Bold Banana Republicans
by digby
I think this story from Ohio says it all, don't you?
I guess I really actually feel we shouldn’t contort the voting process to accommodate the urban — read African-American — voter-turnout machine,” said Doug Preisse, chairman of the county Republican Party and elections board member who voted against weekend hours, in an email to The Dispatch. “Let’s be fair and reasonable.”
He called claims of unfairness by Ohio Democratic Chairman Chris Redfern and others “bullshit. Quote me!”
Uhm, nobody's asking for special treatment. They're arguing for everyone to have more opportunity to vote. As Dan Froomkin reports,the Republicans disagree:
In Ohio's heavily Democratic cities -- Cleveland, Columbus, Akron and Toledo -- early voting will be limited to working hours on weekdays in 2012. But, as the Cincinnati Enquirer reported recently, attempts to add extended hours at the local election boards have been blocked by Republicans in urban counties, "even as extended hours will be available in some smaller counties with a strong Republican slant."
The reason, as Ari Berman explained in the Nation, is that county boards of election in Ohio have two members from each party. Ties are broken by the secretary of state.
In solidly Republican counties, GOP election commissioners have approved expanded early voting hours -- because why not? But in Democratic counties, they've balked. And Husted, the man who said he supports the law because it will bring uniformity to the state, has backed them up.
The Democrats should have been on this a long time ago and designed an organized campaign against it. The GOP manipulation of the Florida voting system should have been a wake up call. Instead, they were good little soldiers and "got over it" And now it's looking as if it will be a very tough climb to turn back all these restrictive laws.
I don't think there's another democracy in the world in which an election official would publicly make a statement about suppressing the vote of his political rivals. It's shocking.
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