Sen. Sherrod Brown joined Rachel Maddow Thursday night, excoriating Republican efforts to make voting harder, and drawing a parallel with the conservative push to welcome floods of corporate money into politics.
"We're seeing, on the one hand, billionaires put huge amounts of money into political campaigns, overwhelmingly on the Republican side," said Brown, an Ohio Demcorat. "And on the other end they're tidying up voter rules to the point of keeping people away from the polls."
Ohio's Republican Secretary of State, John Husted, said Wednesday that in response to complaints that early voting hours in Republican-leaning counties would be run longer than those in Democratic-leaning ones, he'd decided to shorten early voting hours everywhere. The result, of course, will hurt Democrats disproportionately, since studies suggest they're more likely than Republicans vote early.
"This is just morally reprehensible, to allow more and more big money on one end and shut people down on the other end who'd like to vote early," Brown continued.
"On both ends of that, they've really betrayed the national interest and betrayed our values, what we stand for as a country," he added. "They should be ashamed of themselves for that."
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In Ohio, any registered voter can vote absentee. I fail to see the problem. If you can't get to a polling place on a weekday, then send in for an absentee ballot and mail it in.
I have seen some people argue with the intellectually devoid strawman argument that absentee voting requires a stamp and thus is yet another deterrent to voting. This is ridiculous and there is nothing that will stop these people from crying discrimination. (having the issue is more important than protecting the sanctity of the vote for these people)
For those that are not well versed on the process, an absentee ballot can be dropped off if mailing it in isn't an option; even a relative can drop it off if need be. What more can be done? Ken is correct, this isn't a problem.
The GOP's voting suppression attempts in Ohio are simply a reaction to their fear of President Obama on the far right. We need to understand that taking away people's constitutional rights to voting are reprehensible and vile. The polls should have been kept open throughout the weekends so that people can go to the polls. Anytime the conservatives want to rollback voter rights they need to remember 2004 when Ohio had people waiting in line to vote for many hours.
Ohio should go to an all mail in ballot system of voting like Oregon and Washington state. We need to start registering all citizens to vote early on. We also need to move to public financing of all elections across the country. Nancy Pelosi has this one correct. We must pass laws that eliminate Super-PAC's and disclose the names of donors publicly. We must amend the constitution if necessary to rid the horrible draconian Citizens United law that allows corporations free speech rights. If corporations are people than Mississippi and Texas should be able to execute a corporation said Robert Reich at a rally a few years ago.
Rachael, and other msnbc hosts should get even tougher on the voter suppression issue. Some of these right wing legislators should be guilty of a crime against we the people. It shows how dirty the Repubs really are, and I'll bet they all claim to be Christian as well. To me, they are morally bankrupt. Somehow, the American public should be made aware of what would happen to our democracy if this is allowed by the Federal Government. Since the poor have no voice, the Repubs feel free to exclude them from voting.