Boy, oh boy, it must be very important for Republicans to bar early voting those last three days prior to the election:
DIRECTIVE 2012-40
September 4, 2012
To: All County Boards of Elections
Directors, Deputy Directors, and Board Members
Re: Obama Decision: Voting Hours
On August 31, 2012, a federal court struck the portion of Ohio Revised Code 3509.03 that ends inperson absentee voting the Friday before the election at 6:00 p.m. Obama v. Husted Case No 12-cv-636. The decision is being appealed.
Announcing new hours before the court case reaches final resolution will only serve to confuse voters and conflict with the standard of uniformity sought in Directive 2012-35. Therefore, there is no valid reason for my office or the county boards of elections to set hours for in-person absentee voting the last three days before the election at this time. If the appellate courts ultimately reverse the trial court’s decision, in-person absentee voting for non-UOCAVA voters will end the Friday before the election. If however, the appellate courts uphold the trial court’s decision, I will be required to issue a consistent uniform schedule for statewide in-person voting hours for the last three days before the election. I am confident there will be sufficient time after the conclusion of the appeal process to set uniform hours across the state.
Let me again emphasize, the constitutionality of the statute setting in-person absentee voting hours is still subject to court review and it would further confuse voters to set hours now that the court may change later. As such, this Directive strictly prohibits county boards of elections from determining hours for the Friday, Saturday, Sunday, or Monday before the election.
Recall: the early voting law in Ohio was passed by a bipartisan majority as a response to the incompetent administration of the 2004 presidential election by Republican Ken Blackwell, who is now some sort of pundit-lobbyist-think tank director. We saw long lines and general chaos in 2004.
Early voting is an option ALL voters in Ohio had until Republicans restricted it in 2011. Early voting works. It’s convenient for voters and it takes pressure off polling places on election day. Voters love it. Yet Republicans are working very, very hard to rescind early voting. I’m confident we’ll be able to work around the barriers they’re throwing up, and Husted’s response isn’t shocking to anyone who has been paying attention since 2000, but it’s a battle every single damn day. They set up a barrier, we knock it down, they set up another one.
Soonergrunt
If you need to defend your beliefs and positions by preventing people from voting, then your beliefs and positions, and quite frankly, YOU, suck.
That is all.
Dork
Voting on Saturday and/or Sunday allows the plebes to vote, who’ll vote overwhelmingly Democratic. Ergo, the math is actually pretty simple.
Ash Can
Republicans despise democracy because they know they can’t gain power on the basis of their own merits. Just like any other dictatorship, and just like the communist dictatorships of bygone days that they’re resembling more and more with each election cycle. It’s that simple.
David Hunt
Yeah, it might “confuse” them by giving them the impression that Republicans were trying to suppress their votes. And since Republicans must be the good guys, anything that gives an contradicting narative to that is anywhere from confusing to an outright lie. They couldn’t be the good guys any other way…
Chris
@Ash Can:
This. It’s the reason for that “we’re a REPUBLIC not a DEMOCRACY” line that’s grown popular with them since Obama’s election.
EconWatcher
Wouldn’t this make for a great political ad in itself? (Why are the Republicans afraid of your vote? Why do they want to make it as hard as possible for you to get to the polls?)
They’ve done the math, and apparently concluded that more Dem voters than ‘pub voters will fall off. But the thing is, they are trying to inconvenience all voters (except military).
I would think even quite a few Republicans might resent that.
Kay
@Soonergrunt:
It’s so ridiculous that they’re portraying this as about military voting at all. The whole point of the original state law was to bring the federal law within the state law, making the in-person absentee scheme uniform. The state law was intended to incorporate the federal law on military voting, not set it apart. It’s MORE vulnerable set apart and outside state law, not LESS vulnerable.
patrick II
I think I would rather have the republicans play it this way. Those people who can will make other plans, and I would rather have that than have them show up at the last weekend and finding an appeal had closed the doors.
Of course if enough people decide not to vote because their window of opportunity has become too narrow, I am totally wrong.
NonyNony
Translation: If the appellate courts uphold the trial court’s decision, I WILL remove early voting abilities from EVERYONE, including the active military members that were previously allowed.
Hey, the Ohio GOP didn’t make a big deal out of Obama taking away military voting rights for no reason. They did it on purpose for exactly this outcome. If the judges say that they can treat citizens differently, then members of the military keep their privilege and nobody else gets it. If the judges say that citizens have to be treated equally, then they’ll just take that privilege away from members of the military and make sure that they loudly blame Obama for it when they do.
They won’t fool everyone, but they’ll fool enough. And what do they care? As far as I can tell NOBODY in the State House will suffer for these voter shennanigans because the districts are sufficiently jerrymandered to allow a dead slug waving a Republican sign to get into office (and have you seen some of our Republican state assembly members? A dead slug would be an improvement.)
Violet
@EconWatcher: I agree. I think “Republicans don’t want you to vote” would be a great political ad. And a good talking point to any audience, but especially Dem-leaning folks who aren’t confirmed voters, is “Republicans want to take away your right to vote. Are you going to let them? Are you going to let Republicans steal your right to be heard? If you do, what will they steal next?” Get people fired up about not letting their vote be stolen and mad at Republicans. It’s a twofer. Hardball, bitchez.
Kay
@Dork:
They’re such weenies. They’re afraid of something called “Souls to the Polls”
They’re terrified of happy people on a church bus. Scaaaary. Quick! Issue a directive! Black people who go to church are voting!
Sal
Not a lawyer, but since when does appealing a ruling mean the ruling is not in effect in the meantime? Sometimes judges will issue a stay while it’s appealed, but I haven’t seen that here (maybe there is a stay?). Then, if R’s lose the appeal, on to the Supreme’s, so still “being appealed”?
And just as a matter of practicality, why not issue guidelines now? It would save time later if the ruling’s upheld, and can be ignored if not. Hell, why not just use the old guidelines? No work at all.
Kay
@NonyNony:
I sort of disagree. I don’t know how much impact it will have in the national races, but there are still some really pissed off former Republicans who are targeting the general assembly members who tried to take their collective bargaining rights away. There’s this low-level rumble of “we’ll remember in November”. We shall see.
Linda Featheringill
Sigh. They never give up, do they?
I assume that they’re afraid that if they let everybody vote, Obama will win.
And the Dems might pick up the down ticket races, too.
You’re doing good work, Kay. Two more months.
PeakVT
@Soonergrunt: Amen.
Comrade Mary
@EconWatcher: Agreed. This needs to be used in ads.
Kay
@Linda Featheringill:
They’ll be a directive a week until election day. Guaranteed. Part of this game they’re playing is changing the rules every twenty minutes. Same old, same old. Next they’ll start refusing registrations because they aren’t on the correct weight of paper.
Catsy
Never forget that these people are no-shit, no-hyperbole fascists.
There is no remaining benefit of the doubt for tactics like this. They plainly don’t believe that they can win elections on merit. They know that their real agenda is unpopular and that their demographic base is shrinking. All they have left is the hope of disenfranchising enough of the “wrong” voters to steal elections.
They are exactly who and what we thought they were: a disease on the body politic, a true 21st century fascist movement that will destroy our short-lived experiment in representative democracy, if allowed.
mdblanche
@Chris: Of course, the outcome of Bush v. Gore was neither democratic nor republican.
Dennis SGMM
How axiomatic is that if you can’t dazzle ’em with brilliance then you baffle ’em with bullshit?
ira-NY
TGhis is baloney.
The Court’s ruling is the law. An appeal of the Court’s ruling does not stay the ruling.
A mandamus action should be filed to require the new schedule in conformancce with the Court’s ruling be immediately issued.
The Other Chuck
There needs to be a constitutional amendment federalizing elections for federal office. Oh but wait, it would have to be ratified by the states. So we’re screwed.
Oh and why were states given such control in the first place? That’s right, the South was afraid blacks might eventually get the vote. Is there any civil institution they didn’t poison?
Anoniminous
Every reasonable scenario for a Romney victory runs through Ohio. He MUST take it.
Nate Silver is giving Obama a 72% chance of winning Ohio.
Thus, the National and Ohio GOP is freaking and doing everything they can to make the 2012 Ohio voter profile match 2010 instead of 2008.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@Linda Featheringill:
__
Here in NM the Secretary of State announced earlier this year that straight-ticket voting (which had been a voting option for as long as anyone around these parts can remember) had been eliminated from the ballot this year. When challenged, they didn’t even try to give a reason for it. Their only answer was: “it isn’t in the state constitution, so you can’t force us to allow it” (so much for so-called conservatism, huh?). The state GOP are terrified of Obama’s popularity in this state and figured that if they took away the straight-ticket option they would have a better chance of winning the down-ballot races. I’m honestly surprised they didn’t go further and try to eliminate the party identification from being printed on the ballot altogether.
General Stuck
It may be evil. But it is evil borne or desperation.
rikyrah
not a shock in the least, Kay. but, thank you for keeping us informed as to what these snakes are doing in Ohio.
? Martin
@Anoniminous: Mitt needs to win every battleground state. Not just Ohio, but PA, FL, IA, MI, NV, CO, VA, NM.
I just don’t see how that’s going to happen. Hell, they’re putting up firewalls in Texas.
Anya
This is why we need to focus on local races. The republicans put a lot of energy and resources on local races, while democrats focus on presidential elections alone. We really need to do better.
The Other Chuck
Yunno, intent is something we factor into criminal codes, fancy terms like _Mens Rea_ and so forth. It’s the difference between degrees of murder and assault and so on.
Why not apply it to legislative action? When the intent of a law passed by a state legislature is to undermine the fundamental rights of its citizens in violation of federal law, and it’s done knowingly and aforethought, why not call it what it is: *Insurrection*
scav
Their ideas are edging towards being such an abject failure in the free market that they require protectionism at the ballot box (so out go their pretenses). And they’re nowhere as cute as pandas — so it’s more like establishing sanctuaries for rabid weasels that don’t even trust their own kind. Crummy bookmarks and calendars and probably not viable long-term in any case.
Violet
@? Martin:
They need to. Julian Castro, Mayor of San Antonio and up-and-coming Latino in the Democratic party, is delivering the keynote tonight at the DNC. He’s very popular in San Antonio. Wouldn’t be surprised to see him run for Governor and if a young, charismatic Latino is running for Governor of Texas, you might see a bit higher Latino turnout in the state. That’ll scare the GOP shitless.
japa21
Kay, how is the local media handling all this?
Yutsano
The labeling it the “Obama decision” is the big tell here. They’re askeered of that uppity one!
Dennis SGMM
@General Stuck:
Aw fuck, Stuck. Yes, they’re desperate, no buts about it. America is a changed place in my long life here. Some of us can take that, many can not. The evil isn’t in their asinine plans nor is is it in their xenophobia. It’s in their resistance to change.
We only have two effective political parties. That’s much like having a piano with only two keys. When one of them goes off the deep end it hurts not only their adherents, it hurts the process of argument and compromise. That argument and compromise made my own country great. That the process is no longer in place is sad to me beyond belief.
Judas Escargot, Acerbic Prophet of the Mighty Potato God
Is there any way to go after the national GOP on RICO charges?
(Yeah, I know, probably not… no money laundering. But they sure as hell have gone full Mafia).
Omnes Omnibus
Kay, is Ohio trying to get on the list of states requiring VRA preclearance?
General Stuck
@The Other Chuck:
You got it. “insurrection” is at least on the menu.
Sounding Not that unlike southern conservatives barking at the moon as Lincoln was getting elected. It is a coded call to some kind of rebellion, even if it is simply acts of civil disobedience at the highest levels of government, with a (continued) dare for the other side to stop them.
Ben Cisco
Send the National Guard down to keep this asshole from barring the
schoolhousepolling place door. If he wants to act like a fascist NeoConfederate, then treat him like one.Anya
Total OT: this photo of Jesse Jackson and Wolf Blitzer is waiting for a good caption.
jgaugust
@Sal: The rule is that a judgment is final throughout the appeals process in federal court (state courts may vary this rule depending on your jurisdiction). I didn’t see the original order, though. Sometimes district court judges who know a case like this is going on appeal put in an order of stay pending appeal (e.g. the Prop 8 ruling California which is technically “active”, but is in reality currently unenforceable because the appeals process hasn’t ended yet).
Linda Featheringill
On Goode, running in Va as a 3rd party person:
A video of him talking. That boy does have an accent:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WCeC-Rx3SB0
[h/t dailykos]
Anoniminous
@? Martin:
Agree. Romeny’s chances were never good and are fading quickly.
New Mexico: Romney isn’t going to take it and the Dems are going to keep the open Senate seat and two of three House seats. It’s barely possible, tho’ unlikely, the Dems could win the third House seat. If the voter demographic “is” 2008 it will happen. Otherwise, not.
Arizona will probably go GOP this year.
Texas? There’s a long-shot, outside-the-box, chance it will go Dem from a (possible) coalition of AA, Hispanic, Liberal, Moderate-Independent voters. Not saying it will but the possibility is giving the GOP heebie-jeebies.
General Stuck
The Obama camp is sounding confident to checkmate GOP efforts to suppress the vote with huge GOTV effort.
I have no good reason to believe they are simply blowing smoke to unnerve the other side. It wouldn’t be the first time O has done some sy ops on his opponent.
Though from being signed up for both campaigns email based activist announcements, I don’t get much from the Romney camp, with OFA, and its statewide presence, filling up my email box about every 15 minutes, doing all sorts of org shit with a bleg for cash attached, which is ok.
Face
@General Stuck: Didn’t Theodore Nugent recently say that if Obama won, he’d either be dead or in prison in a matter of months? If a rebellion is going to start, I’d keep an eye in his direction for the first 6 months or so of the second term.
YoohooCthulhu
Seems like this is coming up every two years or so these days. I’ve seen a big increase in the “recipients of any kin d of federal aid should not be able to vote” rhetoric lately. It’s ironic how it doesn’t occur to them them that even misguided people have a right to vote, since, well…
Chris
@General Stuck:
That sounds wildly optimistic to me. Look at his first term – he proposed a health care plan that had been invented and first implemented by conservative Republicans as their “free market based alternative” to “Hillarycare,” and he pushed through a stimulus whose single biggest piece was tax cuts. How did Republicans react? By labeling both those things the most extreme left-wing socialist thing EVER and still blocking him at every occasion.
It’s not even about policy anymore. They want their fucking White House, damn it, and as long as they don’t have it they’re going to keep throwing things, breaking things and screaming like five-year olds. The idea that there’s anything you can offer to make them calm the fuck down and think about something other than not “WAAAAHHHHH someone else is in the Oval Office!” doesn’t fly anymore.
Villago Delenda Est
The Rethugs know that they have no chance of winning Ohio for Rmoney in a fair and honest election.
So they are doing everything they can to make sure it’s not fair and honest.
Pap Finn
@Chris: I swear to God, if one more wingnut gets in my face to tell me that the U.S. is a republic, I’m going Fujian White Crane on his ass.
General Stuck
@Face:
Yup, Chuck Norris today predicted an Obama win will bring us a thousand years of bad shit.
Anoniminous
@YoohooCthulhu:
Is pretty much a definition of anyone 65+ years. 65+ years fairly well defines the GOP base.
So, go ahead suckers. DO IT!
Omnes Omnibus
@Pap Finn: Ask the person what he or she means by that statement. I’ll bet you $10,000 that the person will not be able to give a reasonable answer.
scav
@Anoniminous: Not to mention a hellish lot of farmers, so there goes large chunks of their heartland right there.
Violet
@Anya: Is that camera angle or is Jesse Jackson that big and Wolf Blitzer that small? Jackson and his handler both look like they want to punch Blitzer. And Blitzer’s umbrella really makes it.
General Stuck
@Chris:
The GOP never has supported HCR. That is regulation, and they abjectly through every fiber of their miserable selfish beings, oppose government regulation in most every form. At least the kind that benefits the general peasantry from the by products of manic profit. So it is an easy fit, for them to do nothing, as that is what they have always been for, with regard to government activity. The exception is funding a big military to support a thriving state of American imperial economic exploitation upon our neighbors on planet earth.
The only thing that has kept them playing the game at all, is the proposition they can win an election and run the ship of state backwards in time. If that is no longer possible, or likely, then all they have left are gas cans and matches.
Litlebritdifrnt
@Anoniminous: there was some wingnut on my local radio show the other day saying only people who pay taxes and own property should be able to vote.
Chris
@YoohooCthulhu:
Not even just that. I’ve seen similar rhetoric saying that dual citizens shouldn’t be allowed to vote, and neither should Americans living abroad (ironic given that both groups are still expected to pay American taxes no matter where we are – apparently the model they want to go back to isn’t the Confederacy but King George III). And of course the argument that children born here to illegal immigrants should be stripped of their citizenship.
The search for reasons to disenfranchise anyone who might vote for someone other than them is multifaceted and tireless.
sylvan
If I was a Koch, I’d be upset with my overall investment return.
Not to mention wasting a perfectly good Paul Ryan card before it was absolutely necessary.
Linda Featheringill
@Litlebritdifrnt: #55
That is what the Founding Fathers thought.
Violet
@Litlebritdifrnt:
Fixed to clarify what he really meant.
kay
@Omnes Omnibus:
I don’t know. I didn’t even know a state could do that.
I’m completely taken with this idea, though ;)
God, wouldn’t they go bonkers of we started adding states or precincts or areas to preclearance? It would be worth pursuing for that alone.
Chris
@General Stuck:
What was with RomneyCare then?
Chris
@Litlebritdifrnt:
Because voting is a privilege, not a right.
I’m curious to know if they’d be willing to restrict Second Amendment rights (and all other constitutional rights, really) along the same lines.
General Stuck
@Chris:
Romneycare was Mitt governing the people’s republic of Mass. He was a RINO then. Now he is whatever you need him to be.
mamayaga
@sylvan:
Not sure they’d consider it wasted. I think the whole point of pushing Ryan onto the ticket was to set him up as the frontrunner for 2016 — the Kochs can read the polls just like anyone else, and can see that Mitt has been in the process of fading for a while. Better to get their preferred candidate in place for the next round, regardless of the costs now.
Of course, the card may be wasted if the one-two punch of Ryan’s speech followed by his stupid marathon lie moves the Village to a view of Ryan as an inveterate liar. Once something like that gets established, it’s pretty impossible to shake (just ask Al Gore).
Chris
@General Stuck:
Sure, but he didn’t come up with it all by his lonesome. And the centerpiece of Romneybamacare, the individual mandate, originally came from the Heritage Foundation in the late eighties, and was paraded around as the alternative to “socialist” options like single payer and the public option.
sylvan
@General Stuck:
The prevailing theory is that they were for it initially, contingent on having a Republican president sign it into law.
The opposite was just too horrible to contemplate.
Chris
@mamayaga:
Paul Ryan’s the current star but I wouldn’t be surprised if by 2016 he’s fallen as much out of favor as Palin has today. Anyway I thought the unspoken rule for the GOP was that the runner-up in the last primary gets to be the candidate next time around?
Which I guess would be Santorum this time around. (OY VEY… I’ve said several times that if they lost two elections in a row with candidates they perceived as RINOs, the 2016 one would be wearing white sheets; looks even more plausible than I thought all of a sudden!)
Patricia Kayden
“They set up a barrier, we knock it down, they set up another one.”
We knock it down again. I think you’ll win this one. Repubs are too blatant with their voter suppression. They need to ask the KKK about how to be more subtle.
General Stuck
@Chris:
It’s called playing politics, whereas republicans had their own pol strategy to thwart dems with Potemkin white papers like the Heritage, concerning HCR. No republican has ever actually put up any plan for a vote, and never would have. It is against their pol prime directive, that can include deception, but never regulating the health care business. If they could possibly stop it, like they did with Clinton all the way back to TR.
These same characters, and others before them with similar mentality from whichever party, have stopped cold any effort by progressives to have a national regulatory framework and god forbid, near universal coverage, that could conflict with the status quo of the plutocrat golden goose that is or has been the health care industry.
It is core ideology for them, like their core rejection of all the other parts of The New Deal. Any lip service to the contrary is deception, and lip service.
edit – and the concept of an individual mandate was not invented by Heritage and republicans, it has always been an option out there.
Suffern ACE
@General Stuck: Yep. The notion that there is actually a problem in our healthcare system that needs to be solved by anything other than a patients bill of rights (unenforced by anyone) is kind of anathema to the “best healthcare in the world”. The problem with our health insurance right now is that we haven’t devoted all of our resources to it. The ideal Republican economy is 50% Defense and Security, 50% Healthcare. Maybe we eat. Maybe we don’t.
Quaker in a Basement
I wonder if the trial court judge agrees with this directive’s interpretation of his ruling.
sylvan
@General Stuck:
Sure, but you can’t deny they weren’t the most recent ones to propose an IM prior to Obama.
General Stuck
@sylvan:
Again, the republicans didn’t ‘propose’ anything. One of their thinktanks wrote up a thesis for a talking point to counter dem actions to actually propose and pass HCR. If you want to think they were serious about reforming HC, then go ahead. I don’t. Not to mention casting a single vote in congress to support the IM in the ACA.
? Martin
@Violet: Oh, I know. Texas will go blue no later than 2020, and quite possibly in 2016. I think with more money, Obama could have made a race of it this year – it’s nothing more than a GOTV problem.
sylvan
@General Stuck:
They wouldn’t have at that time, but the pressure for HCR was very real even before the Heritage study.
Health care costs were beginning to impact defense and ancillary industries.
It was bad for business.
Some Loser
@sylvan:
You very clearly overestimate the Republicans in Congress if you thought they gave a fuck about that.
Matt McIrvin
@? Martin:
Actually, no, he doesn’t. If he gets VA, NC, FL and Ohio, plus the states where he’s currently leading, that gets him to 266 electoral votes, and any one of the smaller contested states would put him over. He could even do without Ohio if he gets, say, Wisconsin, Iowa and Nevada instead, though that requires more chancy things to go right.