Sep 4, 2012

Ohio’s Secretary of State – and ALEC Alum – Ignores Court Order To Expand Weekend Voting

From an AlterNet article / By Steven Rosenfeld

VLTP: The legislation popping up in numerous states to disenfranchise millions of predominantly Democratic voters who are students, elderly, Black or Hispanic, come from the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC).  There have been many articles tracking these efforts back to ALEC.  An article published on PolicyMic and VLTP last week exposed that in Ohio, three top state officials; Governor Kasich, PUCO Chairman Todd Snitchler…and Secretary of State, Jon Husted are all ALEC alumni: http://www.vltp.net/prvt-edu-s….

This helps voters understand why Secretary Husted is deliberately attempting to ignore the court’s decision and mandate.  By claiming that Ohio is awaiting the conclusion of the “Appellate” process in disregarding the lower court’s ordered injunction, I believe Husted is overstepping his authority in an effort of advancing a deliberate voter suppression and thus, ALEC led agenda.

From the AlterNet article:

“If you want to see what voter suppression looks like in 2012, parse the logic and rehetoric in Husted’s latest directive—which his office has the authority to issue:

“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.”

Obviously Ohio is an important swing state and the issues and positions of the candidates be damned – the GOP controlled state is demonstrating quite clearly that under the unholy ALEC held “trifecta” of Kasich, Husted and Snitchler they, like Pennsylvania are willing to do whatever is necessary to hand Romney their state in November.  They are willing to go so far as to deny hundreds of thousands of Ohio voters their right to vote in order to prevail at tossing “the Black guy” out of the White House…

Read the entire AlterNet/Rosenfeld article here…