Tuesday, December 9, 2008

Ohio Republicans Seek To End Early Voting

After losing an appeal to Democrats in the the Ohio Supreme Court back in September, Ohio Republicans will try once again try to block one-stop voting in future elections, this time by changing the law. The AP recently reported that Republican lawmakers in Ohio are doing all they can to quickly pass legislation that would end early voting procedures as we know them. Time is of the essence however as Republicans have only one month left of their majority stake in both the state's upper and lower legislative chambers.

While Republican officials were scrambling in Columbus last week, Ohio Secretary of State, Jenniffer Brunner, was focused on hosting an election summit where a few hundred election officials from around the country provided input as to how Ohio can improve in the future.  From the Cleveland Plain Dealer:
There was important conversation about provisional voting, registration problems, data bases, poll-worker training, early voting and the merits of touch-screen vs. optical-scan balloting. Not everyone agreed on everything, but one line of consensus did emerge:
Election practices are complex and interrelated, so beware of quick fixes. They tend to cause unexpected problems down the road.
This is the otherwise known as "unable to win by the rules, so let's change the rules" tactic in politics.  There's just one problem however...

Democratic Governor, Ted Strickland, is likely to veto the bill if passed.  Whewww.

Barack Obama won Ohio's 20 electoral votes this year, beating John McCain by more than 200,000 votes (+4%).

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