Innovation Ohio

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Husted: “No one in Ohio is advocating this” on GOP Electoral College rigging scheme

hustedmugBravo to the Plain Dealer for getting the big four in Ohio elections law and policy on the record regarding national GOP attempts to rig the Electoral College. The Plain Dealer reports  that Gov. John Kasich, House Speaker Bill Batchelder and Senate President Keith Faber have all said through spokespeople that there are no plans for Ohio Republicans to join their compatriots in states like Virginia and Pennsylvania to change how Electoral College votes are tallied. We posted earlier this week about Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted floating the idea at a post-election lobbying confab in Columbus that winner takes all Electoral College vote tallying in Ohio would solve some of (his) perceived problems. (Perhaps like President Barack Obama winning the state.) To Husted’s credit, he says the remarks were taken out of context and said this today to the Plain Dealer:
“Nobody in Ohio is advocating this,” Husted said in a telephone interview.
Let’s hope this is the case and that Democrats and Independents in Ohio aren’t futher insulted and taken advantage of by extending gerrymandering to the Electoral College.

[Video] Husted on Record Touting Right Wing Electoral College Takeover

Last week we brought you a post regarding a concerted GOP effort to change election laws in “blue” states so that Electoral College votes would be given to presidential candidates based on congressional district rather than the winner takes all system currently in place in 48 of our 50 states. The only reason this is possible is because Republicans ruled the roost in several state governments during the last reapportionment of congressional districts in 2011 – leading to gerrymandered districts in many large states, including Ohio. lovechildOhio’s Democratic congressional candidates, as a whole, received more votes than Republican candidates in 2012. President Barack Obama, a Democrat, carried the state. Yet, Republicans hold more seats in Ohio’s congressional delegation by a 3-1 margin. Our current federal (and state) legislative maps were conceived in a downtown Columbus hotel room, the love children of U.S. House Speaker John Boehner (R) and Ohio House Speaker Bill Batchelder (R). Of course, that was done in 2011. Their legislative plans worked out – Ohio Republicans are disproportionately represented (and rule) the Ohio General Assembly and our congressional delegation. Gerrymandering doesn’t work for statewide races, though. When all Ohioans vote, this fairly evenly divided state can swing either way. In the past two presidential elections, Ohio has favored a Democrat. In the past two gubernatorial elections, Ohio has elected a Democrat and then a Republican. Because Ohioans who identify with one or the other party are evenly divided along partisan lines, and most are self-described Independents in the middle, you might think that the GOP can’t fool with statewide general elections. You would be wrong. The current GOP tyranny in Columbus is inviolable for the time being short of real and immediate redistricting reform. With both houses of the legislature and the governor’s office under their control, they can do anything. The governor and Ohio’s GOP legislative leaders have been quiet on the possibility of changing the way Ohio’s Electoral College votes are cast, but Republican Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted seems comfortable with the idea: Husted does include “redistricting reform” in his statement, but what does that mean? You will hear other Republicans say things like, “Statewide candidates will have to compete in every congressional district – not just the urban centers.” That’s a meaningless statement when our districts are not competitive and there is no plan to correct that fact. Be on the lookout Ohio. You’ve been able to count on one person, one vote when voting for president. If the GOP has its way, the rules change and a candidate with a majority of statewide votes could go down in flames courtesy of a gerrymandered Electoral College.

IO Week in Review

Feel out of the loop? Here is your chance to catch up on the issues that matter and Innovation Ohio’s activities this week: IO hit the airwaves over the weekend, appearing on Columbus on the Record and Capitol Square to discuss the latest news in Ohio politics. On Tuesday, a story broke that Ohio State Board of Education President Debe Terhar compared President Obama to Hitler in a Facebook post, based on a dubious misreading of history. Innovation Ohio called on Terhar to resign immediately and asked that Governor Kasich speak out on the matter. [Read more…]

National Election Trend Coming to Ohio?

Currently, if a presidential candidate wins a state’s popular vote the winner also receives all of the state’s Electoral College votes.  The only exceptions to this rule are Nebraska and Maine. However, after losing two presidential elections in a row, Republican lawmakers across the nation are attempting to change this in their respective states. In several Republican-controlled legislatures in states that supported President Barack Obama there are legislative initiatives to award their state’s Electoral College votes based on congressional district.  This plan takes advantage of the fact that the GOP has successfully gerrymandered districts in key blue states. A recent analysis by the Center for American Progress shows that had this election rigging plan been in place in 2012, Mitt Romney would be in the White House, despite Obama capturing the popular vote. Ohio is ripe for this type of effort. Republicans control the governor’s office and both houses of the Ohio General Assembly. Due to this control – and the way Ohio reapportions state and federal legislative districts every ten years – for the second decade in a row Ohio’s General Assembly and congressional districts have been drawn along hyper-partisan lines. While Ohioans voted to elect Obama in the last election and statewide voting totals for Democratic candidates exceeded GOP totals, Ohio’s congressional seats are split roughly 75/25 in favor of the GOP and statehouse seats are no better. The idea to change Electoral College rules in the states is gaining momentum. Earlier this month Reince Priebus, Chairman of the RNC, voiced support.  Legislation to divide electoral votes has been introduced in Michigan and Virginia.  In Virginia this legislation has been voted out of committee. Pennsylvania Senate Republican Leader Pileggi has renewed efforts to pass such legislation in his state. Governor Scott Walker in Wisconsin has said it is an “interesting idea.” This fall, shortly after the election, Secretary of State Jon Husted suggested that he supports the idea of splitting the Electoral College votes in Ohio.  Will John Husted bring this alarming national trend to Ohio? Husted said:
“You’re never going to fix the elections process in Ohio as long as we are the most important swing state in the country…. The way that you could minimize that is that you could fix redistricting so that we had fair Congressional districts and then you could apportion all of our electoral votes according to Congressional district so that it wouldn’t be a winner take all state. And if you did that you would take the importance of Ohio out of this and all of those elections problems would go away”
While he later backtracked and said this was just a comment, not a proposal, it may just be a matter of time before similar legislation finds its way to Ohio. As for fair congressional districts in Ohio, we know what the GOP really thinks of that idea. In the lame duck session of the last General Assembly there was a brief bipartisan effort to work on a more fair way to redistrict after every decennial census. There were two major roadblocks: House Speaker Bill Batchelder (a Republican) and general Republican refusal to consider any bill that would take effect before the next U.S. Census – in 2020.

Husted issues directive statewide on in person absentee voting on last weekend before election

After the U.S. Supreme Court refused Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted’s latest attempt to block in-person early voting on the weekend before Election Day in Ohio, Husted has come to his senses and has issued a directive regarding the matter to county boards of elections: The hours set in Secretary Husted’s directive are:
  • Saturday, November 3, 2012 – 8:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m.
  • Sunday, November 4, 2012 – 1:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m.
  • Monday, November 5, 2012 – 8:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m.
Husted has taken Ohio voters on a quite unnecessary ride this election season with repeated attempts to block so-called ‘last weekend’ in person absentee voting. Today’s move is a welcome one for voters. After all, the job of secretary of state is to make voting easier – not harder. Husted took some lumps over ‘last weekend’ voting because it is a tradition in many African American communities. At times he has looked intransigent over the past several weeks as court after court rejected his arguments to limit voting access on the final weekend. The 6th Circuit Court said the state could not “justify reducing the opportunity to vote by a considerable segment of the voting population”, especially “when there is no evidence that local boards of elections will be unable to cope with more early voters,” just last week. It remains to be seen whether or not the Ohio GOP will continue what has become a national scale effort by Republicans to continue to push limits on voter rights. Let’s hope the confusion and mayhem sown by Husted during this cycle doesn’t portend greater challenges ahead. [Read more…]

Early, in-person voting especially important to Ohio’s African-American community

Under the headline: Analysis of Cuyahoga County voting finds cutback on in-person balloting hits minorities most a story over the weekend by The Plain Dealer’s Tom Feran provides more confirmation that GOP efforts in battleground states to tighten restrictions on when and how we vote are part of a larger strategy to keep Democrats away from the polls. We showed you earlier that Democrats are more likely to vote early and we also just released a report that puts Ohio into the context of wider-ranging right-wing efforts to suppress the vote during this presidential election season. What the analysis described by The Plain Dealer tells us is that there is solid evidence that Republicans stand to gain by restricting early voting in-person before Election Day because it interferes with a traditional way by which many African-Americans vote. From Feran’s article: [Read more…]

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.

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…]

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.

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