Fair and Open Elections Archives | Page 7 of 7

Sep 26 2012

Husted instructs local election official to obstruct early voting attempt

On September 7, Ohio Secretary of Husted appeared to back down from his attempts to block voting on the last weekend before election day. After a federal judge’s rebuke, Husted rescinded a directive that had instructed County Boards of Elections not to establish voting hours for those final three days. So that’s a victory for early voting, right? Not so fast. According to a story in today’s Akron Beacon Journal, the Summit County Board of Elections attempted yesterday to set hours for that weekend, but were blocked when a GOP member of the Board walked out of the meeting. The official, already outnumbered with the other GOP member absent, told the reporter he took this unusual action after he called Secretary Husted’s office for guidance on what appeared would have likely ended up a 2-1 vote for opening on the weekend. [Read more…]

Sep 17 2012

What does GOP stand to gain by suppressing the vote in Ohio?

There’s been plenty of coverage of the complete mess Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted has made of the Ohio election process this year. Directives, court orders countermanding directives, partisanship on the ballot board – it goes on and on. Husted seemed to be his own man for his first year or so in office. From time to time he went his own way from Gov. John Kasich and the right-wing Caveman Caucus in the Ohio General Assembly. The closer we get to Election Day 2012, though, the more Husted has become Ohio’s handmaiden for the national right wing and their concerted effort to suppress the vote in several battleground states. Why mess with an early voting system that worked? A recent NBC News-Wall Street Journal-Marist Poll gives us some evidence as to why Husted and other Republicans are fighting so hard to limit early voting in Ohio. The poll shows that nearly a quarter (24%) of Ohio’s likely voters plan to vote early. Another 17% haven’t decided. OK, lots of people want to vote early. One of my colleagues here at IO dug into the polling data and produced the two charts at the end of this post. As you can see,of those voters planning to cast ballots early, President Barack Obama leads challenger Mitt Romney by 23%. In the second chart you can see that of those voters who plan to vote on Election Day, Romney enjoys a 4% lead. When Republicans work to make it harder for people to vote – in a day and age when we have the technology and resources to manage early voting – there’s a payoff – for them.

Sep 17 2012

Mike Curtin on Why Ohio Needs Redistricting Reform

Mike Curtin, former newsman and vice chairman of the Columbus Dispatch is well known to Central Ohioans who follow public events and politics. In his 38-year career in journalism moving from public affairs reporter up through the editorial ranks to eventually run the Dispatch, Curtin is viewed by most as a fair and balanced observer of Ohio politics. Now a candidate for the Ohio House, Curtin is talking about the winner takes all approach Ohio has to congressional and state legislative district apportionment saying that in this “hyper-partisan age” something needs to be done to take all of the power out of the hands of whichever party controls the Statehouse. “If you look at the maps – any of the maps – they’re absurdities,” Curtin told Colleen Marshall on The Spectrum. Curtin used his own community as an example. He lives in the village of Marble Cliff which for 70 years has been a sister community with Grandview Heights – sharing schools, municipal services and a library district. The two communities are contiguous, but not on legislative district maps, and Curtin says this is simply a twisted mathematical construct to benefit the people currently in power in Columbus in Washington. “They (current district maps) are geographical monsters that serve only the politicians in power,” Curtin said. Ohioans have an alternative, however. It’s State Issue 2 and it will be on the ballot this November. Innovation Ohio supports a yes vote on Issue 2 and we’ll be talking more about it over the next six weeks. Check out Curtin’s entire interview (3 minutes):

Sep 13 2012

Ohio’s Early Voting Timeline – Access Moving in the Wrong Direction Under Husted

Ohio voters have won a key victory in the battle to restore certain early voting opportunities in Ohio. On Wednesday, a federal judge denied Secretary of State Jon Husted’s request for a stay of the Judge’s order to allow counties to set voting times for the final three days before the election. This paves the way for counties to open up the door on Saturday through Monday, November 3-5. In-person voting on the final weekend of the election has proven a very popular option for Ohio voters. In fact, according to Northeast Ohio Voter Advocates, in 2008, 102,243 Ohioans voted in-person on the final three days before the election. Yesterday’s announcement is a significant step in the right direction. [Read more…]

Sep 13 2012

Husted’s rough week …

Correct me if I’m wrong, but didn’t Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted begin his tenure in fairly bipartisan fashion? Didn’t he initially stand up to Gov. John Kasich and some of the more right-wing policies of the Ohio GOP? Somewhere along the way Husted made a course correction and became Ohio’s Secretary of Suppression. His policies have led to court battles which have led to Husted looking like every other partisan for partisan’s sake winger out there polluting our state and national political processes. Last night, Hannah News Service even had to roll out the white text on red background. There’s Breaking News. Husted has been whupped in court again and he and the Ballot Board are going to meet this morning to rewrite the ballot text for State Issue 2. I asked Dale Butland, IO’s communications director and longtime Cap Square observer for his thoughts: “The same desperate politicians who are doing everything they can to eliminate the votes of those they fear might not support them are now lying to voters about the Issue 2 reforms. This is what you expect to see in a banana republic, not a great state like Ohio. It’s gotten so bad that a federal judge and the Ohio Supreme Court have been forced to step in and slap these politicians down. Voters can stand up for honesty and fair play by voting “yes” on Issue 2 this November,” Butland told me. We’ll have some coverage at the Ballot Board this morning and hopefully get a post up from one of our policy folks later today. What Dale told me, though, is key. Issue 2 is important. It’s proscription for fixing Ohio’s redistricting process may seem a bit complicated, but an attempt is being made to bring fairness into the process. Voter advocates aren’t asking for a process that favors either party, they’re looking for congressional and statehouse districts that reflect Ohio, not a Kasich-Boehner fantasy of Ohio.

Sep 12 2012

State of Play – Where does Ohio stand on early voting?

Last Friday, advocates of early voting were quick to declare Secretary of State Husted’s move to rescind a directives limiting weekend early voting a victory. While the Secretary’s decision paves the way for county Board of Elections to offer early voting for the three days before the election, his action is by no means the silver bullet voting activist were looking for. How did we get where we are today? In July, the Obama campaign sued Ohio over a new law eliminating early in-person voting on the three days before the election, except for military and overseas voters. Meanwhile, in August, Secretary Husted prohibited counties from opening the polls at night or on weekends for the full five weeks of early voting. [Read more…]

Sep 11 2012

Voters in Ohio not aligned with the ‘cheating’ part of GOP agenda

PPP Poll shows early voting on weekend before election favored by Ohioans There is a trajectory voters in Ohio have been on since 2004 when it comes to open, easy access to the polls – and unfortunately the direction is no longer up. Secretary of State Jon Husted has made a mess of things by forcing counties to scale back early voting hours, providing shoddy guidance to boards of elections and then firing local elections officials who challenge his directives. The state is in court over the whole mess – it’s just been mass confusion from the start. [Read more…]

Dec 05 2011

$15 million in waste – and not a peep from the Tea Party

Unless Republicans compromise soon, Ohio taxpayers will spend $30 million to hold two primary elections in 2012 – $15 million each for one in March for state legislative candidates and one in June for congressional candidates. If two primary elections strike you as wasteful and wholly unnecessary, you’re in good company. The editorial pages of most of Ohio’s daily newspapers agree. So why two primaries? One word: politics. The delay until June is aimed at preserving GOP-drawn Congressional maps that are currently the subject of a possible referendum. But, instead of moving the selection of state and local candidates back to the June date, legislators kept both dates, adding enormously to the workload of already-strapped County Boards of Elections. As the Columbus Dispatch put it in their November 22 editorial:

Two primary elections, imposing millions in extra costs on taxpayers, plus the confusion of preparing for a June primary even as county boards of election are cleaning up the details of the March primary? Not to mention subjecting the public to two rounds of political ads and robocalls? That’s voter abuse. The General Assembly should spare taxpayers and voters such nonsense. Lawmakers should agree on a reasonable map, then do away with the two-primary plan.

The bill contained no direct appropriation to reimburse local governments for holding a second primary, merely intent language to do so. With the state budget already strained, it is unclear where the additional money would come from. That Ohio Republicans do not embarrass easily – even in the face of blistering editorials from the Toledo Blade, Youngstown Vindicator, and Cleveland Plain Dealer and the aforementioned bastion of conservative thought, the Columbus Dispatch – is hardly a revelation. What’s curious, however, is the deafening silence coming from organizations like COAST and the Tea Party which never tire of telling us how much they hate “government waste.” Especially since there’s such an easy, one-word way out of this mess: compromise. Of course, to the Tea Party there’s only one thing worse than government waste. And that’s political compromise.

Jun 21 2011

PBS investigates new Ohio voter suppression legislation

In case you missed it, on Friday’s national broadcast of its Need to Know program, PBS highlighted legislation in Ohio that would install new barriers to voting in Ohio. Friend of Innovation Ohio and OSU Law Professor, Daniel Tokaji was featured, as were State Representatives Kathleen Clyde and Robert Mecklenborg. Watch the video:

Watch the full episode. See more Need To Know.