Ohio – The Heart of it All
Hey OHIO!! You’ve heard it time and time again, shouted from the State House steps: “OHIO HAS THE SAFEST VOTING AND ELECTIONS IN THE COUNTRY”. So is it true? Well, here’s one measure: 5,974,121 votes were cast in 2020. Out of that number, 27 were cast illegally and charged with a crime (AP). For you math “geeks”, that’s .000452%. Those 27 votes did not impact the outcome of any election in the state. And this was in the “Pandemic Election”, when Republicans decried (and are still crying about) the “looseness” of the election process.
Here’s the deal, Ohio. When Republicans say elections are “questionable”, they’re lying. They know that Ohio’s elections are secure. There’s an old saying, “Don’t fix what ain’t broke”. So when Republicans in the State House put out a two-hundred and fifty page bill to “secure the elections”, what are they fixing?
Voter Suppression
Here’s another axiom of elections: the more restrictions on voting, the more difficult voting becomes, the longer it takes to vote, the more hoops there are to register and vote; the more likely Republicans are to win. Why is that? It’s simple economics. Folks with less money tend to have less flexibility in their voting hours. Hourly workers can’t just “take off” to vote. And they can’t wait hours in line, the situation in many urban areas of Ohio. And they can’t afford day-care for their kids while they are voting. Those voters are overwhelmingly Democratic.
Ohio’s proposed “security enhancements” include electronic comparisons of picture identifications. This creates added requirements for polling places, leading to “consolidating” precinct polls into larger facilities. Instead of folks being able to walk to their local precinct, in many cases they are required to find transportation to a “mass poll” farther away. (This happens in suburban Ohio as well. Here in Pataskala, there are multiple precincts that vote in a church only accessible by car). Don’t have a car – can’t find a ride with someone else – can’t vote.
The same is true with “picture identification”, usually a driver’s license. What is difficult for suburban voters to understand is that not everyone has a license. In fact, only 62% of 18 year-olds, and 90% of 30 to 34 year-olds in Ohio have a license (Cleveland.com). Sure, they can get a State Identification Card, if they can get to the BMV. But if they don’t need if for “more important” facets of life, things like getting bank accounts for direct deposit, then why should it be required to vote?
How Pure Is It?
The old Cincinnati soap company, Proctor and Gamble, claimed that Ivory Soap was “99+44/100% Pure”. Elections in Ohio are even better than that, 99.999548% secure. The Republican Secretary of State brags about how secure our elections are, even with early and mail-in voting. So why is the MAGA-Republican legislature trying to “fix what ain’t broke”?
Because, if voting in Ohio were easy, more Democrats would vote. And more Democrats voting is a threat to the Republican hegemony in state government. Not only does partisan Gerrymandering drastically tilt the scales to the GOP, but they want to make sure that what might be a Democratic majority in the state can never express their will. And the best way to do that, is keep them from voting.
Adding more layers to a voting process that “ain’t broke” isn’t “fixing”, it’s “rigging”. That’s what’s happening right now, in Columbus, at the State House. Standing on the “purity” of election protection, MAGA-Republican legislators are doing one more thing to maintain their power in the state. They are making sure it’s harder to vote.
In the Depths
It’s happening all over the country, wherever Republicans are in control. From Georgia to Arizona, the false cries of MAGA “stolen election” advocates are creating laws to suppress the vote. Because if you can’t win the election outright, you’ve got to rig it. Just like the “Red-Map” strategy of 2010, it’s working. And if you’re depending on Ohio’s State Supreme Court to step in and “make it right”, that slippery slope is coated in Ivory Soap. Look what happened to the gerrymandered districts. Even when the Supreme Court ruled against them, the legislature ignored them and conducted elections in the districts they wanted.
Back in the 1890’s, Proctor and Gamble made a mistake with their soap processing. Air bubbles were trapped in the Ivory Soap bars. Instead of fixing the process, good old P&G decided to make the air bubbles an asset. Ivory was, and is, the only soap that floats. But the State Legislature doesn’t want the election fixes to “float” on the surface, they want to rig them in the depths of legislative committees. The way to “fix what ain’t broke”, is to do it in obscurity. Then when the voters realize what happened, it’s too late. We may already be there, here in Ohio.
