Earlier this year, Ohio Gov. John Kasich (R) signed a sweeping bill intended to make it harder to vote in his states’ elections. Kasich’s anti-voter law drastically cuts back on early voting and erects new barriers for absentee and even for election day voters. Today, however, opponents of Kasich’s war on voting will submit over 300,000 signatures to the Secretary of State’s office — well over the 231,000 signatures necessary to suspend the law until it can be challenged in a referendum in November of 2012. If enough of the signatures are deemed valid, the practical effect of this petition will be that Kasich’s law will not be in effect during the 2012 presidential elections when Republicans hoped the law would weaken President Obama’s efforts to turn out early voters who support his reelection.
Note the caveat: if enough of the signatures are deemed valid. The general rule is one would want to submit twice as many signatures as required, and we didn’t make that number. 318,000 is better than I expected, however, because, in my opinion, conservatives and media have succeeded beyond my worst nightmares in convincing people that the fundamental and constitutionally guaranteed right to vote is exactly the same as cashing a check, using an ATM, or purchasing a bus, train or airline ticket. I’m sure I missed one or two comparisons there, although I believe I’ve heard every one. Like everything else under the sun, the franchise is now akin to a commercial transaction.
That’s remarkable, considering the absolutely epic struggles we’ve had in this country to extend voting rights to minorities and women, up to and including amending the Constitution, but, working in concert, conservatives and media managed to pull that redefinition off.
Votes for women were first seriously proposed in the United States in July, 1848, at the Seneca Falls Woman’s Rights Convention organized by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott. One woman who attended that convention was Charlotte Woodward. She was nineteen at the time. In 1920, when women finally won the vote throughout the nation, Charlotte Woodward was the only participant in the 1848 Convention who was still alive to be able to vote, though she was apparently too ill to actually cast a ballot.
That’s a lot like the epic struggle to cash a check, isn’t it? Sure it is.
Supporters of President Obama in Ohio, a key battleground state, have scored what is seen as a significant victory for maximizing Democratic voter turnout ahead of the 2012 presidential election. Obama campaign volunteers and a coalition of Democratic-aligned advocacy organizations gathered more than 318,000 signatures to effectively block new Republican-sponsored voting restrictions from taking effect through the next year, the groups announced today. “It’s a victory for organizing,” said Brian Rothenberg, who led the fight against the new rules.
It is a victory for organizing, and it’s a (preliminary) victory for my local OFA organizer, who is brand new at this, very young, and local: she grew up in one of the most conservative counties in Ohio. She had to call me four times to track me down to find a place our paths might cross where I could give her my (one) petition.
geg6
If I believed in angels, kay, you and all of the Dem activists in OH would be what they’d look like in my mental picture of them.
Baud
Thanks for actually doing something positive instead of engaging in fruitless internecine warfare on the Internet. You are a better person than I am.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
heck, we’ve got people two posts over, on this site, that believe this.
Kristine
Thank you for keeping us updated on the Good Fight, Ohio edition. Your posts are fresh air.
Ash Can
Congratulations, and good luck in the referendum. If the law ends up being repealed, we all benefit.
Cat Lady
Yay Kay, and the boots on the ground. It’s so much easier to whine about what you’re not getting, than work for what you want. Many blessings.
Linda Featheringill
Congratulations. And good luck.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
Like you, I am cautiously optimistic. The conservative reframing of the issue of a fundamental right into a the equivalent of a commercial transaction is horrifying. Thank you for all that you do for us in Ohio. I thought I lived in a conservative county (I do) until I started working one county north and I was shocked that there is no nonconservative presence.
Mino
Great job. I suspect the Republicans are gonna get their heads handed to them in the upper midwest next year, gerrymander be damned. They’ve woken up the silent Americans.
cat48
This is exciting news to know volunteers are working hard.
gene108
What’s ironic is buying a gun is a commercial transaction, like cashing a check, but the same proponents that want as much ID as possible to vote, wish purchasing guns would be as hassle free as buying a ball-point pen (also a lethal weapon in the right hands…just watch some action movies).
Palli
We are all weary after the hardwork of the SB5 petition drive and a broadly based Wisconsin-style democratic community spirit in Ohio is slow to grow.
One reason is that the media- especially the conservative newspapers Cleveland Plain Dealer and the Columbus Dispatch- deliberately strangle any sustained level of activist consciousness in the general public. In Ohio, we had virtually no media attention to the features of HR194 that were blatantly repulsive to commonsense and nothing more than legalized state voter suppression.
For example: the law actually states that poll workers on the day of an election are no longer required to tell any voter the location of their proper precinct voting table-or if they are in the wrong polling place-where the right one is!
Now you can say, dedicated poll workers and Board of Election staffs will probably still feel it is a service they will provide, but the law says they don’t have to give that information to a citizen. Add that clear voter suppression message from Republicans lawmakers to these facts: 1.) ballots cast in the wrong district are not counted and 2.) the partisan gerrymandering of Ohio’s redistricting will confuse and disorient thousands of voters.
A second example: A higher minimum number of voters per precinct is mandated for only urban districts, thus closing many polling places in neighborhoods and guaranteeing longer lines at the poll
Another example: the law shortens early voting periods have been but then reduces evening hours too.
Woodrow L. Goode, IV
One of the things that Kay doesn’t mention is how difficult it is to get anything done with a complete news blackout.
If you search archives of The (Cleveland) Plain Dealer you won’t find a single story on the signature campaign dated before 9/28. There was an op-ed on 9/7, but that was in response to an editorial insisting that there was no need to fix HB 194.
You won’t find much more in the Columbus Dispatch and The (Toledo) Blade isn’t that much better. Nor is The (Youngstown) Vindicator a beacon of help.
It’s one thing to get no help from newspapers that serve heavily wingnut areas– the Cincinnati Enquirer can at least argue that they’re representing the interests and concerns of their readers.
But if you read The Pee Dee and had no knowledge of where in the U.S. Cleveland was located, you would imagine it to be in Mississippi or Utah. The area is 2/3 blue, but the only time a labor rally is covered is when there are arrests and the only coverage of Democratic politicians is about corruption.
The Dispatch is arguably the worst newspaper located in a state capitol. Not many of those papers do great journalism, but they usually offer seamless coverage of everything the governor and the legislatures are up to.
The Disgrace frequently omits stories that even the other papers in the state feel compelled to print. If you had read it during the Taft Administration, you would not have been aware that the Governor was having that many problems, except when they ran his denials when a new scandal broke.
It’s pretty sad when you have to go to the free newsweeklies and what’s left of the Akron Beacon-Journal to get any coverage.
singfoom
Congratulations. That is a great victory for organizing. Keep up the good work!
rikryah
I think it’s a good thing too, Kay. thanks for keeping us notified on the Ohio happenings
jayackroyd
How and who is certifying the signatures? SecState’s bio looks pretty republican….
kay
@Woodrow L. Goode, IV:
That’s a good analysis of bias. Fact-based, and all.
I complain about “media” constantly (incessantly, even) but I don’t hate newspapers. I love newspapers. I buy three, every day, local, “state” and national.
All I’m asking is that they pause for a moment when presented with a conservative argument and examine the premise, rather than repeating the argument, and playing it off the liberal argument. If it means they have to go all the way back and actually cite the Constitution, they should do that. What is voting? Is voting really just like (licensed) driving? Where did that come from? What does it mean?
Or, they could go a different way. I read an absolutely excellent piece in a SC newspaper where the reporter printed the governor’s conclusory proclamation that no one would be disenfranchised by her new law, and then went and found some actual people who would be disenfranchised by the governor’s new law. Then the reporter searched state data to find a whole bunch of other people who were just like those people she interviewed.
That’s what I want. I’ll pay for that.
Too, I think we should mention that a newspaper, The Toledo Blade, exposed the last GOP corruption scandal, and essentially took down every state-level GOP officeholder.
kay
@jayackroyd:
He is a Republican. Lotta lawyers. There will be a lot of lawyers :)
JCT
The folks in Ohio are as impressive as all hell. Given the endless drumbeat of gloom of late, these posts are really uplifting, Kay.
Yutsano
@kay:
Shorter Kay: don’t mind me if I disappear for awhile. I’m busy.
(not really shorter. but you get my point. :)
MTiffany
Aided and abetted, I might add, by every “New Democrat” and “Third Way” coward (Yes, I’m talking about Bill Clinton and his ilk) who dutifully regurgitated the Republican suggestion that “government should be run more like business.”
That’s the pernicious idea right there, that’s the root of the weed that needs to be pulled. Government is not a business and anyone that says it should be run like one needs several swift kicks in the ass.
Exurban Mom
The Toledo Blade really did a bang-up job on the Republican corruption scandal.
The PD is more interested in keeping suburban white subscribers happy than it is in serving real Clevelanders.
The Akron Beacon-Journal is a mere shadow of its former self. There is hardly any news in that newspaper. I get better coverage from my crappy hometown paper than the Beacon Journal, which is really sad given its Pulitzer-winning history.
I’m a little ticked at the Obama campaign for not getting involved EARLIER in this battle. They only stepped in at the 11th hour. I pray that the number of signatures is sufficient. Kay totally rocks, thanks for the updates.
kay
@Yutsano:
Oh, God, not me. I’m a county court gal. I’m not in the big leagues. I do “election protection” which involves a lawn chair. I only do that because I’m surrounded by conservative lawyers, and the “other” Democratic lawyer is on the Bd of Elections. We have two, and he’s ineligible.
“Pick me!”
It’s not like it’s wildly competitive :)
PWL
Part of the problem, I think, is that Americans take their democracy for granted, and don’t place much value on it.
They don’t know their history, and what a fight it took to get some of those things they accept as a matter of course, and they have no understanding of what life would be like if they lost those things. They may have to learn the hard way.
Woodrow L. Goode, IV
@kay: Kay, there are five types of stories that a good newspaper files every day:
1. Who is this new hire, what is he being paid to do and is he qualified to do what he’s doing?
2. Elected Official X claims Y— is it true?
3. City A had problem B— Do other cities have this problem and if so, how do they deal with it?
4. M years/months ago, Project N was chartered to do O and they promised P. Have they kept their promises or met their goals?
5. This disaster just happened to stats G or City H. What would we do if it happened here?
Editors hate assigning them because they get people in power angry, and they’re not the kind of “original” idea that impresses Pulitzer juries. Reporters hate them because they require work, don’t let them get ‘creative’ and often the piece doesn’t produce blockbuster stories.
But type #1 is exactly how James Drew of The Blade got Tom Noe. Noe was named to chair the NEO re-election efforts of Emperor W. the Godly, The Blade noticed he was also on a couple of state boards and decided to profile him. When Drew caught wind of something, they put investigative reporter Mike Wilkinson and they had a story that made them Pulitzer finalists.
I do not feel that The Blade does great day-to-day journalism (although I don’t live there and am not up on everything that goers on). But, hey, if you give them a scoop that smells tasty, they go after it. as hard as anyone in the country. They’re award whores, but the good kind.
The Pee Dee and the Disgrace want awards, but they don’t want to run stories that upset people. After the Upper Big Branch mine catastrophe, one of the senior editors of the PD I told one of the editors that Ohio has a huge number of mines and suggested it might be a good idea to check their safety records. “We don’t have the time and money to do that sort of stuff,” he replied. “If something happens, we’ll cover it.”
Which is why there was no story on the HB194 petition drive until after they finish successfully.
The Pee Dee might be the worst newspaper in America. Not only has it never won a Pulitzer Prize for reporting (they’ve won one for editorial cartoons and one for commentary), but they’re driven away about five people who have (including Walt Bogdanich, who won two).
I believe Connie Schultz (who resigned because she was sick of being criticized for writing about issues that her husband might vote on) is only the third columnist winner to leave a paper that wasn’t folding (Mike Royko quit the Chicago Sun-Times when Rupert Muirdoch bought the paper and Liz Balmaseda quit the Miami Herald).
And not only did it get the Sam Sheppard case wrong the first two times, it wouldn’t even cover the story properly when the killer was finally identified.
pete
Thanks for the work, and the updates. Sounds like you have a reasonable chance!
WereBear
Precisely! Though the way corporations have fallen back on “we’ll just make them buy things!” these days, THEY aren’t being “run like a business” either.
piratedan
@PWL: well I very much doubt that Paul Revere would agree with you after all the trouble he took to warn the British and everything…..
Samara Morgan
Bravo, bravura Kay.
Thank you for your service.
JR
I’m pessimistic about those numbers. Ohio is notorious in election law circles for invalidating petitions. It’s very possible that enough of the ones collected will be found deficient in some respect to keep it off the ballot. Fingers crossed.
julie
The petition signatures to stop Ohio’s HB 194 were turned in, but signatures will still be collected over the next 14 days. If you’re an Ohioan or have friends and family who live in Ohio, tell them to sign the petition. they can find locations at fairelectionsOhio.com.
Palli
@jayackroyd: Our Sec of State is former Senator Mike DeWine; he’s still trying to look senatorial and appear above the riffraff like State Treasurer Josh Mandel. He’s responsible for certification and the referendum wording that will be printed on the ballot. The three issues already on the ballot has been fairly written and a NO vote would be for the repeal. We will wait to see how this one gets worded and how DeWine works under his party’s political pressure.
I frankly expect there will be sufficient signatures because this was a low key drive and, unlike some Wisconsin Republican recall petitioners, there were no payments in beers or $25 dollar store coupons.
Woodrow L. Goode, IV
@Palli: Wrong. DeWine is the Attorney General. Jon Husted is the SOS (“POS” would be more accurate).