contract for a similar election awareness and voter information campaign proposed in 2018 by the Franklin County Board of Elections was panned as a partisan waste of tax dollars by the two GOP members of the four-member board, who vetoed the deal.
Robin Davis, a deputy chief of staff for Columbus Mayor Andrew J. Ginther, said the mayor − who previously worked for Triump − holds no interest in the company, nor did he play any personal role in awarding the contract. The contract will be overseen by the Ginther administration’s finance department.
Council Member Elizabeth Brown said she sponsored the Triumph ordinance after the Franklin County Board of Election “did not advance important additional voter education efforts at their meeting last week.
“We looked to the 2018 ordinance, which responded to a similar scenario,” she said.
No one from the Franklin County GOP could be reached Monday evening, but in 2018 its then-chairman, Brad Sinnott, called the city expenditure a waste of tax money intended only to remind people that there were elections, something anyone watching fall TV ads or passing numerous outdoor candidate signs already knew.
wbush@gannett.com