Some Votes Count More Than Others

And one-party Republican rule in Ohio continues, with the goal being to make voting as difficult as possible in order to disenfranchise as many poor and elderly voters as they can.  The latest effort in the Buckeye State involves sins of omission.

Last week, the GOP-led House passed an election law overhaul without the highly restrictive voter ID provision. However, the House tweaked the bill to weaken a law mandating poll workers to direct voters in the wrong precinct to their correct voting location. Under the new language, a poll worker need not direct a voter to where they are eligible, adding that “it is the duty of the individual casting the ballot to ensure that the individual is casting that ballot in the correct precinct.” 

Some 14,000 votes in Ohio were thrown out in 2008 because of incorrect voting precinct locations, and the vast majority happened in urban centers, including a quarter of those incorrect votes happening in Cuyahoga County up in Cleveland.  But Ohio's GOP specifically weakened that provision in their overhaul bill.  They're quite happy with disenfranchising several thousand voters, because they are traditionally Democratic ones.  Digby sums it up:

Chalk this up to another victory by the decades long GOP Vote Suppression Project. These guys will just keep chipping away until it's perfectly legal to vote for a Democrat but it's really, really difficult for that vote to count. Kind of like getting an abortion in Kansas.

Party of smaller, less intrusive government, my ass.