Gwen Dillingham, the Cuyahoga County deputy election director, said 15,000 to 18,000 pre-election challenges have been filed in the Cleveland area, a traditional Democratic stronghold. "I don't know how we're going to find those people to tell them there's a hearing," she said.
Republicans have pointed to what they contend is widespread evidence of fraud in voter registration. Making the rounds on the Sunday talk shows, for instance, Republican National Committee Chairman Ed Gillespie pointed out that in Franklin County, the latest Census shows there are more registered voters than there are age-eligible residents.
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But election officials and other experts say there is a reasonable explanation for bloated election rolls that has nothing to do with fraud: The National Voter Registration Act prohibits them from purging voters from the rolls for four years after an initial notification is sent.
"It's unfortunate that there seems to be an assumption that there's fraud behind every problem," said Kay Maxwell, president of the League of Women Voters. "There often is a simple explanation. And we're very concerned that these challenges will intimidate people and keep them from voting."
Some boards, including those in the two counties that are home to the cities of Columbus and Dayton, are tossing out most of the GOP's pre-election challenges because the party made technical errors in filing them.
Of the 4,200 challenges filed in Franklin County, officials have determined that 1,600 are valid. Election Board Director Matthew M. Damschroder, a Republican, said that his board will hold the required hearings on the challenges that remain, but will more than likely keep every voter on the rolls and allow those voters to cast provisional ballots.
One irony of the GOP's challenges in Franklin County and Montgomery County is that many of those challenged are overseas military members -- often Republican supporters -- whose mail cannot be forwarded, officials in both counties said.
Although Ohio law specifies that removing a successfully challenged voter from the rolls is an option, that conflicts with the rules laid out by the National Voter Registration Act. Moreover, local Ohio election boards are bipartisan, with two Republican members and two Democrats, leaving the potential for deadlocks.
Steve Harsman, the Democratic deputy director of the Montgomery County Board of Elections, said he worries that Election Day challenges could create "such congestion at the polls" that people waiting in line will give up and go home.
"The aim of this is to sow confusion and suppress the vote by creating questions about the eligibility of completely eligible voters," said Bob Bauer, one of the chief lawyers for the Democratic National Committee.
Those who marched to Blackwell's office in Columbus appeared to agree. "We cannot forget what happened in Florida," Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.), a veteran of the civil rights movement of the 1960s, told the crowd. "And it will not happen here."
