{"id":8568,"date":"2012-08-09T08:22:35","date_gmt":"2012-08-09T15:22:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/?p=8568"},"modified":"2012-08-09T08:22:35","modified_gmt":"2012-08-09T15:22:35","slug":"the-truth-about-ohio-voting","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2012\/08\/09\/the-truth-about-ohio-voting\/","title":{"rendered":"The Truth about Ohio Voting"},"content":{"rendered":"

A particularly ugly lie is being spread by the right wing noise machine, especially the Republican Ministry of Propaganda, Faux Noise<\/em>.  They are saying that Barack Obama is attempting to take away voting privileges from the military though his lawsuit in Ohio.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  All Ohioans used to have early voting privileges on the Saturday, Sunday and Monday before the election day.  Ohio Republicans took early voting away from everyone except active military.  Obama\u2019s lawsuit has no effect at all on early voting for active military.  It merely seeks to restore it to everyone else too.  Ari Berman covered this well.<\/font><\/p>\n

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\"9supression\"On Election Day 2004, long lines and widespread electoral dysfunctional marred the results of the presidential election in Ohio<\/a>, whose electoral votes ended up handing George W. Bush a second term. \u201cThe misallocation of voting machines led to unprecedented long lines that disenfranchised scores, if not hundreds of thousands, of predominantly minority and Democratic voters,\u201d found a post-election report by Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee<\/a>. According to one survey, 174,000 Ohioans, 3 percent of the electorate, left their polling place without voting<\/a> because of the interminable wait. (Bush won the state by only 118,000 votes).<\/p>\n

After 2004, Ohio reformed its electoral process by adding thirty-five days of early voting before Election Day, which led to a much smoother voting experience in 2008. The Obama campaign used this extra time to successfully mobilize its supporters, building a massive lead among early voters than John McCain could not overcome on Election Day.<\/p>\n

In response to the 2008 election results, Ohio Republicans drastically curtailed the early voting<\/a> period in 2012 from thirty-five to eleven days, with no voting on the Sunday before the election, when African-American churches historically rally their congregants to go to the polls. (Ohio was one of five states to cut back on early voting since 2010.) Voting rights activists subsequently gathered enough signatures to block the new voting restrictions and force a referendum on Election Day. In reaction, Ohio Republicans repealed their own bill in the state legislature, but kept a ban on early voting three days before Election Day (a period when 93,000 Ohioans voted in 2008), adding an exception for active duty members of the military<\/strong>, who tend to lean Republican. (The Obama campaign is now challenging the law<\/a> in court, seeking to expand early voting for all Ohioans).<\/p>\n

The Romney campaign has recently captured headlines with its absurd and untrue claim<\/a> that the Obama campaign is trying to suppress the rights of military voters. The real story from Ohio is how cutbacks to early voting will disproportionately disenfranchise African-American voters in Ohio\u2019s most populous counties\u2026 [emphasis added<\/em>]<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Inserted from <The Nation<\/a>><\/p>\n

Last week, Rachel Maddow reported on Ohio’s broken election system and the events that led up to the invention of this Republican lie.<\/font><\/p>\n

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Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news<\/a>, world news<\/a>, and news about the economy<\/a><\/p>\n

If that doesn\u2019t convince you of Republican duplicity, see how Ohio Republicans are scheduling extra voting time in Republicans areas only. Rachel covered this one too.<\/font><\/p>\n

<\/embed><\/object><\/font><\/p>\n

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news<\/a>, world news<\/a>, and news about the economy<\/a><\/p>\n

Here the difference between the parties becomes clear. Democrats want expanded voting for all American voters, regardless of affiliation. Republicans, on the other hand, are demonstrating that they want expanded voting for Republican voters only.  Republicans want power no matter who they have to screw to get it.  Stopping them is your job.<\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A particularly ugly lie is being spread by the right wing noise machine, especially the Republican Ministry of Propaganda, Faux Noise.  They are saying that Barack Obama is attempting to take away voting privileges from the military though his lawsuit in Ohio.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  All Ohioans used to have early […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8568","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","category-5-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8568","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8568"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8568\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8568"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8568"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8568"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}