They had me going for a moment. The vigilant Ohio urban newspapers, I mean. When Secretary of State Jon Husted delivered his mandate that all voting hours should be uniform, who besides cynical pests like me could challenge the political correctness of the Husted Hustle?
The Plain Dealer's editorial follow-up to his ruling concluded that the decree was, um, "acceptable". After all, it said, "What Husted has ordered may not completely satisfy anyone, but it at least treats everyone equally." Of course.
That's after it opined that it would have been "preferable " if Husted had "included a week end or two" for early voters." Shucks, he didn't. And isn't that at the heart of the problem?
Not fully dismayed, the PD's closing argument meekly ended: "Imperfect though it may be, this solution will suffice." Imperfect?
Down in Columbus, the Dispatch's editorial declared: "Vote for fairness". The paper didn't waste time in sharing its satisfied view, beginning the editorial with...
"Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted has struck a fair compromise by standardizing early-voting hours throughout the state." Whoopee! Compromise! Who could complain?
Meantime, the Beacon Journal conceded that the ruling "has not pleased everyone and even recalled that in 2008 the early voting proceeded "smoothly." However, it said Husted has "leveled the field for early voting hours."
What the editorial writers didn't level about was the ugly source of this year's election scandal. None of the papers bothered to mention that the Republicans had set out early to suppress minority voters. African-Americans, in particular. And they slyly confiscated a system that worked four years ago and found an "acceptable" way to fix it to increase their party's chances against President Obama. 'Tis a fact that was buried in much of the latest round of editorial page coverage, where outrage was replaced with studious defenses of a political plot that can't be remedied by uniform voting hours.
But wait!
Over the week end Plunderbund, ThinkProgress and other sources reported more evidence that the GOP mission all along was to shrink the black vote.
That word came not from those awful libs but from Doug Preisse, the Franklin County Republican chairman and member of the board of elections. In an email to the Dispatch, he conceded:
"I guess I really actually feel we shouldn't contort the voting process to accommodate the urban - read African-American - voter turnout machine. Let's be fair and reasonable."
Lets.
This is the same perp who, according to the Dispatch, said claims of unfairness were "bullshit. Quote me."
In fairness, I will.
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How does one justify a "compromise" of a bedrock principle of democracy, namely the right of American citizens of all shades, opinions and constitutional standing to vote? In this case, the "compromise" entails changing the rules of access to the ballot by altering the times of access in a partisan manner that admittedly is intended to interfere mainly with urban voting blocs. Husted also is under fire in a U.S. District Court in Ohio for insisting that ballots cast by voters who are directed by poll-workers to the wrong precincts not be counted. And where are such votes most likely to be cast? At big-city and densely populated suburbs where several precinct voting stations are grouped in schools and large public buildings, inviting mistakes by poll-workers who send voters to the wrong voting machines. Husted says individual voters have a personal responsibility to seek out the right precincts. Don't the poll-workers, hired by the local government, have a responsibility to steer voters to the right place? Why shouldn't faultless, misdirected voters, who obviously have met the requirements to cast their ballots, have their votes counted?
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