Ohio GOP to Pass New "NC-like" Voting Restrictions

[LeBron]

http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/ohio-gop-looks-turn-clock-back-voting
http://www.msnbc.com/the-ed-show/watch/ohi-no-you-cant-easily-vote-66212931862
http://www.msnbc.com/the-ed-show/ed-show-poll-nov-19-2013

These new laws if they're signed would kill Kasich's approval rating and despite voting restrictions, would still give FitzGerald a huge advantage over Kasich in the election.

Most of these are Ohio Senate bills (where the Republicans have a 2/3rd's majority). They would allow absentee ballots to only be mailed out only after approval by the GOP General Assembly (watch them not approve any sent to Cuyahoga) and then have the biased Republican Secretary of State Jon Husted mail them, new provisional ballot requirements including the number of days someone has to return with the needed information to get the vote to count, ending same-day registration, cutting early voting from 35 to 30 days, and the most idiotic bill out of all of these, reducing the number of VOTING MACHINES.

These were the reasons for the long lines in 2004 and why Bush ultimately defeated Kerry in Ohio to win the Presidency. And the problem is, if these get passed, no matter how unpopular the Assembly and Kasich will be, while we could easily throw out the Governor next year, the Republicans have a gerrymandered lock on control of the Assembly until at least 2020 when hopefully Democrats will have a majority in the redistricting board. The laws would never be overruled by the Ohio Supreme Court because of the obvious bias and 6-1 conservative majority there, so the only other sure fire-ways are taking them to the Supreme Court or we'll just have to wait until a Democratic majority in both houses and the Governorship which.....may take a very, very long time.

[LeBron]

http://www.thenation.com/blog/177454/ohio-gop-resurrects-voter-suppression-efforts

http://www.toledoblade.com/State/2013/12/06/Legislators-deciding-election-issues.html

Four bills all proposed by Republicans have passed the Ohio Senate already. The main two being watched are a bill that would prohibit anyone but Secretary of State Jon Husted (R) from sending out absentee ballots and only when authorized by the GOP-controlled Ohio General Assembly. The other one would eliminate the "Golden Week" which basically prohibits same-day registration/voting.

They're currently being heard in the Ohio House of Representatives where Republicans control a 60-39 majority. Speaker Batchelder already announced he plans to allow a vote on them and when they most likely pass, they go back to the Ohio Senate for final approval whereby they are then sent to Kasich's desk who has not announced what he'll do with them yet.

So far, the only person I've seen on the national news covering this was Ed Schultz compared to the NC voting laws which were talked about everywhere on several major networks. In order to effectively defeat these bills or ultimately defeat Kasich (if he signs them), this needs to get in the national media. It's not a statewide issue anymore because this is just as bad if not worse than TX, NC, PA, FL, MS, etc.

[LeBron]

It still amazes me the media continues to let the GOP get away with blatant voter suppression.

In general, it has always been astounding to me how the Republican Party gets away with leveraging public policy to protect their power, with disturbingly little controversy in the media.

And unfortunately, this is one of the main social injustices we can currently catch Kasich on. People have already forgotten about SB5 and the legislature will most likely wait until after 2014 to pass the right-to-work and anti-abortion "heartbeat" bills. If this is the case though and Kasich survives re-election followed by Tea Party legislation being passed like no tomorrow, then we can be VERY hopeful for a Democratic Governor in Ohio come 2018.

I still have a lot of confidence in FitzGerald though. He's already going after Kasich on this voting rights issue and the absurdity that Kasich needs to cheat to win.

These laws will affect roughly 1/3rd of Ohio voters especially minorities since tons of people in the north part of the state vote by mail and vote early which is 2012 all over again. The question is, can we rely on Attorney General Eric Holder to sue Ohio again over these restrictions? (Assuming the politically biased Ohio Supreme Court upholds them).

[LeBron]

http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/ohio-republican-voting-bill

http://www.msnbc.com/the-ed-show/watch/all-eyes-on-ohio-in-the-voting-rights-fight-93433411575

So for recent status on this, the super majority in the Republican-controlled Ohio House of Representatives passed two bills last week that implement two absurd voting restrictions. They're now sitting on Republican Governor John Kasich's desk and according to his spokesmen, he's expected to sign them into law.

The first one will purge voting rolls by comparing Ohio's databases to other state's databases in order to find supposed "errors" like deceased people, non-citizens, or those registered in other states. By doing this, those who have the first and last name and same date of birth of any errors they find nationwide within the system will have their vote rejected.

The second one is more simple to understand, but it's even more idiotic than the above one. It reduces the number of voting machines per county and it's apparently just an attempt to please counties who have sent in complaints of wasting money on unused machines. What this will do is bring us back to the 2004-like controversy where thousands of voters leave the lines in Northern Ohio because of lines that could last as long as 8 hours.

Come January, the Ohio General Assembly plans to go even farther and pass bills that cut early voting, end the "Golden Week" which will attack young voters from registering to vote and casting an early ballot around the same period of time, and giving solely the state legislature the power to allow the Secretary of Suppression to send out absentee ballots to certain areas which has "Screw Cuyahoga County over" written all over it. 1.3 million Ohioans voted by absentee last year so this will have a huge effect.

If Kasich signs these though, it will bring a good sign of things to come for Ed FitzGerald and possibly even State Sen. Nina Turner. Chris Matthews was just talking about this issue to and now that the Obamacare roll-out and Nelson Mandela's death are starting to lower it's significance in the news, it's now just talk of the congressional budget deal and the voting rights in NC and OH. These first two laws might not hurt Kasich's approval much at first, but after all of these are passed and said and done with, I think Kasich will be very vulnerable than people have seen him come election time.