Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

If you still can’t see these things even now, maybe politics isn’t your forte and you should stop writing about it.

Let’s finish the job.

Republicans firmly believe having an abortion is a very personal, very private decision between a woman and J.D. Vance.

Republicans would impeach Biden if he bit into a whole Kit Kat rather than breaking the sections apart.

Donald Trump, welcome to your everything, everywhere, all at once.

ha ha ha! Nice try weird people.

Nothing says ‘pro-life’ like letting children go hungry.

“And when the Committee says to “report your income,” that could mean anything!

They traffic in fear. it is their only currency. if we are fearful, they are winning.

… riddled with inexplicable and elementary errors of law and fact

Thanks to your bullshit, we are now under siege.

Fuck that bum, let’s go Joe!

It may be funny to you motherfucker, but it’s not funny to me.

If you are in line to indict donald trump, stay in line.

People really shouldn’t expect the government to help after they watched the GOP drown it in a bathtub.

Why is it so hard for them to condemn hate?

Nikki Haley, who can’t acknowledge ‘slavery’, is a pathetic shill.

That’s my take and I am available for criticism at this time.

I’ve spoken to my cat about this, but it doesn’t seem to do any good.

If you are still in the gop, you are either an extremist yourself, or in bed with those who are.

I also would like a pony to improve my balloon juice experience.

Seems like a complicated subject, have you tried yelling at it?

No one could have predicted…

Ron DeSantis, the grand wizard, oops, governor of FL.

You are here: Home / Voting n Ohio

Voting n Ohio

by | 27 Comments

This post is in: 

I’m going to a big voter protection meeting/training in Ohio here shortly. I won’t be writing in detail about it, but I did want to mention it because I know a lot of you who live in “blue” states suffer a lot of anxiety over Ohio voting, because you’re possibly dependent on our outcome here yet can’t vote here and have very little control over what happens here. This planning has been going on since March, but it will (of course) intensify as we get closer to election day.

So just know that voter suppression is being addressed and if you’re donating to the Obama campaign or the state Democratic Party this is part of what you’re funding, so thanks for that.

I don’t think you should HAVE to fund it, but Republicans are bound and determined to suppress voting, so, sadly, in addition to paying these election officials and state governor salaries, you also have to pay for an election protection defense. As we’ve seen in Florida in 2000 and Ohio in 2004 and will be seeing in Pennsylvania, Republicans cannot run elections properly. It’ll be chaos, but we’ll all just have to deal.

Preparation and planning work a lot better than worrying. We saw it in ’08 and we’ll see it again in ’12.

Reader Interactions

27Comments

  1. 1.

    dmsilev

    Republicans cannot run elections properly

    You should change that to “Republicans *will* not run elections properly”. This isn’t incompetence, it’s deliberate malevolence.

  2. 2.

    mk3872

    Too bad. Libs reap what they sow.

    Those who sat out the 2010 election or voted Tea Party because they didn’t get their Obama ponies, are now paying the price of having deep-rooted Conservative lunatics in charge of most of the state’s legislatures.

    Thanks a Libs! For the most part, you suck.

  4. 4.

    Patricia Kayden

    @mk3872:

    Great point. And it appears that all the Repub anti-voter laws are being upheld when appealed. Votes have consequences, and this is a permanent consequence for all those who wanted to punish Obama.

  5. 5.

    Bill Murray

    @mk3872: Insulting people is a great way to get them to vote the way you want. Further, the Dem 2010 numbers were standard for an off year election, so my guess on who didn’t show were those attached solely/mainly to Obama. I do realize that won’t make a difference to a sensible centrist like yourself.

  6. 6.

    TheMightyTrowel

    Thanks Kay. Living in a country with mandatory voting makes the US patchwork legal framework seem even more absurd and appalling than it is. I’m glad Ohio has you – if there were Oscars for elections, I’d nominate you for Best Voting Enthusiast.

  7. 7.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @dmsilev:

    This. This. This.

    All this is deliberate and premeditated. It’s the only way short of Diebold manipulating the machines they can win. So that’s what they do.

  8. 8.

    Elizabelle

    Maybe we could do a week of BJ donations to the Democratic Party in Ohio, to aid in on the ground work and combating voter suppression?

    And maybe other swing states too.

    Wisconsin. Read today that Paul Ryan’s county went 2:1 for Obama in 2008.

  9. 9.

    Carl Nyberg

    Was there something stopping Democrats from passing a voter protection bill when they had 60 votes in the Senate and controlled the U.S. House?

    Why isn’t the Obama Justice Department enforcing voting rights more aggressively?

  10. 10.

    Valdivia

    Thank you Kay. That is all.

    Oh. And I just met Jill Biden while grocery shopping and gushed at her like a total fangirl

  11. 11.

    KXB

    Try this:

    1. Voting is a constitutionally protected right. There are so few instances of voter fraud as to be statistically insignificant. Yet, you have Republicans going to great lengths to enact legislation to stamp out any instance of fraud. That such laws will inevitably disenfranchise thousands of voters is just too bad.

    2. Gun ownership is a constitutionally protected right. Gun homicides are a national problem. More people were killed in Chicago this year by guns than American servicemen in Afghanistan. The Aurora, CO shooting is equal to the number of homicides Japan has in one year. Yet, neither party suggests taking some modest steps, like ensuring people on the terrorist watch list cannot buy guns, to address gun violence. Limiting gun purchases to one per month? Not going to happen.

  12. 12.

    cosima

    Here in Colorado I’ve been doing many many hours of volunteering for Organizing for America (the community-based arm of Obama’s re-election efforts). Our Secretary of State is a Republican and enacted a law that has inactivated any voters who did not vote in 2010.

    If you were a Republican SofS, and you could choose an arbitrary year to disenfranchise hundreds of thousands of minority voters, would you A) choose the most recent year (2011) of voting, in which a black mayor of Denver was elected, B) choose the most recent Presidential election year in which a black President was elected, or C) choose a year with the lowest turn-out?

    What really has me pissed off, though, are the numbers of inactive voters being posted on the SofS’s site (govotecolorado.com). In spite of the fact that this rule has been in effect for months (and is being challenged in court, though not likely to be resolved prior to Nov), that we have been pounding the pavement constantly attempting to reactivate voters, the number of inactive voters has gone up! How is it possible that on X day a rule goes into effect and X number of voters who did not vote in 2010 are suddenly inactivated, and that that number could go up? It defies explanation and comprehension. If a voter has moved to Denver in the past month, and was previously inactive because they did not vote, they should have been reactivated simply by virtue of changing their address.

    WTF Gessler???? More Republican dirty voting tricks!

    This shit has got to stop!

  14. 14.

    shortstop

    kay, sorry to make this personal, but a question: the third baseman and I do a lot of GOTV work, and are going to be in Ohio for our close-to-the-election efforts this year. I’m in touch with OFA here in Chicago, and I already know they’re going to send us to Toledo for a couple of weekends. Given the confusion about the voter ID changes, what are your thoughts from the ground on whether those efforts would be more useful earlier in September-October, rather than the couple of weekends just before the election?

  15. 15.

    KeithinOhio

    I’m a resident of Ohio. I live in the capital Columbus. Just saw the President and shook his hand personally at a rally here in town. I even have close up pics. I work with OFA-Ohio. Voter suppression is real, lethal, and consequential. We are fighting it at every turn. PBO and the Dems will have to bring all they got vs Romney to make him look completely incompetent if we expect to win this election. We have to have enough votes to circumvent the voter suppresion is these swing states. Not to mention the Rightwing is spending millions to manipulate the pollsters and the MSM. Thanks Supreme Court for Citizens United. This is the most devasting ruling that has ever taken place for our Democracy.

  16. 16.

    Nickws

    @Carl Nyberg:

    Was there something stopping Democrats from passing a voter protection bill when they had 60 votes in the Senate and controlled the U.S. House?

    Rightly or wrongly, I think the example of pro-voter-access GOPers like Charlie Crist tended to outweigh the example of Ohio’s anti-voter-access SoS Ken Blackwell. This made it seem like bipartisan sanity was possible, and that it wasn’t necessary for a Voting Rights Act 2.0.

    Also, my impression was that too many clean election folk circa 2000/10 were obsessed by the possibility of The Voting Machines’ Software Being Rigged. You’ll notice that Kay stays away from those sorts of theories in her posts, as addressing that stuff isn’t a grassroots reform thing; it’s more an Internet Tough Guy fight club thing.

  18. 18.

    mk3872

    @Bill Murray:

    Insulting people is a great way to get them to vote the way you want

    Classic hurt feelings approach that Libs take.

    the Dem 2010 numbers were standard for an off year election

    Which are LOW because Dems got TROUNCED by Repub turnout because Libs were too busy belly-aching about Obama not ending the wars quick enough, not ending DOMA, DADT, Bush tax cuts, yada yada

  21. 21.

    PNW_WarriorWoman

    Thank you Kay for your informative posts. As a former Trumbull County Buckeye, I’m very interested in hearing what’s happening in Ohio on these issues.

  22. 22.

    PNW_WarriorWoman

    Thank you Kay for your informative posts. As a former Trumbull County Buckeye, I’m very interested in hearing what’s happening in Ohio on these issues.

  23. 23.

    japa21

    Carl, the Dems never had a full 60 votes in the senate when it would have mattered. Also, elections are generally considered the rights of the states in how they are run.

    As far as running an election properly, it depends on your definition of properly. By the GOP definition, which is Republicans win, then they are very good at running elections. See Waukesha County, WI as an example.

  25. 25.

    LanceThruster

    I was massively ticked this morning when MSNBC Morning Joe had FL Gov. Rick Scott talking about hurricane Isaac and the RNC, but not one question/mention of Scott’s voter suppression activities.

    Effin’ MSM!

Comments are closed.