Skip to content Skip to footer
|

Ohio’s Republican Secretary of State Calls for Repeal of Controversial Republican Election Reform Bill

Ohio's Republican Sec. of State John Husted has called on fellow Republicans in the legislature to repeal their controversial Election Reform bill, rather than see it face a voter referendum currently slated for this November's ballot.

Ohio's Republican Sec. of State John Husted has called on fellow Republicans in the legislature to repeal their controversial Election Reform bill, rather than see it face a voter referendum currently slated for this November's ballot.

The law, if it is not rejected by voters, will severely shorten the time for Early Voting and will ban it all together on the Sunday before Election Day in the Buckeye State, in a way that is geared towards suppressing Democratic votes. The bill also includes other major barriers to voting such as a prohibition on county Boards of Election mailing absentee ballot request forms to voters and a ban on poll workers instructing voters where their correct precinct is located. Opponents of the law have noted that some 200,000 voters in Columbus alone —- or 4 in 10 votes cast there in 2008 —- would have had to cast their vote in a different manner in 2012 has the law been allowed to take effect this year as planned.

Husted, the state's chief election official, elected in 2010, had worked with GOP legislators in crafting the bill which was passed and signed by Republican Gov. John Kasich last year, before being met with a wildly successful petition campaign in support of a “voter veto” of the bill. That campaign, led by progressive groups such as Fair Elections Ohio, garnered more than 300,000 signatures, or more than 75,000 above the total required to put the bill on hold and place it on the ballot for a popular vote. The result is that, last December, the bill was officially suspended for 2012, when Republicans had hoped it might help suppress Democratic-leaning voters in the swing-state's Presidential election. Instead, the law is now set to be on the November 2012 ballot for voter approval or rejection.

The Sec. of State called on fellow Republicans to overturn the bill in the legislature, scrap it, and revisit the issue after the 2012 election, rather than allowing it to remain on the ballot in November. Those remarks have raised the hackles of some powerful GOP lawmakers in Ohio.

Truthout doesn't take corporate funding – this lets us do the brave reporting and analysis that makes us unique. Please support this work by making a tax-deductible donation today – click here to donate.

Husted is developing a record for standing against some of the most radical elements of his own party's agenda in some cases, as seen, for example, in his outspoken condemnation of an attempt to institute polling place Photo ID restrictions on voters in the same bill last year, as well as a bi-partisan effort in 2007, with the previous Democratic Sec. of State, to do away with 100% unverifiable touch-screen voting systems in the Buckeye State…

In remarks reported by Jo Ingles of WKSU on Thursday, Republican Senate President Tom Niehaus blasted Husted for his recent comments on the sweeping Election Reform bill, charging he hadn't consulted with lawmakers before offering his opinions to the Ohio Association of Election Official about scrapping it entirely.

“When people put a headline in front of good public policy, yes, that bothers me,” Niehaus said.

In his own defense, Husted, who had worked closely with lawmakers in crafting the bill, suggested the referendum was likely to cause confusion for voters this year, according to AP.

On WKSU, he responded to Niehaus' criticism: “All I was trying to do is to make the point that if it’s not going to become law before November and we were going to look at other ideas, wouldn’t it make sense for everybody to just repeal the bill so we didn’t have the controversy and hit the reset button and come together to work on these issues so that we have less controversy around our election law in this state.”

It's not the first time Husted has come out publicly against his own party. As The BRAD BLOG noted last Summer, before the bill was passed by the State Assembly, he spoke out forcefully against an additional voter suppression measure that Republicans were attempting to add the bill which would likely have disenfranchised thousands of Ohio voters.

Said Husted in a powerful statement posted to the official Ohio Sec. of State's website at the time:

“I want to be perfectly clear, when I began working with the General Assembly to improve Ohio’s elections system it was never my intent to reject valid votes. I would rather have no bill than one with a rigid photo identification provision that does little to protect against fraud and excludes legally registered voters' ballots from counting.”

The crystal clear remark strikes directly at the heart of wholly-unsubstantiated GOP claims in state after state that such polling place restrictions are necessarily in order to combat “voter fraud” by polling place impersonation. Husted's assertion —- that such measures fail to protect against fraud, while keeping legal voters from being able to cast their otherwise legal vote —- is backed up by every independent study ever published, and even by evidence proffered by Republicans themselves.

In 2007, when Husted served as Ohio's Republican House Speaker, he joined with then Democratic Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner, in calling for a ban on 100% unverifiable touch-screen voting systems in the state. The call came after a bi-partisan, independent study carried out by Brunner, had found, as she stated at the time during a press conference Husted participated in, that “Ohio's electronic voting systems have 'critical security failures' which could impact the integrity of elections in the Buckeye State.”

Despite the findings which led to some Ohio counties moving to paper ballot systems, most Republican election officials in the state fought hard to keep unverifiable electronic voting systems in place, and so they are slated, once again, to be used in the majority of the state's 88 counties during the 2012 Presidential election. There is no way to know if even a single vote cast on such systems has even been recorded accurately as per any voter's intent.

We’re not backing down in the face of Trump’s threats.

As Donald Trump is inaugurated a second time, independent media organizations are faced with urgent mandates: Tell the truth more loudly than ever before. Do that work even as our standard modes of distribution (such as social media platforms) are being manipulated and curtailed by forces of fascist repression and ruthless capitalism. Do that work even as journalism and journalists face targeted attacks, including from the government itself. And do that work in community, never forgetting that we’re not shouting into a faceless void – we’re reaching out to real people amid a life-threatening political climate.

Our task is formidable, and it requires us to ground ourselves in our principles, remind ourselves of our utility, dig in and commit.

As a dizzying number of corporate news organizations – either through need or greed – rush to implement new ways to further monetize their content, and others acquiesce to Trump’s wishes, now is a time for movement media-makers to double down on community-first models.

At Truthout, we are reaffirming our commitments on this front: We won’t run ads or have a paywall because we believe that everyone should have access to information, and that access should exist without barriers and free of distractions from craven corporate interests. We recognize the implications for democracy when information-seekers click a link only to find the article trapped behind a paywall or buried on a page with dozens of invasive ads. The laws of capitalism dictate an unending increase in monetization, and much of the media simply follows those laws. Truthout and many of our peers are dedicating ourselves to following other paths – a commitment which feels vital in a moment when corporations are evermore overtly embedded in government.

Over 80 percent of Truthout‘s funding comes from small individual donations from our community of readers, and the remaining 20 percent comes from a handful of social justice-oriented foundations. Over a third of our total budget is supported by recurring monthly donors, many of whom give because they want to help us keep Truthout barrier-free for everyone.

You can help by giving today. Whether you can make a small monthly donation or a larger gift, Truthout only works with your support.