NFL Vikings Star Punter And LGBT Advocate Takes On Ohio Vote Suppression

Chris Kluwe, the now famous NFL Vikings punter whose support of marriage equality — which includes accusing a state lawmaker of worrying about turning into a “cockmonster” — took America by storm, is now up in arms and battling Ohio’s voter suppressing Secretary of State, Republican Jon Husted.

Kluwe, by the way, just pulled his blog from his publisher, Pioneer Press, over their “neutral view of both sides of the marriage amendment,” the anti-gay marriage amendment facing Minnesota voters tomorrow.

WATCH: Vote Fraud? Voting Machine Shows Romney After Voter Chooses Obama

Via Twitter, Kluwe took Secretary Husted, who has done everything humanly possible to disrupt early voting in Ohio, to task.

What Kluwe is referencing is this article in Salon, “Is the GOP stealing Ohio?,” which notes that “Uncertified, ‘experimental’ software patches have been installed on machines in 39 counties of the key swing state.”

Some frightening excerpts from the Salon piece:

• He describes the process as “criminally negligent just from a standpoint of data security.”
• “What ES&S has chosen to do here is extremely dangerous and exactly what you’d want to do if you wanted to plant a ‘cheat’ onto the central tabulator,” March says in his affidavit.
• The “transparency” of a system that counts votes in secret and features a secretly installed piece of software that skirted normal certification procedures aside, March’s affidavit disputes Husted’s explanation about the separation between the reporting and counting systems.
• “Their custom application … would have full contact with the central tabulator database on both a read and write basis, while running on the same computer as where the ‘master vote records’ (the central tabulator database — the ‘crown jewels’ of the whole process) are stored,” he says.
• “Under this structure a case of accidental damage to the ‘crown jewels’ of the election data is possible. A case of deliberate tampering of that data using uncertified, untested software would be child’s play.”

 

If this sounds like cause for concern, it is.

If you think Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted is someone worth your trust, just read this via Wikipedia:

Husted announced on September 4th that the state would not comply with a court ruling and allow early voting during the final weekend before the election until an appellate court rules on the matter. “Announcing new hours before the court case reaches final resolution will only serve to confuse voters and conflict with the standard of uniformity,” Husted wrote in a memo. However, after he was summoned to appear before a federal judge who had struck down the policy change and questioned his failure to comply with the court order, Husted relented, thus allowing counties to plan for early voting.

 

Is our electoral process safe?

I don’t know.

But I do know that voting is the only thing we can do right now.

To not vote would be to admit defeat.