The absence of partisan voting "integrity"

During this election cycle, one’s ability to vote for his or her elected official became far more complicated and difficult.

Voter ID laws cropped up across the country this year in Republican states, and several of them were enacted too close to Election Day to allow voters to comply.

Early voting hours were cut down, and because of shrinking state budgets, less time and fewer resources were allocated to handling historically long lines at the polls on Election Day especially in battleground states.

This all happened under the guise of protecting the “integrity” of the vote, on the surface a nonpartisan and noncontroversial thing to do.

I wanted to believe it was an honest attempt to streamline our voting process, but last-minute moves made by Republican lawmakers in Ohio and Florida during the past week have convinced me otherwise. 

Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted issued a directive the Friday before elections that changed how one should submit provisional ballots. Basically, the directive requires voters to correctly describe the form of ID used to vote on the form.

The only problem is that if anyone filled out the form incorrectly, Husted ordered that those votes not be counted, and be thrown out.

A few weeks ago, Husted tried to limit early voting hours in Ohio, but was unsuccessful after losing a lawsuit brought against him by President Barack Obama’s campaign. Why might a Republican secretary of state want to eliminate early voting in a battleground state?

Because early voters tend to lean Democratic, and Husted does not want Obama to win Ohio. Too bad for him.

In Florida, we saw a similar situation. On Saturday, in response to Floridians waiting in line for more than seven hours to vote, Republican election officials extended early voting hours on Sunday.

However, the extension of early voting was made available only for the most Republican district in the state and for no others.

Florida saw its fair share of voting problems this year. Absentee ballots were not sent to people who requested them weeks ahead of time, and early voting hours were not extended in the midst of about three hour long lines at the polls.

There is no legitimate, nonpartisan reason to do what they did in Ohio and Florida only days before the election.

Let’s not forget that voting is a right, not a privilege, and that it should be available for everyone who qualifies under the law.

If lawmakers want to protect the “integrity” of the vote, how about they make sure they don’t disenfranchise tens of thousands of eligible voters from doing so in the process?

I can respect an honest attempt to eliminate the little voter fraud that exists in this country, but the recent actions taken by Republican state legislators are nothing but blatant partisanship.

­— sydhoffe@umail.iu.edu