Good Bye Columbus. Stacking the deck for Republicans in Ohio

[JohnnyRingo]

It looks like Ohio governor Bob Taft, long since giving up on his own integrity, is concentrating on a legacy of voter corruption. With a 17% approval rating the only Ohio governor to be convicted of a crime is working to ensure republican rule for years to come:

The End of Democracy in Ohio?

New legislation passed by Ohio Republicans may just institutionalize those famous "voting irregularities."

A law that will make democracy all but moot in Ohio is about to pass the state legislature and to be signed by its Republican governor. Despite massive corruption scandals besieging the Ohio GOP, any hope that the Democratic party could win this most crucial swing state in future presidential elections, or carry its pivotal U.S. Senate seat in 2006, are about to end.

House Bill 3 has already passed the Ohio House of Representatives and is about to be approved by the Republican-dominated Senate, probably before the holiday recess. Republicans dominate the Ohio legislature thanks to a heavily gerrymandered crazy quilt of rigged districts, and to a moribund Ohio Democratic party. The GOP-drafted HB3 is designed to all but obliterate any possible future Democratic revival. Opposition from the Ohio Democratic Party, where it exists at all, is diffuse and ineffectual.

HB3's most publicized provision will require positive identification before casting a vote. But it also opens voter registration activists to partisan prosecution, exempts electronic voting machines from public scrutiny, quintuples the cost of citizen-requested statewide recounts and makes it illegal to challenge a presidential vote count or, indeed, any federal election result in Ohio. When added to the recently passed HB1, which allows campaign financing to be dominated by the wealthy and by corporations, and along with a Rovian wish list of GOP attacks on the ballot box, democracy in Ohio could be all but over.

The GOP is ramming similar bills through state legislatures around the U.S., starting with Georgia and Indiana. The ID requirements in particular have provoked widespread opposition from newspapers such as the New York Times. The Times, among others, argues that the ID requirements and the costs associated with them, constitute an unconstitutional discriminatory poll tax.

Continued here:
http://www.alternet.org/rights/29292/

[converted_democrat]

1. I think this is a huge issue, but many don't seem to "get it."

The war on Christmas is sooooo much more important. :sarcasm: Our democracy is being stripped away, and it's happening in plain view. The pukes have no plans on giving up their power in the foreseeable future. Very few seem to understand or care just how dire the situation is becoming.

[villager]

2. we will need tactics like the Montgomery bus boycott

...including refusals to cooperate with bad laws, sit-downs, willingness to arrest mass arrests (on election day, while trying to vote, for example, etc.)

Also: a willingness to use these same laws against Republicans: Demanding IDs in wealthy, white districts, challenging votes in these same districts, etc., etc.

You can be polite, or you can be free. Time to choose.

[adarling]

3. i think i am going to throw up

i just can't take this feeling of being helpless. i sit and read this and am sickened by all of the corruption and evil in this country. Why won't anyone stop it! we let the republicans walk all over us and we take it because two wrongs don't make a right. well iam sick of it, we need to fight back and we need to fight back hard.

[villager]

4. again, you can be polite, or you can be free.

Time for all of us to choose up.

[adarling]

7. best way of putting it

thank you

[ReadTomPaine]

13. Wonderful quote! Love it. n/t

[FreedomAngel82]

12. But who can help??

[acmavm]

5. This makes it even more important to file a civil rights, voters rights

suit in federal court.

These stupid dem asshold reps better get off their dead asses and earn their paychecks. This is disenfranchisement on a humongous scale.

Where the hell is Hillary now? Whining about flag burning and video games? This may be happening in Ohio but it IS A NATIONAL ISSUE. If she wants to play politics with the big boys she needs to get her ass in there and start fighting against the real injustices and indignities that are going on in this country.

Where's Kerry? Where's Biden? Where are any of them? Letting Dean step up and tell the truth and take the heat is not a feasible or practical or defensible plan folks. If they don't start screaming about these issues they need to go. Just because it hasn't happened in New York or Massachusettes or wherever doesn't mean that they should stay silent.

[WCGreen]

6. So how are you supposed to get an application for

an absentee ballot....

[AndyTiedye]

8. We Need to Find a Way to Win Without Ohio or Florida

They flipped over 30% of the statewide vote last month.
Reforms were on the ballot that were Ohio's last, best hope for a return to democracy.
They were ahead in the polls by landslide margins.
Instead they "lost" by a landslide.
With electoral theft on that scale, every election is close enough to steal,
and they are passing legislation to make matters even worse.

Florida is even worse. The BFEE has had that state sewn-up since 2000.
They can always steal as many votes as they need there.
They do a lot of it right out in the open, with voter purges and intimidation,
failing to send absentee ballots to Democrats (but you can be sure those ballots
got delivered somewhere) and accepting Repub absentees without signatures or postmarks.

We poured money and candidate face-time into Ohio and Florida last year, and it was all for naught due to electoral fraud.

We need to focus on those states that still have free elections.

[villager]

9. that's a good point

...what states do we need to flip back to blue, then? New Mexico, West Virginia? Any remaining take-able "free" states in the south, or are they all under the jackboot now?

[AndyTiedye]

16. New Mexico and Maybe Some Other Southwestern States

New Mexico was tantalizingly close. We could have won that state if we
had given it some of the attention we spent on Ohio and Florida.

Arizona and Colorado aren't all that red, and getting less so all the time.

[FreedomAngel82]

14. So you're going to just write off all those people's votes?

Wow, that's really nice. So I guess the people of Ohio and Florida should just stay home.

[AndyTiedye]

18. The People of Ohio and Florida...

...need to regain control of their state governments somehow.
Until that happens, yes, we need to write off their votes, because they will continue to be stolen.

[0rganism]

15. Look to Colorado, Arizona, and New Mexico

To a lesser extent, Nevada and Montana are potentially doable, but our best opportunities for a flip are going to be in the DSW -- IMHO, of course.

[mod mom]

10. DETAILS ON PROTEST SET FOR TUESDAY-OH STATEHOUSE:

Also for Tues, the schedule is (at least at this point) for
people living near Columbus:

  11:00 am meet at the Statehouse, inside near the Christmas tree
(holiday tree?) and we are going to try to lobby Senators.

Around 1:30 pm they will vote on this immoral bill. We can be in the
gallery, but can't be too rowdy or they will kick us out (maybe worth
it!) I am going to get us orange sashes, maybe
we'll write  a message on them---

1:00 or 2:00 pm BRING SIGNS and drums, etc. and dress warmly--(you will
have to stow your signs in cars while inside the Statehouse)
After that we will rally outside on the sidewalk near High Street
(McKinley statue) with signs and pro-Democracy songs till about 4:30 pm
or however we long we can stay and not be frozen.

That night at 6:00 (doors open) or 7:00 pm (program starts) we will go
to a forum about choosing a new Dem chair for Ohio (if they will listen
to us--think they will get  an earful about HB3 and voting reform? )

PLEASE JOIN US IN COLUMBUS. DRESS WARM-THE GROUNDS OF THE OHIO STATEHOUSE ARE UNBELIEVABLY WINDY AND COLD!

[FreedomAngel82]

11. So what can people do?

Can't the SCOTUS or someone do something about this? This is all UnConstiutional!

[mod mom]

17. Sign this petition for one:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x5578495

(and if you wouldn't mind help me get it onto the greatest page to draw more atttention to the issue! ;) )

[Kolesar]

19. Is there any point calling my gopuke State Senator?

[Kolesar]

20. Cle PD & Akron Beacon Journal oppose HB3

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=172&topic_id=10121&mesg_id=10121

http://www.cleveland.com/editorials/plaindealer/index.ssf?/base/opinion/113420709828750.xml&coll=2

http://www.ohio.com/mld/ohio/news/editorial/13338910.htm

[centristo]

21. when will we start using their own rules against them?

its not like the Democratic party doesn't get money from corporations too. It's not like the majority of Ohio Democrats don't already have ID's. We have Hackett. We have Brown. We have Coleman and Fingerhut and Strickland. There are some talented Democratic leaders and a population sick and tired of Republican corruption and cronyism. We have no one but ourselves to blame if we lose Ohio in 2006. Dean needs to make Ohio his priority.


http://www.ohiodems.org/ht/display/IssueDetails/i/709850

[stickdog]

22. Bush has killed 2,000 American soldiers supposedly to bring democracy

to the Middle East.

What kind of sacrifices are WE willing to make to keep democracy in the Midwest?