Block the Vote: Ohio GOP Bars Early Voting to Suppress Pro-Labor Turnout
On Friday, across Ohio, county boards of elections shut down early voting for next Tuesday’s election. They did so on orders from Secretary of State Jon Husted. A Republican stalwart,
Husted served as the party’s legislative point man (rising to the rank of Ohio House Speaker), co-chaired GOP campaigns (including that of 2008 presidential candidate John McCain) and has been closely tied to national conservative groups working on issues such as school choice and privatization. While serving in the legislature, Husted was allied with the corporate-funded American Legislative Exchange Council, which has been promoting Voter ID laws and other rule changes designed to suppress turnout.
Husted claimed a hastily passed and deliberately vague new state law, which took effect just last week, prohibits early voting in the three days before the election. That’s a dramatic change from traditional practice in Ohio, where early voting on the Saturday, Sunday and Monday before high-profile elections has been allowed for years—and has permitted tens of thousands of citizens to participate in the process.
The law in question, Ohio House Bill 224, was written primarily to deal with military ballots. Yet, Husted is interpreting it as a bar on early voting. State Representative Kathleen Clyde, a Democrat who represents Kent, says Hustad is essentially creating his own rules.
“When you take out major chunks” of the legislation, as Husted has, explains Clyde, “the bill is now unreadable and incomprehensible.”
But the confusion has worked for Husted and the GOP. County election officials have, at his behest, shut down early voting across Ohio.
That’s caused protests across Ohio. In Toledo, crowds showed up outside the offices of the Lucas County Board of Elections, which had scheduled business hours for Saturday and Sunday but canceled them to comply with Husted’s order.
“It’s un-American and undemocratic to close the polls the weekend before the vote,” said the Rev. Willie Perryman, pastor of Toledo’s Jerusalem Baptist Church. “The real reason is they want to suppress the vote.”
http://www.thenation.com/blog/164430...-labor-turnout
Such disenfranchisement is also why the Repugs will never settle for moving voting from a workday (Tue) to a (European-style) Sunday, which is one of the reasons Europeans have much higher voter participation than The Best, Most Exemplary Democracy Ever!
This is a non-issue. Shutting off early voting several days before the election is quite common. Friday was the last day for early voting in Texas before Tuesdays vote.
It wasn't "common" in OH. GFY
Should be in that VRWC thread tbh
so you wouldn't bother to read it?
disenfranhisement of non-Repug voters, by voter ID, gerrymandering, caging, election day misinformation, ALEC-dictated legislation etc, are part of the general conspiracy to strengthen the VRWC stranglehold on the country by mopping any countervailing power.
last minute changes to voter laws is common and should never be viewed through the prism of politics
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