News Intelligence Analysis
Posted on Sun, Aug. 06, 2006
Ohio Election officials question voting sticker language
Associated Press
AKRON, Ohio - Election officials in a northeast Ohio county are reconsidering the use of a new variation of the "I Voted Today" sticker given to voters at the polls.
In 2004, Secretary of State Ken Blackwell changed the sticker to read "Change Our World, Vote Your Conscience."
The Summit County Board of Elections will vote Monday to decide whether voters will receive the stickers during the November election.
"I would prefer to go with just 'I Voted Today,'" said board member Russ Pry, a Democrat, who questioned whether there was a religious agenda behind the change.
Brian Rothenberg, a spokesman for the Ohio Democratic Party, said Blackwell, who is the Republican candidate for governor, is using the sticker to send "some type of religious message."
"That's absurd," said Carlo LoParo, Blackwell's campaign spokesman. "The stickers are given to people that go to the polls. It's a strong civic statement. There are no religious overtones or undertones at all. These are basic principles of civics and democracy."
The sticker's words have roots in Blackwell's Ohio Center for Civic Character, launched from his office in 2001.
Blackwell and staff members produced the "The UncommonSense Declaration," as a public education project of the center. It lists 20 traits to provide a "clear map of character ethics," including fidelity, honesty, forgiveness, accountability and honoring authority.
The document was first intended for office use when Blackwell was state treasurer, but he later decided to use it in the secretary of state's office as the basis of a statewide character program.
Some state lawmakers and business leaders are listed on the Web site as supporters of the ideals. New businesses and new U.S. citizens in the state receive a copy from Blackwell's office.
Blackwell said the document is not religious and is meant to be used by people of all faiths and the business community.
"The 20 principles are pretty universal and we crafted it and said that anyone who wants to use it, as long as they understood where it came from, they were free to use it," Blackwell said.
John Green, director of the Bliss Institute of Applied Politics at the University of Akron, said there is no reason a secretary of state shouldn't start a character-building program.
"One could argue that the two things that the secretary of state does - administer elections and administer business incorporations - both have to do with the question of character in the broadest sense," he said.
"I think the key issue is the question of God. ... A lot of people would find that such a program would cross the line, if it was very explicitly religious," he said.
Green said the language of the new sticker is troubling because it "suggests to people the basis of their vote should be on one topic and not on another, and one of the virtues of voting is that we get to vote the interest we want."
Information from: Akron Beacon Journal, http://www.ohio.com
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by Katherine Yurica
J. Kenneth Blackwell has stepped
to the
forefront of the American culture wars. He has
posted his official endorsement of a 20-point
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vocabulary of character-building ethics” on Ohio’s
official Secretary of State web site. Blackwell
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means the opportunity to not only religionize our
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religion that is decidedly not Christianity. Instead,
it is an opportunity to convert our citizens into docile
followers of a new authoritarian rule.
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definitions of terms
plus parallel columns
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Ohio: the Battle for Control
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