Accidental candor in Ohio
By Steve Benen
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Mon Aug 20, 2012 9:22 AM EDT
 Pryce for Congress/Flickr
As a rule, Republicans engaged in voter suppression remember their talking points. Sure, they're imposing the most sweeping voting restrictions since Jim Crow, but it's not about rigging the elections to help the GOP -- heaven forbid -- it's about protecting the integrity of the process.
Any serious look at the underlying policy -- using voter-ID laws to combat imaginary fraud, for example -- exposes the arguments as a sham, but at least Republicans appreciate the value of lying well, knowing that systematic disenfranchisement of minorities might be frowned upon.
Once in a while, though, conservatives slip. In Pennsylvania, the state House Majority Leader, confessed in June that the Republican voter-ID law would "allow Governor Romney to win the state of Pennsylvania."
And in Ohio, where early voting opportunities have been expanded in Republican counties and limited in Democratic counties, we're seeing some additional accidental candor.
[Ohio's Republican Secretary of State, Jon Husted] said he based his decision to bar weekend hours after consulting with local elections officials, many of whom were concerned about cost. But Aaron Ockerman, executive director of the Ohio Association of Election Officials, told The Dispatch that "we would make that work" if directed to stay open until, say, noon the Saturday before the election.
Of course, such decisions are at least as much about politics as policy. [...]
"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."
Got that? If black people are allowed to vote the weekend before the election, it would be an undue "accommodation."
Accidental candor is a remarkable thing, isn't it?
Preisse, incidentally, isn't some random player -- he's an elections board member who's also a " close political adviser" to Ohio Gov. John Kasich (R). |
