Ohio GOP to Pass New "NC-like" Voting Restrictions

[Marokai Backbeat]

It still amazes me the media continues to let the GOP get away with blatant voter suppression.

In general, it has always been astounding to me how the Republican Party gets away with leveraging public policy to protect their power, with disturbingly little controversy in the media.

[Marokai Backbeat]

"It saves money" is not a sufficient rationale for why we should reduce the amount of voting machines available to certain precincts on election day. Perhaps it is to a crazy person. And that's not even getting into the can of worms that is the rather politically convenient targets of these "cost saving" measures among states that have decided to cut early voting or limit machine access.

I actually don't disagree with Cinyc in that I would prefer election day be election day and do away with elective early voting, but the reason it exists isn't because people just thought it would be fun, it's because many states have proven time and again that they clearly cannot handle the load of voters on election day when the time comes, and many people of certain demographic groups simply don't have the ability to just go wait hours to vote; thus, they vote early, or with a group of people they want to make an outing of it with.

If we quintupled the amount of voting machines, locations, and election workers, there wouldn't be such a pressing need to spread out the burden of accepting votes over the course of weeks or months. But such would get in the way of "saving money" and we're right back to square one. Certain people in politics simply don't exactly think the expansion of voting access is worth the effort. They come from a certain side.

[Marokai Backbeat]

I don't care if it costs a trillion dollars for everyone who wants to cast their vote to be able to do so. I'd imagine most people who believe in democracy feel the same way.

It doesn't even really cost that much in the grand scheme of it all, is the preposterous thing. The idea that any state saves a meaningful amount of money by just restricting voting access (let me repeat that for dramatic effect: we are discussing restricting voting access just to save cash) is the same logic that says we can balance budgets by tackling "fraud" or taking pennies from Head Start and public broadcasting.

[Marokai Backbeat]

Sickening.