Today:
WASHINGTON — Republicans will be nominating their 2016 standard-bearer for the White House in Cleveland.
Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus announced Tuesday that Cleveland beat Dallas to host the party's 2016 convention, which could bring millions of dollars to the Ohio city.
"We're excited about bringing the convention to Cleveland and Ohio," Priebus said on Fox News, as he discussed the city's downtown renaissance. "It's a smart decision."
2012:
[A] mailer was sent out by GOP election officials in Ohio informing voters that election day was November 8. A similar mailing, targeting Spanish language voters in Arizona, also said that election day was November 8. In Cleveland, Clear Channel Communications had sponsored billboards threatening those convicted of voter fraud with felony arrest and significant jail time. Unsurprisingly, these billboards were placed in predominantly Hispanic and Black neighborhoods. After a significant outcry, Clear Channel did agree to take down the billboards, which were paid for by an anonymous donor that refused to disclose itself.
And there were more cute GOP tricks that year:
Now, in heavily Democratic cities like Cleveland, Columbus, Akron and Toledo, early voting hours [were] limited to 8 am until 5 pm on weekdays beginning on October 1, with no voting at night or during the weekend, when it’s most convenient for working people to vote. Republican election commissioners have blocked Democratic efforts to expand early voting hours in these counties, where the board of elections are split equally between Democratic and Republican members. Ohio Republican Secretary of State Jon Husted has broken the tie by intervening on behalf of his fellow Republicans. (According to the Board of Elections, 48%* of early voters in Franklin County voted early on nights or weekends, which Republicans have curtailed. The number who voted on nights or weekends was nearly 50% in Cuyahoga County.)
The
rationale was obvious:
The real story from Ohio is how cutbacks to early voting will disproportionately disenfranchise African-American voters in Ohio’s most populous counties. African-Americans, who supported Obama over McCain by 95 points in Ohio, comprise 28 percent of the population of Cleveland’s Cuyahoga County but accounted for 56 percent of early voters in 2008, according to research done by Norman Robbins of the Northeast Ohio Voter Advocates and Mark Salling of Cleveland State University.
They played the suppression game to the very last possible minute:
In an order to election officials on Friday night [the weekend before the election], Husted shifted the burden of correctly filling out a provisional ballot from the poll worker to the voter, specifically pertaining to the recording of a voter’s form of ID, which was previously the poll worker’s responsibility. Any provisional ballot with incorrect information will not be counted...[.]
The
fallout was, as intended, confusion:
In Cuyahoga County (Cleveland) and Franklin County (Columbus), voters who requested absentee ballots were wrongly told they were not registered to vote and should cast provisional ballots. The Cuyahoga County Board of Elections quickly followed up with 865 such voters, but in Franklin County a sample of rejected absentee ballot requests found that 38 percent were mistakenly listed as “not registered,” according to an analysis by Norman Robbins of Northeast Ohio Voter Advocates
While Obama won Ohio in 2012 that didn't stop the Republicans. Efforts to prevent Ohioans from voting
have continued apace this year:
Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted announced Tuesday he is cutting early voting on Sundays and weekday evenings, dealing another blow to the voting rights effort in the nation’s most pivotal swing state.
Husted’s change would spell doom for a voting method that’s popular among African-Americans in Ohio and elsewhere. Many churches and community groups lead “Souls to the Polls” drives after church on the Sunday before the election.
There’s little doubt that cuts to early voting target blacks disproportionately. In 2008, black voters were 56% of all weekend voters in Cuyahoga County, Ohio’s largest, even though they made up just 28% of the county’s population.
The news comes days after Republican Gov. John Kasich signed two GOP-backed bills that cut six more days from the early voting period, end same-day registration and make it harder to vote absentee. Together, the restrictions could significantly reduce minority turnout this fall and in 2016.
And of course, Voter ID is
back on the front burner in Ohio:
Ohio Republicans have already imposed a slew of voting restrictions in the nation’s most pivotal swing state. But now, they may be gearing up for a renewed push on the most contentious tactic of all: voter ID.
The Ohio Christian Alliance (OHA), a conservative group, said last week they’re launching a campaign aimed at getting a voter ID measure passed, either by the legislature or by voters themselves. The effort is already giving heart to Republican voter ID supporters.
Republican efforts to keep Ohioans from voting
are nothing new:
An investigation by Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.) and Democratic committee staff concluded that Ohio's voting disaster in 2004 was "caused by intentional misconduct and illegal behavior, much of it involving Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell." Long lines, faulty voting machines, onerous barriers for voter registration, a rigged recount—anything that could go wrong in Ohio did on Election Day 2004.
The
Mother Jones article quotes
Rolling Stone:
The most extensive investigation of what happened in Ohio was conducted by Rep. John Conyers, the ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee. Frustrated by his party's failure to follow up on the widespread evidence of voter intimidation and fraud, Conyers and the committee's minority staff held public hearings in Ohio, where they looked into more than 50,000 complaints from voters. In January 2005, Conyers issued a detailed report that outlined "massive and unprecedented voter irregularities and anomalies in Ohio." The problems, the report concludes, were "caused by intentional misconduct and illegal behavior, much of it involving Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell."
"Blackwell made Katherine Harris look like a cupcake," Conyers told me. "He saw his role as limiting the participation of Democratic voters. We had hearings in Columbus for two days. We could have stayed two weeks, the level of fury was so high. Thousands of people wanted to testify. Nothing like this had ever happened to them before."
While hosting the GOP convention will undoubtedly provide an economic boost to their City, it's impossible to ignore the fact that Ohio voters, and Cleveland voters in particular, have been been subjected for over a decade to a concerted, deliberate effort by the GOP to prevent them from voting. The degree of cynicism and contempt exhibited by the GOP in this choice of Convention sites is also impossible to ignore.
We should not ignore it. Democrats should make voter suppression and the racism that underlies it the subtext of the 2016 GOP Convention. Hopefully the spectre of the GOP actively celebrating in their city while continuing to work towards suppressing their right to vote will motivate Ohioans to demonstrate their displeasure during this Convention.
Assuming they can be heard across the buffer zones.