Solid editorial in the Toledo Blade on the Breitbart-Romney-Fox News lie on military voters in Ohio. Like all election process stories, it’s complicated, which made it easy for Breitbart-Romney-Fox News to lie about what’s really going on:
The notion that President Obama — or any other rational politician — would seek to curtail the right to vote of servicemen and women is absurd. Yet Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney is peddling that canard in an attempt to win votes in this critical battleground state. Ohio voters surely are too savvy to fall for such nonsense.
Last year, Ohio’s Republican-controlled General Assembly passed an election “reform” bill that needlessly limited the ability of some citizens — most of whom historically lean toward Democratic candidates — to vote. When Democrats promised to put a referendum on the new law on the Nov. 6 ballot, GOP lawmakers decided to rescind the restrictions rather than hand the other party an issue to energize voters.
One part of the law remains in effect, though, because it also was included in a separate law. That provision, in accordance with federal mandates, allows military members, their families, and civilians who live overseas to vote through the Monday before Election Day. Early voting for all other Ohioans ends the Friday before the election.
The Obama campaign sued Ohio to keep the early-voting ban from taking effect. But that didn’t stop Mr. Romney — and his friends at Fox News — from claiming that the suit was intended to disfranchise the soldiers, sailors, and airmen who defend the liberties — such as voting — that other Americans enjoy. The lawsuit seeks a return to the way things were in 2008, when 93,000 Ohioans cast their ballots on the final three days before the Nov. 4 presidential election. Early and absentee voting had been expanded in Ohio and other states after the 2004 presidential election, when long lines and broken equipment caused some people to wait hours to vote, while others simply gave up.
Campaigning on distortions and half-truths is an insult to all Ohio voters — military, civilian, left, right, and center.
Ohio newspapers generally did a good job rebutting the lie. The voter suppression law that former Fox News personality John Kasich put in that limited early voting was fairly big news here, we passed petitions to stop the voter suppression law during the same period when we were passing petitions to stop the union-busting law, so the lie was probably more difficult to spread within the state than it was nationally.
Our Secretary of State is now doing his best to constantly change the rules on voting and I expect that will continue right up to election day, but I’m fairly confident people can nimbly navigate all the various barriers GOP politicians will throw up and actually vote, because voting wars have been the norm here for the last 7 years. We’re used to it.
I think the bigger story is Pennsylvania. Pennsylvania voters and democracy enthusiasts have very little time to prepare. The Ohio voter protection operation gets better every year, because we’ve been dealing with this for years.
Hopefully we’ll get good news on the Pennsylvania law next week.
arguingwithsignposts
I didn’t see Paul Ryan’s name mentioned once here, Kay. Well done.
Baud
Good blog work reporting on this issue, Kay.
Hill Dweller
Kay, is the different voting hours in Republican and Democratic leaning districts getting a lot of play in the state?
LosGatosCA
It’s ironic that our military fights to protect our liberties while the national security peacocks shamelessly strut around curtailing those liberties on the home front.
Sparrowgal
I think the other big story, reported by several of the MSNBC hosts late last week, is that Ohio counties are being selectively granted or denied extended voting hours, and that this grant or denial is tracking really closely with Democratic/Republican-leaning counties (in guess whose favor?!) I hadn’t heard how or if the Obama campaign plans to insert itself in this additional disenfranchisement exercise.
kay
@Hill Dweller:
Yes. Ohio Democrats in the statehouse are good on voting rights. They’re noisy as hell. I watched the debate on the first voter suppression law in 2005 and I thought there were going to be punches thrown. It’s a very emotional issue for those who have a disenfranchisement history or family story. People cry about this. It means a lot to them.
I myself am not that worried about the disparity. I think they should fight each and every sleazy attempt to disenfranchise, mind you, but as I said I think there is a core group of people here who ‘get’ this, and they’ll be ready.
Violet
@kay: I think the more national publicity things like the disparity in extended voting hours for Republican vs Democrat-leaning counties gets, the better. Since the Republicans are the ones trying to curtail voting in Dem counties, it affects their whole brand, making them look like they don’t want to play fair/can’t win without cheating. People generally don’t like that kind of thing.
kay
@Violet:
The national attention is wonderful. It was a long time coming. Talking Points Memo is a great resource on voting. Their stuff is both accurate and easy to understand. I think they “mainstreamed” voting rights, which is just a huge accomplishment.
Zach
It blows my mind that legislation that has no rational purpose other than ensuring that fewer people vote isn’t a bigger deal.
In my opinion, Democrats are nearly as responsible as Republicans for this by panicking after the 2000 election and ushering in universal electronic voting, provisional ballots and other nonsense that has invalidated many thousands of votes over the past decade. Checking a box or punching a piece of paper after someone put a check next to your name in a big book worked almost perfectly for many decades until one idiot in Palm Springs screwed up a ballot. Our bipartisan overreaction to that one mistake is what made this sort of meddling with the Democratic process possible.
Smiling Mortician
@efgoldman: That makes sense, but I wonder if the DOJ is acting out of concern that time is short and the state legal process could drag out?
Patricia Kayden
All this out-and-out lying cannot be helping Romney in Ohio or elsewhere. Good that the media is calling him out.
Linkmeister
What the heck is it with Ohio Secretaries of State? Wasn’t there some trouble with a previous one too?
Ah, yes. Ken Blackwell.
feebog
I followed the PA trial on the ACLU blog. I simply don’t see how an injunction against the mandatory ID law could fail. Almost 10% of the entire voting population will be disenfranchised if this law is not stopped. Thats banana republic territory for sure.
Joseph Nobles
As the early voting hours was explained to me at Bradblog, district boards are 50/50 Democratic/Republican by law. The Secretary of State breaks the ties. So Democratic-leaning districts that get curtailed early voting hours and days and Republican-leaning districts getting extended hours and days? All perfectly legal. You know, except in that equal-protection-clause way, but all the other t’s are crossed and i’s dotted.
JoyfulA
@efgoldman: The DOJ stuff is backup to the state trial. The state judge is supposed to rule this week, and the possibilities for appealing his ruling are not good because the PA Supreme Court now has only eight members, with the ninth judge on the sidelines, indicted for election fraud (a GOP judge, of course).
Mike in NC
Romney: chicken hawk draft-dodging fucker and his equally shitty running mate. They’re scum.
Villago Delenda Est
@Mike in NC:
Counsel for scum on line two, Mike. Something about “comparative defamation.”
Villago Delenda Est
@efgoldman:
No, scum is angry that it’s been compared to Rmoney and Ryan.
rikyrah
thanks for this news, kay.
rikyrah
the obviousness of what the Secretary of State is doing became plain this week, kay
Lewis Carroll
What else are R-Money and Ryan going to campaign on?
LanceThruster
@Mike in NC:
And in a party where the scum rises to the top.
Anatoliĭ Lъudьvigovich Bzyp (formerly Horrendo Slapp, Jimperson Zibb, Duncan Dönitz, Otto Graf von Pfmidtnöchtler-Pízsmőgy, Mumphrey, et al.)
The bullshit about the Republican counties having their polls open longer than the Democratic counties is hard to believe. It’s hard to believe they’d be willing to do something that obvious. I can’t understand how they thought (at least I’m guessing they must have thought) that nobody would ever find out about this. What were they thinking?
Violet
@Lewis Carroll: Ha! I read that as “camping” not “campaign” and wondered why they’d go camping together.
BlueUU
Kay, I live in Butler County, Ohio in Boehner’s district. I’d like to help with vote protection. Where do I go to sign up?
PaminBB
Kay, thanks for all your efforts, and for the steady updates. Deeply grateful.
phillygirl
Kay, or any Ohioan out there, I have a question. Here in Philly, the local powers wants me to vote. I’ve never had to wait more than 5 minutes to vote. ID law or no, the board of elections and the election judges and the committeepersons with their walking-around money will see that Philadelphians get ushered into voting booths at the speed of light.
So … how come this doesn’t work in Cleveland and Akron and Toledo and Columbus? How come, every election, these places don’t have enough voting machines? Are they allocated by John Boehner? What’s with the lines? Where are your mayors? Your ward-heelers?
I kinda understand about Husted and the county boards. But why can’t Ohio, under the best of circumstances, allow people in the cities to vote?
I know there’s an answer to this question.
phillygirl
The PA Supremes are actually down to six, a 3-3 split, since the 4th Repub got indicted. If the Supremes split, the lower court’s judgment stands. So that’s good. One of the Repubs, Chief Justice Ron Castille, is a Repub of the sort that no longer exists. He’s a Philadelphian, and he’s largely OK with voting rights. So that’s better. Optimism is not in my nature, but on this matter it’s setting my dark heart aflutter.
Lewis Carroll
Actually Violet, that was supposed to be in response to this portion of the article in the OP:
“Campaigning on distortions and half-truths is an insult to all Ohio voters—military, civilian, left, right, and center.”
When that’s all they CAN campaign on, I suppose it’s what they will campaign on.
But your reading is pretty funny, since I don’t think I can imagine R-Money doing anything remotely resembling camping.
John M. Burt
@Zach: Electronic voting is highly unreliable under the best of conditions, but when it is conducted by a private corporation it’s totally unacceptable.
Early voting / voting by mail is a very good idea, and should always be available, on demand, to anyone who wants it.
Best of all is to go over to exclusive vote-by-mail, as we do in Oregon. Repubs will claims it is open to abuse, but no examples have yet been found.