Obama Campaign Files Suit Against Ohio Election Officials
The Associated Press reports that the Obama reelection campaign has filed suit against Ohio election officials over the state’s restrictions on early, in 
person voting the three days prior to the election.
Republican Gov. John Kasich and his legislature recently OK’d the new restrictive laws, prompting the lawsuit form the Obama campaign.
The Obama campaign’s position is that Ohio’s restrictions unfairly ends early, in person voting on Friday, while allowing military persons and people overseas to vote until Monday.
Before the law was amended, local precincts could set their own rules regarding cut off times for early voting. The Ohio state government took control away from the people, and mandated the new changes.
Ohio Secretary of state Jon Husted argued that rules for precincts should be the same across the board.
“I didn’t see a lawsuit occur when six counties had weekend voting and extended hours and 82 of them didn’t,” Husted said in an interview with The Associated Press. “I’m sympathetic to the idea that we should have consistency, because that’s exactly what we’ve been doing on a number of fronts.”
Here Husted misses the point. If the Ohio state government had left things as they were, and allowed precincts to set their own deadlines, it is doubtful that the Obama campaign would have filed suit. The suit is based on the new rules set by the state that treats two sets of voters differently.
President Obama and Mitt Romney are both making a play for Ohio, and Obama won it last time and needs to win it again, so we may expect more lawsuits to challenge the changes being made by Republican legislatures to curb voting among demographics which tend to vote Democratic.
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