GOP crying foul over law it passed is the title of an article in the Columbus Dispatch. Why should another story about GOP vote-rigging make the news- it occurs all of the time and everywhere. Yet this one is a classic! Why? Because the GOP set the rules and now they want to change them. I suppose Karl Rove might label that a flip-flop.
The article reports: In trying to close a brief window that will allow simultaneous voter registration and absentee voting, Ohio Republicans are engaging in "blatant voter suppression," a leading legal expert on voting said yesterday. "This is exactly what the law says and what it allows," said Daniel Tokaji, a professor at the Ohio State University Moritz College of Law. "If the Republicans are trying to close the window, they would be violating the law they wrote."
Tokaji, a frequent critic of Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner, said she is "absolutely right on this one. ... It could be the best thing she's done in office."
Voter suppression is classic GOP stuff. They learned it well from the racist Southern Democrats in the 40's and 50's who suppressed [that's a mild word] the black vote there with all sorts of Jim Crow laws and intimidation [and lynching]. Seems that the right to vote in a democracy has limits. Reminds me of that classic post-9-11 statement of George W. Bush: 'There ought to be limits on freedom of speech.'
Yes, American-style democracy is a quirky thing, filled with 'buts' and 'howevers' put in place to limit freedom and give an advantage to a certain sub-group in the society. The present-day GOP, stocked with fundamentalist christians and neocon warmongers, clearly has an agenda that demands that some votes ought not to be counted. The Founding Fathers would weep at what this 'democracy' has become.
