For Husted a very busy week

It's been a busy week for Secretary of State Jon Husted.  While he was attending to his re-election campaign,  he also had to rule on a Summit County Board of Elections matter and then suffer a setback by a Federal judge on his  controversial election reforms.

To no one's surprise, he informed the county board that he would step aside from a request from Democrats that he investigate a board worker's use of her cellphone to post many times on Facebook as a sort of personal phone bank while she was on the job - a big-time  no-no.

Husted called upon the board to settle the issue in a "bipartisan fashion".  He said what?
Bipartisan?  It is  beyond acceptable naivete to use that standard of civilized behavior for a gathering of  board officials with English-speaking accents.  Six years ago, former Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner, a Democrat, even unceremoniously removed board member Alex Arshinkoff,  the county Republican chairman, from his hallowed chair for being disruptive.  (He has since returned under Husted.)

There's more.  Husted's decision to cut and run had a deeper context:  the  worker in question is Cecilia Robart, the wife of former Cuyahoga Falls mayor Don Robart,   the fellow who   had a brief stay on Husted's office payroll as a liaison in northern Ohio - brief because of the stuff that later was found on his office computer after he left office. Yep, pornography.  That damned Internet can be a career killer.

In that instance, Husted acted promptly in an election year by removing Don Robart from his ranks.

When you connect the dots, you can't make these things up.

Arshinkoff's solution to the latest hometown guyser   was to call for a probe of everybody's  cellphones, which , of course, eliminated any further thoughts of bipartisanship.

* * * * *

We assume the alarm button in Husted's office ran overtime when U.S. District Judge Peter C. Economus in Columbus declared Husted's restictrive voter plan was unconstitutional and ordered him to restore all of the cuts in voting hours.

The secretary's deal was gilded with Republican repeatedly expressed concerns that voters were cheating like hell when they went to  the polls.  Voter fraud? All  subsequent studies revealed  no such thing and merely raised serious concerns that minorities were being targeted, which indeed they were.

Dick Cheney for president? Will lunacy triumph?

Re-posted from Plunderbund


Like Mack the Knife, Dick Cheney is back in town.  He and his daughter Liz have announced a new non-profit group called Alliance for a Strong America to shame Barack  Obama's presidency.   And if your thing is the Theater of the Absurd then you have to believe that every rich Obama hater in the land with some loose change will drop a few coins  in his cup.

And if anything is deserving of a Saturday Night Live schtick, you could spread the rumor that Cheney, so full of sound and fury,  is again stirring up media coverage because he's actually running for president to restore our unique position as the global sheriff. Sounds silly, I know.  But with  the former veep who always operates beyond the limits of reality, silliness has no meaning.  We  can even envision a scenario in which he attaches Liz to his ticket as his running-daughter. It would dispel the notion among anyone who shudders at his name that he is a cold-blooded lunatic.  Instead, he would come across as a tender loving family guy who merely wants to see his daughter get ahead.

Karl Rove  would immediately predict a landslide victory for Cheney.  And Donald Trump would be thrilled that we finally had a white guy in the Oval Office who was born in America.

 And in swing-state Ohio. the projected turnout  for our new hero on Election Day would be so large in even the smallest counties  that Secretary of State Jon Husted would alert all of the local election boards to remain open around the clock by Labor Day for early voting.

If I all of this sounds too crazy for words, you can't say I didn't warn you.  Did I mention that a lunatic is on the loose again?

With Husted challenged, BJ's Douglas to the rescue

Secretary of State Jon Husted has been flitting around the state in search of a safe harbor  for his besieged voting "reforms", and he couldn't have found a more hospitable port   than Mike Douglas' Sunday column in the Beacon Journal.  In a piece that asks teasingly  "How hard is it to vote in Ohio?'  the BJ  editorial page editor solemnly went on and on to cast Husted as the Wizard of Oz in cleaning up an election system that has been  victimized by long lines, shfting polling places, shortened voting hours  and - I pause - the Zombie cheaters. Douglas concludes that it  isn't that hard to vote. Problem solved.  

Indeed, that has been Husted's rallying cry as he seeks reelection against a fiery Democratic opponent, Sen. Nina Turner.  The secretary prides himself in creating a new culture that makes it "easier to vote and harder to cheat".  On Sunday, Douglas oddly  bought into the  argument that is being scorned by some other newspapers as well as ordinary folks like you and me.  (A columnist in the Toledo Blade booed the Husted Hustle (my noun ) in  a piece headlined  ''Why Ohio's GOP is strangling voters' access to the polls."

On that point, I think I know why. It's the grand design by the Republican deep thinkers that emerged at the start of the Obama era as the party nervously sought ways to resist  voting trends that threatened its survival forever.  (Years earlier, a Republican county chairman expressed hope that it would rain on Election Day to lower the turnout in certain politically unfriendly urban precincts.)

The Republicans decided the whole idea could be sold as a  Boy Scout effort to eliminate wholesale voter fraud.  When none surfaced in studies, they turned to other  ploys.

Besides piling voter turnout on voter turnout that he compared  favorably with Husted's efforts, Douglas also lashed the New York Times - which is really too big to fail  - for an editorial that accused the Ohio GOP of rigging the election system to hurt the Democrats.  After a couple of Republican officials unwisely said  the so-called reforms were intended to help Mitt Romney, I can only respond:  Well?

Rather than deal with the numbers, I prefer to look at the nefarious ways that Husted and the hoofbeat Republican legislature   have carried out their game plan. The victims of two losses in presidential elections, they have been frantically rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.

I am cynical enough to dismiss voter turnouts in past elections as the sole measure of the merit of Husted's handiwork. I prefer to look at the  wide pool of the carefully nurtured Republican efforts to close some doors in urban polling places. Shorter voting hours, the elimination (now restored) of Golden Week for same-day registration and voting, Republican attempts to bar universities from issuing residency IDs, and,  the measure that would make it quite difficult for a third party to appear on the ballot. It's not a playbook that inspires confidence in the party's  moves to purify the vote.

You might want to know, too,  that Republican Sen.Frank LaRose from Akron's back yard sponsored the measure to end Golden Week.

The issue has generated  a suit by the ACLU, League of Women Voters and NAACP. And not so incidentally, a federal judge in Cincinnati has ordered Husted to restore the early voting hours of the three days leading to the election.

Wherever you land on this, I believe this much is certain: Husted will be a key figure in one of the state's liveliest issues up to Election Day.  It has already cut to the quick the folks who will be most deeply affected. You know  who they are, even if Husted's side won't tell you.  

Major disclosure: I will be a Republican!

OK! That's it!  I'm heading down to the Summit Count Board of Elections to register as  a Republican.  (Which will finally satisfy my late father and let him rest in peace.)

I've been tinkering with the idea ever since they started paying GOP chairman Alex Arshinkoff $10,000 a month to be a University of Akron lobbyist.  And after Bryan Williams (Alex's heir-apparent as chairman?)  landed on the county Board of Elections  following his resignation as a board member  of the State Department of Education under fire for a conflict of interest.   After all, I have to eat, too.

But the decisive point in driving me into the land of the enemy  was the announcement  that Don Robart,  the recently defeated ex-mayor of Cuyahoga Falls, has been hired as the "eyes and ears"  of Secretary of State  Jon Husted to keep book on several Northern Ohio counties for an annual fee of $40,000. As you can see, conservative distaste for public spending doesn't include the immediate family.

Well, folks.  As one who has not had a regular  pay check since I left the sagging newspaper world in the late 1990s, you should not ask why  I am so sour about certain people returning to the inglorious public trough for jobs that don't require much heavy lifting.

Robart told the Beacon Journal that he hasn't ruled out running for elective office again.  If so,  I would be interested in the eyes-and-ears job.  After all, as they say, the legs go first.

Marcia Fudge: Much work to do, including voting rights

Reposted from Plunderbund:  

In her  recent talk at an Akron Press Club/ Bliss Institute program,  Rep.Marcia Fudge covered the entire spectrum of  the unfinished business of combatting racism in America.  A Democrat who chairs  the Congressional Black Caucus,  she represents Ohio's  new 11th District stretching south from Euclid to Fairlawn - graphic evidence of the liveried Republican map-drawers' free-wheeling ability to redefine the upside of hometown politics.

A compelling speaker, Fudge surveyed  the legacy of Martin Luther's King's  place in today's world that has met with no more than mixed results in a nation  that is more polarized than at  any  time in a  generation.

As we have mentioned many times, the seating of an African-American in the Oval Office has inspired his opponents to the excesses  not seen during the two terms served by George Bush.  From being the alleged peacemaker with the invasion of Iraq, to the amassing of public debt by a guy who had no inclination to cap it, we allowed Dubya  to comfortably enjoy his dream-swept environment.

The political right has been so traumatized, in Ohio and elsewhere,  by Obama's successive victories so soon after the Civil War, that it has spent a lot of its time determined to have Obama suffer a similar trauma rooted in a disgraceful legacy.

One of its biggest contracts  is  called voter repression.  And you'd think that by now the Republican public officials who are working deep into the night to purify the vote would at least confess the motives of the their scandalous schemes.

"Cutting back on our voting options has a disproportionate negative effect on certain populations,  among them communities of color, urban voters, students,  elderly and low income, not just minorities," Fudge told her audience.

There've been too many  attempts to stymie the voters  with the  clumsy efforts of people like Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted  to shape the electoral outcomes according to his party's needs. From cutting back early voting periods, to voter IDs, to shortening voting days to align with  business hours, to rearranging precincts - even the failed  attempt to blockl third-party candidacies to protect Gov.  Kasich in November . Etc. etc etc.

State Sen. Nina Turner, Husted's Democratic opponent this year, summed it up with one word: "Immoral."

Without being tempted to predict the outcome of the November balloting,  I can vouch for one absolute that will be a leading issue in the campaigns  It's the  various ploys, sometimes peddled as eradicating voter fraud (Huh!), that will be driven home on the stump from Cleveland to Cincinnati.

You can take it from there.

 Oh.  And let the honest votes fall where they may.

Walmart: Gifts that don't keep on giving

The latest heartfelt story fully making the rounds about Walmart is that bins have been  set up at the Canton store that urge Walmart associates to deposit  Thanksgiving food offerings for their needy fellow workers.  Comedian Stephen Colbert found a lot not to like about the idea.  With his finger always on the pulse, he noted that he  couldn't agree with those who accuse Walmart of not doing enough for its employes. "Wrong," he said. "They don't do anything."  

* * * * *

The table tops at the  Summit Mall food court have inset space for posting ads.  The current ones promote Roto-Rooter with the troubling message for fast-food customers:  "Complete plumbing and drain service."

* * * * *

MSNBC's Ed Schultz and Ohio Sen. Nina Turner joined for a Happy Hour assailing the State GOPs multi-pronged attacks on voting rights. Schultz complained that such tactics, with Republican Gov. Kasich at the helm, hardly reveal him as the  political moderate creeping into some national media stories about him as a presidential candidate so many years from now.  Turner is challenging Secretary of State Jon Husted and is making the voting stink a major issue in the campaign. That's an easy case to make.

* * * * *

Why do I get a  headache when Dick Cheney, a Cyborg with a pulseless mechanical  heart, turns up on TV with still more lies?  I thought those days were gone for the unchastened veep after he told us that the Iraq war would end in a matter of weeks - and not a year longer. He also guaranteed the skeptics that  the freedom-loving Iraqi greeters would shower our troops with candy and flowers from their balconies.  Try to remember.

* * * * *

In case you missed it, the U.S. House has now voted 46 times to abolish Obamacare.  At the same time latest poll figures report that Speaker John Boehner is the most unpopular politician in the universe. They needed a poll for that?

Husted takes credit for cleaning up a non-problem

Do you recall how Secretary of State Jon Husted and a number of other Republicans on the voter-suppression goon squad were trying to narrow the goal posts for Ohio's  minorities in the last presidential election?  Voter fraud might  alter the outcome of the election, they warned.

Well, I'm pleased to report that of the 5.6 million votes that were cast, only 625 were considered questionable, according to a post-election survey by Husted's office and county boards of election.  Of those only 115  were sent to local prosecutors for possible action.

Now upbeat from the findings, Husted said his efforts to clean up the election paid off.  Cool.

Husted's pre-election hustle, he now says, was merely an attempt to get at the facts.
He said the concerns of voters were driven by "hyperbole" and it was through his office's efforts that  fraud was hardly existent,  or as he put it in a puffy release: "This report demonstrates that voter fraud does exist, but it is not epidemic. (Of those cases where duplicate ballots were cast, "only one of those ballots was ultimately counted,"  he boasted.

Immodestly, he took credit for the clean-up, insisting  that the "safeguards we have in place worked in the majority of these cases."

We have a winner for our latest Grumpy Abe Linguistic Lunacy (GALL) award.  See above.

Some people can make these things up

NOTES FROM THE RIGHT WING  BOTTOM  FEEDERS:

Gayle Trotter, the conservative Washington D.C. lawyer who testified against stronger gun controls at yesterday's Senate hearing, asserted that she merely wanted to defend women against  attacks by intruders and crazed  husbands, even, we assume, if that meant keeping an assault weapon and a few hand grenades under  her pillow.

With the clock ticking on her 15 minutes of fame - and, doubtless  more business from howitzer owners  for her law firm - the soon-to-be whatshername recounted the plight of a distressed woman who was threatened by guys who broke into her house  as she  remained defenseless with a limited supply of bullets. As Lawrence O'Donnell  demonstrated in an interview with whatshername, she couldn't produce a shred of evidence that her scary story was true.  None of it. Pure fantasy.

And now we learn from Talking Points Memo that whatshername has a website called Independent Women's Forum  in which she argued against the Violence Against Women Act. She wrote on her website  that among other things, VAWA  "has the potential to encourage immigration fraud [!],   false allegations of abuse and denial of a rebuttal by the accused spouse..."

OK,  Gayle.  Your 15 minutes are up.

* * * *  *

Next: The past week brought us the three Republican musketeers who were the only senators to vote against the nomination of John Kerry as secretary of state.  According to Ted Cruz, one of the two Texans to oppose the decorated Vietnam veteran, there are doubts about Kerry's commitment to the military that would reveal  U.S. weakness to our opponents.  But we do wonder why Cruz, who was never in the service,  doesn't prove his own commitment by joining the forces in Afghanistan or at least  the Alamo.

* * * * *

Oh, c'mon.  The Plain Dealer reports  that Republican State Rep.  Mike Dovilla  of Berea thinks there is interest in the legislature to revive the photo ID cause before  the 2014 mid-term election.    "We think there is broad support in the public," Dovilla told the PD.    Three problems with that:  Republicans  aren't thinking very much these days,  (2) the idea failed to gain support in 2011 even though it kept the lawmakers off the streets for many long hours debating it;  (3) despite the efforts by Secretary of State Jon Husted to purify the voters with various restrictions, there wasn't any proof in 2012 of the voter fraud that the GOP preaches from high on the mount.




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Lieberman vacates a role as most boring person

With the departure of  Joe Lieberman   from Congress,   I've been poking around the honored rolls to settle on someone to replace him as Capitol Hill's most boring person.  The field is so crowded that the choice didn't come quickly.

 I was leaning toward Newt Gingrich until I remembered that during his bid for the Republican presidential nomination I had already tagged him as Crazy Guggenheim, a title that seemed close enough when he promised to fire all  school janitors and replace them with the students.  (He also promised to put a permanent base on the moon during  his second  term in the Oval Office,  but I couldn't convince myself that there would even be a first term for Newtie.)

Then, there was Jon Husted, Ohio's secretary of state, who droned on and on that his voter restrictions were meant to purify the whole system.  Few believed him, but he droned on and on, defending the indefensible.   We haven't heard that much from him  since his class lost, so no need to drag out the story.

You may be surprised, but my choice for the most boring  politician in our midst is Lindsey Graham, the forever whining South Carolina Republican who was usually seen at Joe Lieberman's side as they traipsed through the trouble spots of the world. He's been back on TV a number of times as his party's  Paul Revere to warn us over and over and over that America is  being consumed by the libs. Unfortunately, he remains in denial about the outcome of the November election.  Even in the few seconds that it takes me to change the channel, I feel a headache coming on.

And I didn't even mention Donald Trump, who at least  is always good for a laugh.




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More leftovers - and those diehard Republicans

 

How well this banner describes the Republicans' preoccupation with women's personal choices instead of unemployment and other economic matters.  These women were engaged in a protest in Columbus where a legislative committee was considering a bill to ban public money from  going to Planned Parenthood.  Being  Republicans-tilted, the committee ignored  the protest and voted 11-9 along strict party lines to send the bill to the House floor for further consideration and a vote.  News of President Obama's election that gave him the edge on social issues had apparently not found its way into the GOP cave in Columbus.

                                                                 * * * * *

Speaking of issues, how did Paul Ryan arrive at the conclusion that during the campaign his side was talking about the "popular" issues (i.e., the ones supported by the voters, I guess)?  Ryan also scoffs that Obama won a mandate from the voters because the House of Representatives remains in Republican hands.   That overlooks the math that told us a majority of America's voters supported Democratic congressional candidates, but gerrymandering  remained the decisive factor in electing Republicans. Case in point:  Although the president carried Ohio, Republicans won 12 of the 16 congressional districts.  Go figure.

                                                                 * * * * *

Let's stop talking about "mandates" - fuzzy references to the width of a winner's margin to carry out his or her plans.   A wise old politician once told me he didn't have much interest in mandates.  Rather, he said, a true leader looks at a situation and simply says to himself, "I gotta do what I gotta do".  Makes sense to me.

                                                               * * * * *

In case you felt overwhelmed by all of those TV political ads, there was a reason:  The New York Times reported 1.4 million ads were aired, estimated cost: $952 million.

                                                              * * * * *
Biggest  losers in Ohio were Republican Secretary of State Jon Husted and Atty Gen. Mike DeWine, both of whom traveled down dark paths by mistakenly ignoring  the potency of  those voters who had been  profiled  to lose .   DeWine  worked with Husted in trying to shrink the vote.  And U.S. District Judge Algenon Marbley in Columbus assailed Husted's late-campaign directive   to further alter the vote , declaring  it was "surreptitious" and a"flagrant violation of a state election law." Clear enough?

* * * * *
My column on Jon Husted's lashing by a federal judge and the GOP attacks on Planned Parenthood has been posted on Plunderbund
  

Score one for Husted, at the bottom of the wash

From today's pile of dirty laundry:

You can be sure that Secretary of State Jon Husted, Ohio'a vote suppressor- in - chief,  is feeling rather puffy today now that the appellate court in Cincinnati voted 2-1 to uphold his  heavy hand in denying provisional ballots to voters even if they were misled by poll workers on their valid polling places.

As has been widely reported throughout the long election season , Republican Husted has resorted to  various ploys  of restricting certain voters in a Frankenstein role  with the voice of a canary.  "The rules are clear, and we can now focus on a fair election, " Husted proudly chirped,  with a familiar reprise of intellectual dishonesty.

But the rules in this election have never  been clearly articulated by him ever since the Republican  preservationists  cynically  set out to  use voter "fraud" as their lame excuse for excising blacks,  the elderly  and other urbanites  from the rolls.  Mythical fraud, of course.   So Husted then inserted meaningless  terms like "uniformity" and "fairness" to gird GOP  hopes of winning the state.

Make me laugh. Never have the rules of electoral engagement - even recalling the messy handiwork of former Secretary of State Ken Blackwell - has anybody worked harder and more deliberately, expending taxpayer money and his own office's energy,  as Husted to game the system.  If you don't think so,  you also would agree to  accept a poll tax.

Husted: The federal courts are subversive

Thanks to Secretary of State Jon Husted, we've finally gotten to to the bottom of his maddening but  failed plans to restrict voting in Ohio.  It is based in the sort of hollow patriotic fervor that once affected the old House Un-American Activities Committee when we went to bed each night in fear of a Commie hand bursting through the mattress to seize our buttocks.

Like Republican Senate candidate Josh Mandel, who with straight face referred to Sen. Sherrod Brown as "un-American",  Husted spread the subversive field to include the several courts that turned down his appeals of an early-voting case filed against him by the Obama Administration.  ThinkProgress reports that Husted appeared at an election law symposium at the University of Toledo to denounce the courts (which included the U.S. Supreme Court)  as 'un-American".  He figured the courts had no business  imposing its ideas on Ohio's ability to run its own elections.  Take that Antonin Scalia!

The Toledo Blade, which first reported the event,  noted that Husted's opinion was "not shared by many who sttended the syposium."

That is a growing truth about many of Husted's opinions these days.  But embarrassing though it may be to reasonable  Ohioans, we're stuck with him at least until 2014.

Detente, at last, at Summit Board of Elections

The most  profound item on the Summit County Board of Elections agenda Wednesday was

                    #3) "approval to hold general election , November 6, 2012"

 Even with board member  Alex Arshinkoff back, the item was approved without debate.  See:  this board can agree on some things without 2-2 deadlocks.  Otherwise, Secretary of State Jon Husted had eliminated further tension by declaring that it was OK for voters to cast their ballots in the 3 days leading to the Nov. 6 election that the board approved in its brief meeting.

If you are an 11th hour voter, the elections board will offer you these early voting hours:

Saturday, Nov. 3,  8 a.m. to 2 p.m.
Sunday , Nov. 4, 1  - 5 p.m.

Monday, Nov. 5, 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. 

Whew!  Why was  that so hard for Husted to finally accept?

The NY Times may be on to something

   

This war-like headline ran over half of the cover page of the New York Times Sunday  Review section.  It led me to check the Ohio situation before  resentful Republicans started quacking their age- old complaint about the liberal media. Would you be surprised  if I reported that four of Ohio's top political leaders had roots in towns with a total population of 16,804?

Here they are:

        Gov. Kasich, McKees Rocks, Pa., 6,118

        Secretary of State Jon Husted, Village of Montpelier, 4,071

        Senate majority leader, Tom Niehaus, New Richmond, 2,582

       Atty. Gen.. Mike Dewine, Cedarville, 4,033

(I purposely left out this list of small-town politicians House speaker  Bill Bachelder, who, compared to the others, arrived in Columbus from the megalopolis of Medina, pop. 26,827.)

                                                                  * * * *  *
As Mitt Romney continues to back away from his 47 percenters and other odd numbers, is it possible that he might be suffering from percentile dysfunction?  After all, as he has shown, percentages aren't for everyone.  If side effects  persist,  he should call his doctor, but only if he has coverage for pre-existing conditions.

                                                             * * * * *
The Sunday Plain Dealer reported at length that Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown has been hit b y a $19 million  avalanche of radio and TV  ads that have made the race closer than it deserves to be  against Ohio Treasurer Josh Mandel.  The money is from outside groups , including Karl Rove's vault.  I haven''t heard much from Josh's cheering section, which says it's an up-and-down race about Brown by Super PACs  and corporate interests who care little about the challenger and would  be  satisified to replace Brown with Donald Duck without a pleasant nod to Mandel. If  Mandel's money machine happens to pull an upset - Good heavens, don't even think about it! -  will he stand up in the winner's circle  on Election night and declare that he built the victory himself.  He will because he has a very inventive mind when there is a need to say, "I am Josh Mandel and I approve this message."

With Husted-Dewine: Is Blackwell still with us?

Who would have ever guessed that a case could be made for returning Republican Ken Blackwell to the Ohio Secretary of State's office  considering the mess he made of the voting system back in 2004  and later?  From a controversy over provisional ballots, to challenging  the paper used for ballots to adding Diebold voting machines (in which he held some company stock) that were faulty - seldom  a day passed without having to endure more screwups in his office.

On two occasions, the office accidentally exposed Social Security numbers and names of registered voters.  It first released computer discs bearing  such goody information listing  1.2 million individuals.  Second time around, it gave out the names, addresses and social security numbers  of 5.6 million  registered voters.  Blackwell apologetically called the goofs "accidental". Problem solved.

Well, now we have a secretary of state , Jon Husted,  and attorney general, Mike Dewine,  creating greater confusion.  Earlier reports said Husted, acting under a federal court order,  had rescinded his own order shutting down week end voting just prior to Election Day.   That much he did and cheers went up that possibly we could count on a normal election.  You know, like the 2008 election that had caused so few systemic problems.

But we later learned from published reports all the way up to the national media  that Husted, joined by Dewine, had something more in mind, seeking a stay of the court's decision until the state's appeal could complete its course through the courts; i.e., don't do anything until we get back to you, whenever that may be.  Husted's Special Counsel, William S. Consovoy, said the delay was intended to avoid  confusion. 

Plunderbund reported yesterday that this was the same William S. Consovoy who sought an unsuccessful constitutional challenge to the Voting Rights Act in the South.  Husted obviously didn't pull Consovoy's name out of the hat to advance his  opposition to early week-end voting.

In his appeal, Dewine is now talking state's rights instead of voter fraud, a myth that never went anywhere.  I can't imagine the cost of all of these delaying tactics.  Worse yet, it is increasingly clear that Husted and Dewine are still hoping to prepare a table for a Romney victory in Ohio, candor and  the public interest be damned.

Are you listening, Public?

GOP-style absentee ballots: 'Righting' the system

Well, Nancy and I each received a feel-good absentee  ballot notice  from Secretary of State Jon Husted today.  It was patriotically red, white and blue, with a prominently displayed checkmark that did double duty by serving as the stylized "V" in the My Vote logo.  Underneath it boldly  declared "My Right - My Responsibility".

How good of Mr. Husted to remind me of my right.  How timely, too, so soon after after he and his cohort,  Atty.  Gen. Mike Dewine  decided to drag out their response to a federal court order to restore week-end early voting.  Oh, they will argue, week-end voting hours are not a right, which is like asking you not to count the change from  a suspicious sidewalk vendor.

It's at least interesting to me how quickly guys like Husted and Dewine move in to blur their tracks on suppressing the vote.   Rights and responsiblity?  Make me laugh, guys.  And as conservative Republicans who preach personal freedom from Big Brother,  shouldn't you be practicing what you are preaching by getting off the backs of certain voters?

UPDATE:  THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH JUST REPORTED THAT HUSTED RESCINDED HIS ORDER  AGAINST EARLY VOTING HOURS FOR THE THE LAST 3 DAYS BEFORE THE ELECTION.  (Shucks.  Mike Dewine, the Ohio AG, had threatened  to be so bold as to appeal the order to the U.S. Supreme Court.    That was STRIKE THREE for Mike, who belatedly switched to the losing candidate in the Republican presidential primary, was on the losing side in the appeal to the Supreme court on Obamacare and now this.  If you think of it, send him a cheerful card as the loser. 

The Husted-Dewine axis challenging Federal court order

Man, these Republican guys aren't kidding in their mad-dash campaign to block early voting on the pre-Election Day week end despite a federal court ordering them to play nice and keep the doors open.  Secretary of State Jon Husted (top photo) has boasted of his leadership in ending the 2008 benefit for pre-election voters, and Attorney General Mike Dewine says he will take the issue onward and upward, to the U.S.Supreme Court, if necessary. Some people define leadership in other ways.

Both men, of course, have their eyes on a Romney election that holds a little promise for their own political future.   Dewine began his term with a promise to join others in appealing Obamacare. You have to wonder whether he has nothing better to deal with his time than to  obstruct  anything that might be favorable for the other party.

As for Husted, well, he's got a tiger by the tail with this one and it's too late to run his office for everyone in Ohio rather just those who vote Republican.

Some Ohio newspapers have already called on the Husted/Dewine twins to obey the court order. But Husted has said he will do nothing until the higher court rules on the appeal. Early voting begins Oct.3, fellows.

I continue to ask:  why have these two state GOP officials given the issue top priority in the workaday world?  I have a hunch that they are looking out solely for their political future.  Dewine, after all, has never seen a possible self-serving opportunity that didn't send him up into the the ether.  He's the fellow, you might remember, who abruptly switched his allegiance from Mitt Romney to Rick Santorum in the final weeks of the Ohio campaign when he was downright sure Santorum would carry the state.  You know the rest of the story.

NOTE: My column  on Josh Mandel's bad habits has been posted on Plunderbund.com

In Dayton, time to return 2 Dems to Elections Board

Question for the legal minds, which I'm not:

In the Repubicans' bizarre attempts to restrict voting hours while being less than candid about their motives, Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted  fired two Montgomery County (Dayton) Democrats on the Board of Elections because they  decided to  go ahead with  early week- end voting - a practice followed in the 2008 presidential election that went smoothly.  If it wasn't broken, why did he try to fix it?

But now that a federal judge has ruled that Republican Husted's scheme was unconstitutional (except  not in the mind of Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine, who is appealing it)  shouldn't Husted take the hint and restore Dennis Lieberman and Tom Ritchie Sr. to their board positions?

With the current state of the GOP, you are always missing something in the narrative.

Armstrong's words won't resonate in Tampa; Husted again

The week end called our attention to  events that  contrasted two visions of the American experience.   The laudatory remembrance of  the late Neil Armstrong told of the optimism of the first astronaut to walk on the moon, who spoke to the entire planet of Earthlings  when he said:

"That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind."

The words came back to haunt us with a different  vision, that of the Republican Party arriving in Tampa with plans for no steps for man and a giant leap backward for mankind.

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Update:  Secretary of State Jon Husted made a last-minute cancellation as a speaker  at the True the
Vote Summit in Columbus, sponsored by a right-wing outfit known for  supporting voter suppression and other questionable policies.  You can find the full report on Plunderbund.com, which includes a report from NBC News.  Husted has been busy these days dodging critics of his own voter handiwork in Ohio.   We wonder if he'll ever get it right. Also, we wonder why he didn't vet the group before he agreed to be programmed as a speaker along with former Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell and other.

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The PD: Now aware of week-end early voters

It is always rewarding to note that my friends who write for editorial pages can increase their level of awareness of a problem within a matter of four days.  That seems to be the case at the Plain Dealer in the Husted Hustle to eliminate week- end early voting.  On Saturday , the PD said "Husted's decree is acceptable"  even though a "weekend  or two"  of of early voting would be "preferable."

Preferable, but not terribly necessary?

But on Wednesday,  it returned to the scene of the crime to report editorially that there is "considerable evidence - notably by a study by the Franklin County Board of Elections - that in-person early voting during evening and week-end hours is especially popular among black voters."

Oh?  The PD  needed a study to convince it of something most folks have known for a long time?

The remedy for Secretary of State Jon Husted's half-a-loaf decree (uniform weekday hours but no week-end hours to accommodate early voters)?

From the PD came this idea for Husted on Wednesday:  "consider adding at least one week-end day for early voting".

Thank goodness for that Franklin County study , or some papers would have never known!