Early Voting Bird Gets The Worms

Ohio's GOP Secretary of State Jon Husted has decided that if "those people" get to vote early, then nobody gets to vote early.

Ohio’s secretary of state is asking the U.S. Supreme Court to block a pair of rulings that will open the polls for all voters on the three days prior to the Nov. 6 election, a time when 105,000 Ohioans cast ballots four years ago.

The election-year emergency appeal could prompt the high court to revisit its Bush vs. Gore ruling of 2000, which said voting standards must be equal across the state.

Now things get pretty serious on this front.  SCOTUS will have to act rather quickly here either way, and Husted figures he's going to win regardless.

“This is an unprecedented intrusion by the federal courts into how states run elections and because of its impact on all 50 states as to who and how elections will be run in America, we are asking the Supreme Court to step in and allow Ohioans to run Ohio elections,” Husted said. “As a swing state, we in Ohio expected to be held to a high standard,” adding the state is offering early voting on all the weekdays leading up to final Friday before election day.

Husted said if his appeal to the Supreme Court fails, he will craft “a directive to set uniform hours” for early voting in Ohio’s 88 counties.

Either way, expect Ohio's early voting hours to be sharply curtailed, if not all but eliminated by Husted's directive.  If early voting means a higher turnout for urban, minority, and poor voters, then by God, Ohio will put an end to that once and for all.