For Bowling Green State University scholars Richard Anderson and Michael Doherty, making the right
decision about changing voting rules comes down to the numbers.
Anderson, assistant professor of psychology, and Doherty, professor emeritus in psychology, question
whether Secretary of State John Husted and the legislators who backed recent changes in early voting and
absentee voting had the numbers to justify the changes.
"My concern as a citizen is the democratic process … is being subverted in a number of ways,"
Doherty said. "One of those ways is by carefully changing voting requirements … so your party
gets the upper hand."
Both major political parties are guilty of this, he said.
"Most of the new changes look reasonable on the face," Anderson said, until the background is
considered.
In Ohio, those changes were reducing the time for early voting and taking away local county boards of
elections’ ability to mail absentee ballots to all voters.
Now signatures are being gathered for a so-called Ohio Voters Bill of Rights that would establish more
open election procedures including online registration.
Earlier this year as the voting changes were making their way through the legislature, Doherty and
Anderson wrote an informal paper on "Voter Fraud vs. Voter Suppression" looking not only at
the Ohio proposals but those elsewhere. (Click here to
download)
The paper applies what scholars have learned about decision making in fields such as medicine and law to
the ethics of changing voting rules. They balance the error of letting some people who are ineligible to
vote cast a ballot against the danger of disenfranchising those who have a right to vote but are denied
by stricter rules.
"What should the value trade-offs be with regard to cheating people out of the right to vote vs.
people voting fraudulently?" they write.
"We need to know what two kinds of errors could be made," Doherty said in a recent interview.

And the trade-off here, Anderson said, is not one case of fraud balanced against one disenfranchised
voters, rather one case of fraud against tens of thousands of disenfranchised voters.
And some changes, such as adjustments in voting hours, "disproportionately affect minority
voters," Doherty said.
In a recent email, State Sen. Randy Gardner, who supported the changes, spelled out his reasoning:
"Ohio has some of the strongest, most accessible voting laws in the nation. I’m opposed to making
it difficult for people to vote. That’s why I’ve voted to provide that Ohioans have more than 600 hours
to vote through a variety of ways, including in-person voting, absentee voting for 30 days for any
reason with absentee applications mailed to every voting household in Ohio. On top of all of that,
Ohioans have 13 hours to vote on election day."
His email statement continued: "Most of these changes were recommendations from the organization
representing the bipartisan local boards of election in Ohio – 176 Democratic party members and 176
Republican members.
"I do not believe whether or not the government sends someone an absentee ballot request should be
based on how large the county budget is or how wealthy the county is. Citizens should have equal access
to voting to every extent possible."
Anderson and Doherty contend crafting a law that at once assures everyone who is eligible can cast a
ballot while blocking all fraudulent voters could not "be framed by ordinary mortals."
Invariably, making voting more accessible would make fraud more likely. And the opposite is true as well.

Still they come down strongly on more accessibility. In American law, they write, "the conviction of
innocent people" is considered "a far more serious error than letting some guilty people being
freed."
The conclude: "We believe that current efforts to change voting requirements are profoundly contrary
to American values."
If the Ohio Voters Bill of Rights makes it to the November ballot it will be up the voters to strike the
right balance.