Daran Carlin Weber of Mahoning County, Ohio, got the flyer above from the county Board of Elections in the mail yesterday. It tells Ohio voters that in-person, early voting goes through November 2, and that "Hours vary by county." November 2 is the Friday before Election Day, or three days sooner than allowed by a federal court in a ruling last week.
You can find the same information on the state elections site. Ohio's top elections official, Secretary of State Jon Husted, is appealing the ruling to the U.S. Supreme Court. Lately a champion of uniformity, Husted previously allowed fewer days for voting in Democratic counties than in Republican ones. He then decided to impose a shortened window for early voting on all counties.
With the court ruling that counties can offer voting on the last weekend -- days that proved popular last time with African-American voters -- some counties are again trying to offer them. The hitch is that the boards of elections include two Democrats and two Republicans. Especially in Democratic counties, Republicans have tended to vote against expanding voting, leaving the board deadlocked. Secretary of State Husted gets to break the tie.
This time around, the challenge to Husted is playing out differently. Lucas County, which went for Barack Obama last time, deadlocked on early voting this week. Lefty Ohio blog Plunderbund reports that Licking County, which went for Obama, decided to allow more voting. One place that went for John McCain, Delaware County, is now deadlocked. Another McCain county, Butler, voted for more days in a meeting that sounds like kind of a mess, with Republicans walking out and Democrats insisting there was a quorum.
Ohio, if you're confused about when you get to vote, it's understandable.
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Jon Husted is no friend to democracy! The mess in Ohio rests squarely on his shoulders, and any recriminations yet to be brought to bear are his also!
Jon Husted is not a noble human being! He is a miserable excuse of an elected official who has nary a desire to carry out in good faith the duties of his Office. It has become plainly obvious Jon Husted has worked to Gerry-rig the Ohio election results, and that same Jon Husted should be run out of the state on a rail for tainting the good name of the great State of Ohio with his partisan efforts to corrupt our mechanisms of the vote!
May Jon Husted and all who would dare destroy democracy to save it rest in a place where there is no peace for the fraudulent, for fraud is a perfect descriptor when weighing and measuring Mr. Husted's commitment to the impartiality his elected office rests upon! -Kevo
And, of course, it is setting up all sorts of lawsuits and things, and if the vote in Ohio is even remotely close, recounts (recalling, of course Gore v Bush, with a very much right-leaning supreme court once again making the decision)
*shudder*
Two toed Sloths playing three card Monte with voting rights in order to take control of the country? Meanwhile the mouse wants to know who stole his cheese.
Gee, anyone else getting the feeling that the GOTP don't like democracy, and are being spoiled sports because they're not allowed to stop it for the people (democrats) that they don't like?
It's time we took our country back the right says.
I am a little confused, take it back from We the people AKA the voting public? Take it back to the 16th century? Both?
Husted is determined to go down fighting. And that may come to pass when Ohio has the next state elections. I think voters are going to make big changes in many state governments. But Republicans don't plan long term because they never consider the possibility they will be unemployed.
When it comes to voting for a national candidate there should be nationally consistent voting periods. How is that so damn hard? Presidential election day should be a National Holiday.
Shouldn't the Federal Court who issued the early voting order reinstatement be bitch slapping Husted from here to kingdom come?
A fisherman's bend is very handy type of knot that has the wonderful property of being easily untied, even after being brought tight by near breaking load.
It easily made in the field by draping an ample length looped over the back of your right hand holding the two strands in your left hand. Then grasping those strand with the right hand, with the left hand move the loop so that you pull the double strand. Despite the complicated sounding move, this simple process creates a standard full-hitch. You then thrust your right hand through the full-hitch opening, take up some slack.
Then repeat the same move grasping the double strand held by the left hand pull it through the full-hitch you just made. This is the knot you slip around a trailer hitch, a post, or a load of some sort. It takes only a few practice knots to get the idea, and few more to get it down by heart, and few more to adapt it to multiple situations. The double move is smooth, exact and repeats the full-hitch double to make the fisherman's bend, making secure knot, designed to hold fast, but be removable. It also allows you own a rope for 35 years and never cutting it.
The speed of tying the knot is important when climbing the tree or some awkward location and fastening the knot rapidly for the umpteenth time on a heavy branch and above it with a slip knot, that allow a cut between the knots, to 'hinge' the cut's fall, and allowing a controlled drop. The kind of thing that you'd do if you were the fool cutting a tree down from the top, to avoid buildings or property you did not want to damage. (There is complication when not being able to loop oven an end, as takes bit of patience to thread the knot manually.)
This is not the kind of knot suitable for public officials, who are lawyers, but only because getting so many necks in the noose at once creates too many oral arguments. Thought the public needs this option once in a while to greet politicians who are too smart for their britches, or slipperier that a snake slinking away under a rock, but it could be used to move the rock.
If were not for the lawyerly conduct of gentlemen judges and a baffled public nearing of outrage, we might defer to the court of courts and the applications of appeal. But key here is the time-wise and timely flow of information to the public. There would be little to gain by the tempting the possibility that the judge would rule on his own election, since there is no such a thing possible. It is therefore possible to predict that the neck exercise for Jon Husted, might put the public's indignation to the test to see if anger can be easily forgive.
Forgive me for I know knot what I mean, but lead us knot into further temptation.
Husted should be charged with treason. In the meantime, for all Ohio residents, just help get your neighbors to county election offices now, and not wait until Nov 6.
Husted is UnAmerican, Unpatriotic, and is in the process of 'treason' against the free people living in a Democracy. Husted needs to be subpeoned by the US Department of Justice for violation of the Voters Richts Act Of 1965. Husted is a 'Closet Communist" who does not believe that all free people living in a free society have the right to vote. Husted has violated an individuals GOD given right to vote. This reinforces that Husted is a card carrying member of the Communist Party. Husted is has no respect for himself, no respect for his fellow citizens, and no respect for the GOD given right to vote. This very 'treasonous' GOP/Tea Begger has to go!
Presidential elections should have consistent times for voting in every single state. The Presidential ballot should be worded and formatted exactly the same in every single state. Voting should all be done on paper, not with machines that can be programmed to be hinky. These are national, federal elections for the most important and powerful position in the United States.
Also, the electoral college has long outlived it's utility. It needs to go.
When are the democrats going to prioritize voting out GOP Secretaries of State? Strong candidates need to be identified and well financed by the DNC to put an end to this chicanery. The republicans that hold the office in swing states must be targeted for defeat when they come up for election. Yet the focus appears to be on who goes to Washington. Democracy needs to be protected, the GOP henchmen in charge of the state voting apparatus must be voted out. Winning that office must become a democratic priority. Immediately.
I want to know: If Mitt Romney were elected President of the US because of massive voter suppression, 1) How would he feel at being an illegitimately elected president? (2) would that impede his ability to govern within the US Congress since he would be viewed by many as unfairly and unjustly holding office? (3) Would that impede his ability to deal with foreign powers? The hallmark of dictators and tyrants is the suppression of the opposition. If the shoe fits.....
1. Mitt Romney doesn't give a tinker's dam how he gets into office - just that he gets there. You already know he is totally without conviction on any subject and would sell even Anne down the road if he felt she was a hindrance to his campaign. He has already been willing to use his own sons as an example of repeated lying to try to project his own behavior on the President. Mitt Romney has no sense of decency, fairness, honor, truth, moral values or propriety to offer the American public.
2. It wouldn't impede his ability to govern since he has no ability to govern even his own behavior. If he had to face the same political facility that President Obama has had to try to function with (only with a Democratic majority) one would hope the Democrats would be venal enough to give the Republicans the same rope they tried to hang our President with. Sadly, most Democrats wouldn't do that as they would be trying to work for the American people, not just their political party.
3. Mitt Romney has abundantly proven to the world that he has no ability to deal with foreign powers. He even made it a point to insult the English Olympics in an effort to make himself sound better.
He is a mountebank, period. He is a huckster and a quick sell artist offering empty rhetoric as some form of promise. He can only win the election by suppression of the vote, the stupidity of the electorate and the vast amounts of money spent to buy the votes of the greedy and profane.
For God's sake, wake up America. Remember what his own opponents in the primaries said. Remember what you have seen and heard of his lies and assininities. Remember what he has done to innumerable companies he took over at Bain. Remember his investment in the Chinese company that had workers living in a compound, sleeping 12 to a room, earning pennies a day for their work!!! Remember his disregard for the "47%" of the American who pay "no taxes" not because like Mitt Romney they can stash their money in foreign countries and play the capital gains tax rate, but because they are too poor to even pay income taxes. You were given a brain to use - for the sake of your country, for the sake of your parents and children, use the wisdom you have been given to vote.
A quick correction: In 2008, Licking County - the county directly south of me - was won by McCain. It's not a wild prediction to suggest that it will also be won by Romney this year.