This past week in Columbus, Gov. Kasich signed two bills that will restrict voting in the Buckeye State.
These bills have enabled Secretary of State Jon Husted, another Republican, to almost immediately curtail access to voting.
Husted knocked six days of early voting off the calendar.
He also cut two Saturdays and most importantly, ended Sunday voting.
Why did the Ohio Republicans do this?
They will tell you it is done to fight voting fraud.
I will tell you it is to keep Democrats from voting.
So who is really affected by this? The working person who finds it hard to vote Monday through Friday from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m.
The minority voters in urban areas are most likely to be affected.
Who do they vote for? The Democrats, overwhelmingly.
The elimination of Sunday voting is especially hurtful to the Democrats and democratic process.
The effect of what has been deemed “Souls to Polls” has been a boon for the Democrats.
Souls to Polls is the phenomenon of African-American parishioners going straight from church on Sunday to the Board of Elections to vote.
According to the Plain Dealer, in the 2008 presidential election, African-American voters represented 56 percent of weekend voters in Cuyahoga County, Ohio’s largest county, even though they made up just 28 percent of the county’s population.
This nationwide conservative drumbeat about voting fraud is an utter, complete smokescreen.
It is a problem that does not exist. Only 270 cases of voter fraud were reported in Ohio during the last Presidential election, according to the Cleveland Plain Dealer.
There were 5.6 million ballots cast in our state during that election. Of those 270 cases, none were prosecuted. You do the math — there is no voting fraud problem here.
Likewise, there is no problem in other states. It is a fairy tale, pure and simple.
The party that wears patriotism and liberty like a badge of honor really does not believe in those traits. A true patriot would not be constantly working to deny voting rights to their fellow Americans.
Whether it is what happened here in Ohio or the despicable voter roll scrubbing in Florida, Republicans all across America are working to keep people from voting.
How is that American?
How is this any different from a totalitarian regime that rigs its elections? The answer is that it is not.
Republicans now realize that electing one of their candidates to the White House is an uphill battle and they are working overtime to fix the rules to their advantage.
This is brazen, unethical and un-American.
No matter how much Red, White and Blue they don, how many “Don’t Tread On Me” stickers they display, and how much they claim to be the guardians of our Constitutions, Republicans just cannot seem to look in the mirror and see that their actions are the opposite of patriotic.
We have all played games with that one whining, insufferable person who will fix things so they will win.
Unfortunately, Ohio Republicans resorted to this behavior last week.
True Americans, those who believe in our system and our ideals, should be furious.
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