Saturday, August 4, 2012

Crooked Scumbags

From Daily Kos, today's Ohio Republican Party:
What this segment misses is what is happening with "extended voting hours" in Ohio.  In Ohio you can go to the Board of Elections to vote early if you chose and a very large number of people did in 2008.  That year the Boards of Elections in the major counties maintained evening hours, Saturday morning hours, even the occasional Sunday.  Good of course for working people of course and they made good use of that.
This year that is changing.  Cuyahoga County (Cleveland) and Summit County (Akron) have been limited to "normal business hours" while at the same time big Republican suburban ring counties are voting to be open evenings and weekends.  The implications are obvious.  If you are a working stiff in those counties there is no need for extra hours to accommodate you.  But if you are working stiff in Butler County or Warren County, reliably Republican counties then by all means your convenience must be accommodated.  Same is true in Medina and Portage Counties near Cleveland.
This is something that is emerging on a County by County basis.  In Ohio Boards of Elections are made up of 2 Democrats and 2 Republicans.  Any tie votes are broken by the Secretary of State.  So in Cleveland and Akron Republicans voted against expanded hours and the SOS broke the tie in their favor.  But in Butler, Warren, Medina and Portage Republicans were in favor of expanded hours and Democrats were happy to support that.   Thus no tie.
A pattern is emerging that is troubling.
We in Cincinnati have not yet voted on this issue (we do on August 16th) but our Republican colleagues are indicating they intend to do the same as happened in Cleveland.  It remains to be seen what will happen in Columbus (not anymore - see update).  To reiterate, I personally will be casting one of the four votes that day.  This diary is a solicitation of support.
I don't understand how these guys get away with screwing minority voters so blatantly.  There is something wrong when people don't freak out about this stuff.   We have a right to vote, and everybody should be treated the same.  But that isn't how today's Republican party works.  They know that if everybody votes, they lose big.  Their only chance of winning, even with 8.3% stated unemployment and a very restive populations is to keep as many people who vote against their anti-middle class/pro-super rich folk agenda from being able to cast a ballot.  With voter ID laws and restricted early voting hours, they are doing the best they can.  Probably on election day, they'll send out drivers who will tell people they'll take them to the polls, then they'll just drive them around until the polls close.  Yeah, that's right, I'm saying they might not put kidnapping off limits.

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