At least for now, Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted’s devious plot to steal the election for Mitt Romney has been derailed. A district judge (appointed by Clinton and on senior status) has ruled that Ohioans can vote on the Saturday, Sunday, and Monday before Election Day, despite the persistent efforts of Husted and the Ohio GOP to eliminate early voting.
In 2004, the GOP was able to suppress the Democratic vote in the Buckeye state by ensuring that Democratic strongholds had insufficient voting machines and, thus, many hours-long lines. In some places, people were still voting at midnight, although there was obviously substantial drop off from people who couldn’t or wouldn’t spend that much time waiting to vote.
In 2008, early voting prevented those kinds of lines and the Democrats got the votes they deserved. The Republicans have been doing everything they can think of to restore the situation they enjoyed in 2004. They even attempted to allow early voting in Republicans counties and deny it in Democratic ones. When the Obama administration sued, they claimed that the administration was trying to suppress the military vote. In fact, it was the Republicans who were trying to let the military vote on days and places where civilians would not be allowed to vote. Obama sued to allow everyone to vote, not to take away the vote from the military. And, for now, he won.
[Jon] Husted spokesman Matt McClellan and a representative of Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine said the state’s chief elections officials was reviewing the decision to determine whether to comply or proceed with further appeals.
Perhaps they will appeal.
Poll I saw on ABC News this morning had McCaskill up only two points over Akin. Don’t know who the poller was. Bogus poll? Or Missouri women going back to the dark side?
Hmmm, I wonder if they’ll just ignore this and claim “whoops, made a mistake!” on election day.
Oh, I was right!
http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2012/09/obama_campaign_ohio_early_voting.php?ref=fpb
Well, that didn’t take long.
Ohio Will Appeal Expansion of Early Voting
yep, no surprise.
Of course DeWine and his Ohio vote supression machine will appeal. The Sixth Circuit is a solidly Repub-controlled circuit, with 8(!) judges appointed by Bushco. There’s no way this pro-voting lower court ruling survives up there.
The days of the federal courts looking out for poor and minority voting rights are basically long gone. After 30+ years, our institutions have been intentionally wrecked by the “conservative” movement, so there won’t be any help from above.
If you want to vote, you’ll have to fight the Repub party and its henchmen to do so and “prove” your right to vote, especially if Voting While Minority—that’s our new “democratic” reality in the Exceptional Nation.
Yep. A lot of people around here got real excited when they saw the announcement. But the reality of it is exactly what you cite. This will almost certainly get overturned and we will be right back where we were here in Ohio. This is what happens when you let the other side stack the deck, year after year, with their ideological cronies. The chickens are coming home to roost here in Ohio. And this will be a perfect example of this history.