This action by the Obama administration was commendable.
Of course, the administration is not the Obama campaign, and I do not know that this action by the campaign in Ohio was especially wise, given the issues I discussed above.
From my good friends at ThinkProgress (links to sources embedded at site, so if they’re lying, you have every opportunity to prove it.)
And furthermore:
Restricting the voting rights of military voters has fuck all to do with anything, here. It is an effort to keep the early voting privileges that Ohio voters have enjoyed in place. Is it a coincidence that the sorts of voters who most depend on early voting (outside of the military, that is) are the sorts of voters that Republicans would prefer not to see going to vote?
One of us is misunderstanding the basis of the lawsuit: you say it is about overseas voters having sufficient time to mail in absentee ballots; I understand this to be about an Ohio law that gives members of the military more time for in-person early voting than it gives to civilians. As I read the lawsuit, the proposed relief is:
Maybe I’m missing something, but I can’t find that there’s anything in the lawsuit at all about mailed-in ballots.
Maybe not lying, but they are wrong.
So if some voters in Ohio could vote early right to Election Day, some could not. Now everybody has to get their votes in by Friday before the election, except for overseas votes which can come in anytime before Election Day.
Are states permitted to allow overseas and military voters extra time to vote? They certainly have been encouraged to do so in the past, right?
Did you notice this part?
You are aware, I trust, of the minor furor over state’s rescinding “Sunday voting” privileges? And the reaction of the Black Congressional Caucus?
And notice that Husted’s approach to fairness and equality between the counties is to be implemented by restricting voting, not by extending the maximum privilege to all, but by establishing the minimum to all. All of this taking place against a backdrop of Republican efforts all across the nation to make it more difficult for unreliable voters to cast ballots.
A coincidence, do you think?
Thank you for that comment.
I’m not following this – the lawsuit seems to pertain to in-person absentee voting. Talking about overseas voters and extra time needed to vote seems to be a different issue than making a distinction for in-person voting.
Ohio’s secretary of state basically said it was unfair that voters in some counties got more time to vote than people in other counties. That makes sense to me, it isn’t fair. But the remedy to that situation, normalizing early voting times across the state, then resulted in military voters having three more days to cast in-person absentee ballots than civilians do.
You seem to be defending giving military personnel more time to cast in-person absentee ballots; why shouldn’t civilians be afforded the same extra three days? That’s what I understand the lawsuit to be about.
That is precisely the thing, in a nutshell. The suit is aimed at extending such privileges to all Ohio voters. The Republicans want to pretend its about restricting military voting, but, as the quote from Romney’s legal counsel above shows, they have no basis for their accusation.
I think if Ohio wanted to extend early voting in those three days, that would be fine. If it didn’t want to do so, that would be fine too. States have the responsibility to establish and maintain these voting systems - they can do things as they see fit.
The fact that certain members of the electorate with federal jobs have the right to vote in person or by mail right up to Election Day - that is a federal law binding on the states. It cannot mean that the federal government can mandate early voting for all - they can only do so for federal employees. That is their jurisdiction.
It is in no way an equal protection issue, IMHO. In fact these extensions for military and other overseas voters were put into place because of special difficulties with this voting. These have been alleviated in recent years to a degree, in part because of the laws I mentioned above and the expectations placed on states by them.
If the Obama campaign wants to lobby or sue for those additional days of early voting, they are free to do so. I think they would be better served by not mentioning military ballots in their argument. That is a separate issue.
Please, please tell me what “special difficulties” exist with respect to in-person early voting. We aren’t talking about ballots mailed in from a war zone here.
But it is the state of Ohio that made military early voting the issue, by passing a law which said that civilians are not entitled to the same number of days of in-person early voting as military or foreign service personnel are. I simply don’t see the logic of having three days of early, in-person voting that are ONLY for certain Federal employees, to the exclusion of anyone else.
ETA: Would it be okay for Ohio to have the polls open on election day from 10am-5pm for civilians, but 6am-9pm for military personnel?
I think the issue that has folks so irritated (myself included), is that the Ohio policy USED TO BE to allow all residents to vote up to three days ahead of time, but the Republican legislature pushed through a change this year to allow ONLY active-duty military. Here’s the relevant part from TP.com
"Since 2005, Ohio has had in person early-voting in the three days prior to the election. This year, however, the Republican legislature in Ohio eliminated early voting during this period, except for members of the military. The Obama lawsuit is attempting to restore voting rights for all Ohioans, not restrict them for the military or any other group. "
If this is all true, then it’s bullshit on two counts.
- That the Republicans are trying to legislate more votes for themselves.
- That Romney’s campaign (and fox, etc.) are completely twisting the facts of this story, beyond their usual twisting, to make it sound like Obama is against the military.
- Hi Opal
Mark
Yeah, plus the fact that we as citizens are expected to spout mindless pablum about foreign policy ‘the military is in [insert country X] because of freedom’. You can’t have a functioning democracy when the political class make foreign policy decisions based on ideology, natural resources, alliance building/destruction, long term planning, etc but the public are supposed to mindlessly spout platitudes like ‘freedom’ whenever we invade some country, irrelevant of the country or why we invaded.
I wonder sometimes if one of the reasons Napoleon sold us the Louisiana Purchase because he realized if he didn’t we’d just take it anyway.
Nah, Josephine needed some new jewelry.
“Russian caviar? Russian? Why does it have to be Russian, its fish eggs!.. Do you know how big Russia is? All right, all right, Russia! Jesus…I’m gonna regret this…”
If I may elaborate a bit on this reference: R. Lee Ermey’s drill seargent character’s admonishment to a poor young boot camp recruit, in Full Metal Jacket: “I bet you’re the kind of guy that would fuck a person in the ass and not even have the goddamn common courtesy to give him a reach-around. I’ll be watching you.” 
I think I misconstrued my son-in-law’s motives and made them into something offensive. To his credit, my SIL has chosen a life of public service. After high school, he trained as an EMT with the county’s ambulance service. However, he wants a career that is fueled by adrenaline. When he realized that the bulk of an EMT’s life is working rather mundane calls, and even the exciting ones like bad car wrecks are not particularly risky for the EMT, he looked for something else. He found his kill-or-be-killed thrill in the infantry in the US Army. He served a tour in Afghanistan for about a year. Realizing that this was not a long term career, he has changed his MOS to Military Police. After his service, he hopes to get a job with a large, urban police department. He hopes that will fulfill his adrenaline fix. I worry that his search for a thrill will get him killed. I also worry that he will realize that even a big city cop’s life is mostly paperwork and mundane calls. Still, I appreciate and honor his desire to serve his country and community.
Yeah, only now he’s the father of my grandson. It’s time to think a bit more like a family man, in my opinion.