Ohio's John Husted had done everything in his power leading up to the election to turn the electoral votes in Ohio for Mitt Romney. Notably, constantly playing with the early voting days. On Jansing & Co. he was called the Secretary of Supression.
“Let us not forget that he is the secretary of state in this state who appealed all the way to the United States Supreme Court to try to take away the last three days of early voting,” Turner told MSNBC host Chris Jansing. “It’s laughable now that he wants to try and stand up and be the agent, when he tried to suppress every single vote in this state. He is the secretary of suppression, make no doubt about it.”
Husted, a Republican, did indeed file an appeal with the high court when he was ordered to open up the polls on the weekend before Election Day.
After the Supreme Court refused to take his case, Husted ordered election officials not to fill out a section on provisional ballots confirming what kind of identification voters provided, a move that led to an emergency lawsuit against his administration.
Now Husted has proposed a plan at his post election presser where he has an idea that would make Ohio 'less important' in the election.
Today, at the Impact Ohio conference, Jon Husted said something incredibly newsworthy that we haven’t seen reported anywhere.
Defending his performance managing Ohio’s election, Husted argued that because of the high stakes involved with being an electoral vote-rich swing state, Ohio’s elections chief is always scrutinized and criticized. (Funny, we don’t remember that happening in 2008, but that’s beside the point).
Husted’s solution to this perceived problem of Democrats and the national media picking on him? He says we should make Ohio less important in the election by dividing up our electoral votes by Congressional district.
This is huge and should raise giant red flags. Under the current winner-take-all system, Obama won all 18 of Ohio’s electoral votes. Under Husted’s plan, 12 of those 18 electoral votes would be handed to Mitt Romney, the popular vote loser.
The reason for this is Ohio's ridiculously gerrymandered districts to favor Republicans.
Dave Weigel at Slate explains what a bad idea this would be.
I can't overstate how disastrous this would be. Instead of a small chance of a popular vote/electoral vote split, you'd have, every four years, multiple chances for a majority of voters to support one candidate, but partisan gerrymanders handing the election to the loser. It would slant the election away from urban areas and give disproportionate powers to rural areas. You couldn't come up with a more tenacious assault on one-man-one-vote. Don't do it, people.
As it turned out President Obama's electoral strategy worked, his Midwest firewall held and he swept all but NC of the swing states. But Ohio was a must win for Romney and this could have given him a path to success.
Husted tried everything he possibly could to give Ohio to Romey, just like Jeb to GWB in 2000, and his continued persistence illustrates their determination, since they can't win with votes, to win by any other means possible.
Welcome to the GOP playbook. If you can't win fair and square, change the rules.