Ocassional Thoughts of an Independent Progressive Atheistic Humanist
On Friday, 10/5, the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that if early voting in Ohio is open the last 3 days for the military then it must also be open for all voters and there was much rejoicing. Then Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted had to be a kill joy on Tuesday when he announced he would be appealing the ruling to the US Supreme Court.
One of the narratives of the GOP and right-wing this election season is that our country is being threatened by rampant voting fraud. Their need to “protect our country” and suppress votes for Democrats has led several states run by Republicans to restrict early voting, pass strict ID laws, and to purge voting rolls. It’s ironic then that a right-wing conservative front group would actually give instructions on how to commit voting fraud. They want people to commit a federal crime in order to make a point.
On Friday a tweet showed up in my twitter feed about a post on the Ohio Watchdog website:
There have been recent stories of voter registration purges in Texas and Florida. A story appearing in the pro-Kasich newspaper The Columbus Dispatch may suggest that an attempt will be made in Ohio to purge voter rolls. Anyone who cares about their Constitutional rights should be very wary to hear that Ohio wants to remove valid voter registrations from the rolls.
Now that the party conventions are over, the meat of the 2012 US Presidential campaign gets underway. Non-stop campaign stops in battle ground states and wall-to-wall advertisements on TV and radio. Except this week here in Ohio. Ads from the Romney campaign have been few and far between. Since the Democratic Convention ended I’ve seen one ad from a pro-Romney super pac and one Romney ad. Picking up where the GOP left off during their convention, the new Romney ad is less than truthful and contradicts Ohio’s Republican Governor John Kasich.
Text used in the new Romney ad titled “A Better Future: Ohio – Manufacturing”:
The blog Plunderbund is reporting that Ohio Secretary of State (SOS) Jon Husted is going to attend a tea party “voter protection” event with former Secretary of State and still RWNJ Ken Blackwell. Don’t remember Blackwell? He was responsible for voter suppression efforts while Secretary of State during the 2004 Ohio voting debacle. His work pissed off so many people that a state referendum was tried in 2005 to take voting oversight away from the SOS. I guess we know how Husted really feels about voting rights.