Friday, September 7, 2012
GOP-style absentee ballots: 'Righting' the system
Well, Nancy and I each received a feel-good absentee ballot notice from Secretary of State Jon Husted today. It was patriotically red, white and blue, with a prominently displayed checkmark that did double duty by serving as the stylized "V" in the My Vote logo. Underneath it boldly declared "My Right - My Responsibility".
How good of Mr. Husted to remind me of my right. How timely, too, so soon after after he and his cohort, Atty. Gen. Mike Dewine decided to drag out their response to a federal court order to restore week-end early voting. Oh, they will argue, week-end voting hours are not a right, which is like asking you not to count the change from a suspicious sidewalk vendor.
It's at least interesting to me how quickly guys like Husted and Dewine move in to blur their tracks on suppressing the vote. Rights and responsiblity? Make me laugh, guys. And as conservative Republicans who preach personal freedom from Big Brother, shouldn't you be practicing what you are preaching by getting off the backs of certain voters?
UPDATE: THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH JUST REPORTED THAT HUSTED RESCINDED HIS ORDER AGAINST EARLY VOTING HOURS FOR THE THE LAST 3 DAYS BEFORE THE ELECTION. (Shucks. Mike Dewine, the Ohio AG, had threatened to be so bold as to appeal the order to the U.S. Supreme Court. That was STRIKE THREE for Mike, who belatedly switched to the losing candidate in the Republican presidential primary, was on the losing side in the appeal to the Supreme court on Obamacare and now this. If you think of it, send him a cheerful card as the loser.
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Since the beginning of the Republic, access to the American ballot has been restricted by the white men who controlled the levers of government. Early on, only propertied or "qualified" white men were allowed. No blacks or women of any race. Then it was all white men and, later, some blacks and women (after a Civil War and 120 years or so). Then came the ill-disguised Jim Crow era that made it very difficult or dangerous for blacks of either gender to vote in most of the South. Now, in subtler and nuanced legislative or administrative ruses that are wrapped in rhetoric about protecting against virtually non-existent "voter fraud," the effort is to suppress turnout that is likely to discourage voting by citizens in urban (blacks and Hispanics) and far-flung rural settings (southwestern Latinos). The current onslaught of voter suppression is not simply unpatriotic, it is cowardly and an undemocratic stain on the American Ideal.
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