In a clever move, John Kasich’s administration has found yet another way to discourage less Republican enlightened people from voting. Every county has some discretion over questions such as exactly how long the polls may stay open on voting days, and each county elections board is made up of two members from each party regardless of how the county itself tends to vote. When a committee deadlocks in any county the tie vote gets broken by Jon Husted, the Republican Secretary of State.
Here’s how the game works. In urban counties, GOP committee members vote to close polls at 5 pm, a time that is inconvenient to impossible for many people who work for a living. So far Husted has always broken the tie in favor of less voting, as one might expect. The counties encompassing Cleveland, Cincinnatti and Akron, three of Ohio’s largest cities, will thus operate under “business hours” only. In suburban counties at least one GOP committee member will vote for extended hours and the polls stay open quite late.
Kay will have a more informed opinion on this than I do, but from here the upshot seems clear: Dysfunction Working As Intended.
Mnemosyne
Seriously, how is it even legal for counties to be allowed to make their own decision about when to close the polls? Here in California, the polls are open from 8:00 am to 8:00 pm for everyone statewide. They print it on every sample ballot. So how in the hell does Ohio communicate to its residents that polls in one town are open until 8:00 pm but polls one town over close at 5:00 pm?
ETA: Also, too, California has a law that says that if the poll hours conflict with your job, your employer is required by law to give you up to 2 hours off to go vote. What is wrong with Ohio, FFS?
sb
Republicans really, really hate democracy. They just can’t stand it.
Zifnab
Can someone in, say, New York or California start adopting these tricks? I just want a side-by-side comparison so we can verify that what is good for the goose is also good for the gander.
DJAnyReason
This is less nefarious than Tim seems to have interpreted it:
The question isn’t the hours polls stay open on election day – its the hours the boards of election stay open during the rest of the year. So it makes it harder to go apply for early voting in D areas than in R areas.
Still bullshit cheating, but less flagrant and noxious than advertised.
Steve
I can’t wait till someone challenges this by arguing equal protection and citing Bush v. Gore. (Not really joking, btw.)
jwest
@Mnemosyne:
I believe this is in reference to “early voting”.
Some counties may not want to pay overtime for weeks on end prior to the election waiting for someone to vote.
Hunter Gathers
John Kasich wants his tax cut. If that means some un-American, citified lazy blacks, dirty hispanics and whites who are traitors to their race have their rights compromised, so be it. John Kasich needs his Romney Tax Cut For Freedom or he might not create any jobs.
Zifnab
@jwest:
Perhaps they should consider raise their taxes to pay for it.
Roger Moore
@Mnemosyne:
They let the Republicans control the state government. SATSQ.
quannlace
This is so insane. We are WAY beyond the need for a universal voting standard; nationwide. Enough of this fucked-up crazy quilt. And change the goddamn day from Tuesday to Sunday.
quannlace
Oops, meant Saturday. BJ won’t let me edit.
Scott S.
@Zifnab: A-fucking-men.
Martin
@Mnemosyne:
Unpaid time, worth noting. So even with that, not everyone can afford to lose two paid hours.
Mnemosyne
@jwest:
And they can’t play that game in California, either. The hours set are set statewide so there’s no disparity where people in one town can vote until 8 pm and people one town over can only vote until 5 pm.
But somehow I’m not surprised that you think there’s no problem with voters who live in higher-income communities having more voting rights than people who aren’t as lucky. The rich are just better than the rest of us and therefore should be allowed more opportunity to vote, amirite?
Disco
State voting laws need to finally go bye-bye. There should be national voting standards. This patchwork of dysfunction is complete bullshit.
Warren Terra
Fortunately, it’s obvious under the relevant case law that this is an unconstitutional violation of Equal Protection, and the SupremevCourt will move rapidly to block it. I mean, any other interpretation would assume bad motives by the Court.
Cols714
@DJAnyReason: DJ I didn’t know you cared about anything but the Steelers!
Groucho48
Does anyone have a link the a newspaper or such article about this? I’d like to bring it up to some of my right wing debating adversaries but they will just pooh-pooh any info that comes from a non-crazy blog.
Warren Terra
@quannlace:
An admittedly small number of observant Jews would not be cool with this.
More generally, it’s time for election “day” to go bye-bye. Weekend or week would be better, or mail-in.
Disco
@Warren Terra:
Why not just an election “deadline?” Voting opens today; you must return your completed ballot in two weeks. I don’t know logistically how that would work, but it seems better than requiring everyone to vote on the same day.
This is all just pissing into the wind anyway. The Dems don’t have the spine to even propose such radical (positive) changes.
kindness
Pitchfork & torches time yet?
Not Sure
@Zifnab: And why can’t suburban and rural Democrats in Ohio adopt them? Polls close at 5PM in Cleveland? Fine. They also close at 5 in Grove City. Or 3. Banker’s hours. Fair is fair.
Southern Beale
This looks like a lawsuit waiting to happen.
Dennis SGMM
Nate Silver has the odds of Ohio going for Obama at 70%. I wonder if Kasich & company would be pushing this if the odds were the other way round.
Maude
@Southern Beale:
The Obama admin might as well set up shop with the Ohio lawsuits they have to bring.
kc
Wait, doesn’t this play into the hands of all the lazy, shiftless Democrats who don’t have full time jobs?
LanceThruster
Mah.Thur.Fah.Curse.
MaxxLange
Tuesday must be an artifact of a time when Ma and Pa Kettle (well, Pa) had to come in from the farm to vote. They work Saturday, go to Church Sunday, and then need to hitch up the mule to the wagon and travel into town on Monday.
RaflW
Five frunkin’ p.m.? FIVE?!?
What utter, evil bullshit. Good g*d.
Martin
@MaxxLange: It’s a series of decisions.
November was picked because it was after the harvest. Monday was ruled out because many people had to travel overnight to the polling place and they didn’t want people to have to leave on Sunday. The first Tuesday after the first Monday was to make sure it didn’t ever fall on All Saints Day which is Nov 1.
Worth noting that not one of those reasons would be considered valid today.
Nethead Jay
@Disco: Been saying this for quite some time.
Maude
OT
Kevin Drum has stopped cat blogging. At least for several months.
Nethead Jay
@Martin: There’s a serious need for comprehensive election reform in the US. Unfortunately, a lot of change has to happen in Congress and on the Supreme Court before it’s possible.
WaterGirl
@Martin: Martin, I was just thinking of the comment you made months ago, with some great suggestions about how they could handle voter registration. Do you happen to have easy access to that? What you wrote made so much sense, I would love to see it again.
Culture of Truth
“never tell me the odds”
WaterGirl
@Maude: That’s sad, but completely understandable.
kay
@Dennis SGMM:
Kasich is partly responsible for that 70%.
Obama and Sherrod Brown are a good team. Brown has enormous (and earned) credibility with labor, so can help Obama in rural counties and Obama has the same pull in urban centers, where mayors matter as far as turnout.
It doesn’t fit the Democrats in Disarray theme, but it’s a real interesting dynamic. Liberal populist and Dem President. Mutual benefit.
I have this idea that if we could get a coupla more Frankens and Browns in Midwest states, we could break the hold the FIRE sector has on the economy and the Senate.
Roger Moore
@quannlace:
Or keep it Tuesday but have it be a national holiday, the way they do in countries where they want to encourage people to vote. If it’s too big a deal to have one more holiday on the Calendar, eliminate one of the current bullshit holidays, like Columbus Day. Or put it on Veterans’ Day, so we can celebrate our Veterans’ service by exercising one of the important rights they fought to protect.
Canuckistani Tom
@Martin:
It’s still not a bad time of year. If you had it any earlier, you’d run into hurricane season in the south. (plus the clean-up time after a bad one). If it was later, you’d risk large blizzards in the north. From a disruptive weather point of view, November’s not so bad
kay
@jwest:
Except that isn’t how they do it. They bring in pollworkers here. The system worked beautifully in 2006 and 2008, so of course Republicans had to screw with it.
Has their been a botched state election that wasn’t run by conservatives?
Florida 2000, Ohio 2004 and now PA in 2012 unless an adult intervenes.
Why can’t you guys run elections competently? Aren’t you embarrassed there’s always some dope like Kasich or Corbett or Bush at the helm when these meltdowns occur.
State government 101. Run an election properly. Conservatives fail every 4 Years.
askew
@quannlace:
I don’t understand why the Democrats didn’t do anything to address this issue when they held House, Senate and WH in 2009. There should be standard rules across the country which include early voting and funding to make sure that there are enough voting machines in each precinct.
kay
@askew:
kay
I personally would turn elections over to the Postal Service.
Names and addresses, sorting and counting, that’s what they do. Federal, standardized, non-partisan, and they already have a workforce.
Just add it to their duties, to replace the lost 1st class mail volume.
I’ve done both things and they have a lot in common. Postmasters would pick it up in a week, registration, the whole works. It’s a lot like handling mail.
rikyrah
no good, low down mofos..
the entire lot of them
hells littlest angel
A clear violation of the Equal Protection clause.
Man, the Democratic party really needs to make people understand that there’s no such thing as an “off-year” election.
danimal
@kay:
Damn you, Kay, another great idea. Must they all come from the same person?
A politically tough sell (Do you trust the post office with your vote…), but operationally, that makes a hell of a lot of sense.
Robert Sneddon
@kay: In the UK voting is always carried out on a Thursday. It’s not official or written down anywhere, it’s just what we do. It’s one of the great advantages of not having a written Constitution, no domination of the public process by folks 200 years in their graves. Voting usually takes place in May or June but it’s not fixed and if the government falls to a vote of no confidence then the election has been held in other months (but still on a Thursday).
Voter registration is done by local councils, not by groups or political parties. They send out a form to all households once a year, usually in September and the names of all eligible voters at that address get added to the voter’s rolls. Those rolls are publicly available, but not on-line. If someone moves into a new district or ward they can get themselves put on the rolls by applying at the local council office but a lot of folks don’t bother until the update form arrives at their domicile. When an election is due a voting card for each person eligible is sent to their address. This is the recommended method of identifying a voter at the polls but it’s not exclusionary, an addressed receipt or invoice will usually work. Picture ID is not required but will be accepted.
The voting for local, national or European-wide elections (I also get to vote for the Scottish Parliament) is done with simple voting sheets — put a cross in the box beside your candidate, drop it in the ballot box and you’re done. The Scottish Parliament is a STV system, not a single-choice vote. The votes are all counted by hand after the polls close, in public with reps from the candidates watching and in some cases with TV cameras present too. Bank staffs are usually employed to do the actual counting for historical purposes since they are supposedly being good at tallying and handling large amounts of paper.
Major differences that make the UK system more workable than the US system — we don’t elect judges or other public officials, just representatives so the voting process tends to be simpler and shorter. All voting sheets are registered with a serial number against the voter’s name in order to cope with purported voter fraud; the ballots are stored for a year and a day after the election and then destroyed without being examined by the Powers That Be, supposedly.
A big difference is that eligibility to vote in the UK is much wider than in the US. For one thing felons who have served their custodial sentences are automatically re-entitled to vote once they have been released from prison. There is no requirement to apply for permission to vote and no state-specific absolute annulment of the right. Another expansion is that some non-British nationals resident in the UK have the right to vote in some elections — a citizen of France, for example can vote in the European Parliament elections and local elections. An Irish citizen resident in the UK can vote in all the British elections, as can all members of Commonwealth nations similarly resident, even temporarily as long as they have registered and are resident on the day of the election.
The Lodger
Turning elections over to the Postal Service? That would be just another reason for the GOP to want to put them out of business.
(One of the reasons vote-by-mail works in Oregon is that our Secretary of State wants people to vote. As you can imagine, there hasn’t been a Republican holding that office for some time now.)
Patricia Kayden
@Warren Terra: I hope you’re right. Repubs are such nasty dirty people. It’s amazing that they run around shouting about freedom and rights, but look how they conspire to cheat people out of the right to vote wherever they have control.
Hope when Kasich is up for re-election, the Dems go overboard in getting him out of office. AND DON’T PUT ANOTHER REPUB GOVERNOR IN OFFICE. Thank goodness I live in Maryland. My blood pressure couldn’t take all this Repub foolishness.
Carl Nyberg
This seems such a clear violation of the Equal Protection Clause that it will be used to buttress the case in other states that the true Republican agenda is to disenfranchise U.S. citizens who tend to vote Democrat.
Auguste
@Disco:
Oregon was already mentioned in this thread, but I’ll point out that the election “deadline” is essentially what vote-by-mail enacts. I’ve actually never kept track exactly, but I think we get our ballots two weeks before election day or so, and the deadline is 8 pm on election day. If you forget/choose not to/can’t mail it before election day, you have to travel to a collection station, but up til then it’s the easiest thing in the world.
grandpa john
@hells littlest angel:
First the leadership needs to learn that state and local elections in all 50 states have meaning and that in order to constantly win national elections you first need to win state and local elections. Control of state governments is just as important as winning national elections. You would think that the evidence from the last 2 years would somehow convince Dems that Dean’s 50 state idea was a pretty good one. Turning control of state legislative bodies to the repubs turns out not to be such a good idea.
grandpa john
@Robert Sneddon: Our MSM would
never allow that, got to have the results before the 11:00 PM news. Seriously one of the reasons our voting is so fucked up is because it has become more important to announce the winners early than it is to have a system that gets it right
debbie
Hope when Kasich is up for re-election, the Dems go overboard in getting him out of office.
I was listening to a local (central Ohio) reporter roundtable last night, and one (who spoke as if he was revealing something he knew he probably shouldn’t) said that Kasich was not interested in helping Romney much because he is entertaining thoughts of running for the presidency himself in 2016.
Combine that with growing talk of the lucrative contracts Kasich’s unaccountable Development Department has been handing out, and all kinds of fun loom on the horizon.
liberal
@grandpa john:
This X 1000.
liberal
@askew:
FTFY