Local Boards of Elections must be cleaned up

OHIO LEGISLATORS MUST CLEAN UP LOCAL BOARDS OF ELECTIONS STOP THE ABUSE OF WORKERS – ESPECIALLY ELDERLY WORKERS

Tom Zawistowski, President of the TEA Party affiliated We the People Convention, called upon the Ohio House and Senate to act IMMEDIATELY to end the abuse of workers at the County Boards of Elections while they are passing legislation to restore their control of Ohio’s elections after Governor DeWine illegally conspired to cancel our election on March 17, 2020.

“We call upon the Legislature to investigate and FIX the despicable conditions under which elections are held in Ohio. Though the Governor never says it outright, the fact as I know it is that the AVERAGE age of Ohio poll workers is 72.4 years! Average! The County Boards of Elections make their poll workers – including these elderly people – work a 13-hour day (6:00 AM – 7:00 PM) on election day, simply because they are unwilling to break the work load into shifts of like 4 hours each like some other states do. Why did OSHA not stop this abuse of elderly employees years ago? OSHA would shut down any private business who abused employees in this way, let alone people who are 80 years old! This is a disgrace and the Legislature needs to end this practice now!”

“Let me point the finger right where it belongs. Last summer I personally approached Secretary of State Frank LaRose and discussed this problem with him. I told him that if he would act to make it so that poll workers could be paid to work 4-hour shifts instead of 13-hour shifts, the TEA Party in Ohio would recruit thousands of younger people to fill those shifts for the local Boards of Elections. On September 9, 2019, LaRose sent me a text message saying that “the OAEO (Ohio Association of Elections Officials) opposes it – and when the organization that represents every Republican and Democratic elections officials in Ohio is vehemently opposed to something, it has very little success of getting done…” Their reason for opposition they gave LaRose was that they felt it would be “too difficult to manage the shift changes!” Meaning that they are fat and happy and too lazy to address this serious problem so they choose to keep abusing elderly workers and then complain that we don’t have enough of them to abuse every election!”

“They honestly say ignorant things like “We can’t recruit the minimum number of poll workers we need now. If we had shifts, we would need to recruit three times as many!” Duh! The job pays like $15 per hour and if someone could work just four hours, instead of 13, don’t you think more people would be interested??? Particularly people of all ages, on both sides of the political aisle, who care about our having fair and honest elections?”

“This attitude came back to haunt all of us in this election because nearly all of the election workforce was in the group most endangered by the coronavirus. This is nothing less than managerial malpractice. The Legislature must act NOW to save the fossilized Boards of Elections from themselves, and stop the abuse of the elderly, by making sure that our elections are conducted going forward by citizens who are more representative of our population at large.”