According to Fox News, Republicans have “Good news in Ohio.” What is that good news?
White share of the vote is up 3 points from four years ago, black share is down 7.
There’s no pretense about determining the party of these voters, just their race. And how did Ohio come to be such a sunny spot for Republicans in early voting? It was helped by a massive voter purge.
A recent Reuters report found that across Ohio's biggest cities -- Cleveland, Columbus, and Cincinnati -- a total of 144,000 had been removed from voter registration rolls, and that voters from Democratic-leaning neighborhoods were removed at roughly twice the rate as Republican-leaning neighborhoods.
How easy is it to get purged in Ohio? Very easy. Voters who turned out in 2008, but missed the 2012 election found they were already off the rolls when they showed up for elections last year. Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted’s office is also looking to throw out more votes over technical errors, like someone signing their name in cursive.
Do you live in a swing state? Get involved this weekend in door-to-door canvassing with MoveOn. Click here to find the event nearest you.
Purging voters and searching out more votes to reject is just a portion of the voter suppression tactics Republicans brought to bear this election cycle. Some of the items were smacked down by a judge, but Husted has led the way to making it more difficult to vote in Ohio.
About a decade ago, in response to a messy and needlessly complex voting system, Ohio created a vastly improved process for the state’s voters. In 2010, however, Republicans took control of Ohio government, deliberately undid the improvements, and by 2014, the state had imposed harsh new restrictions on voter registrations, absentee ballots, and early voting.
Now Fox’s “good news” includes some of the fruits of those harsh restrictions. The real news? That anyone thinks it’s good news when black people are kept from voting.
As the Dispatch’s report added, Watson ruled that Ohio’s recent voting restrictions imposed a disproportionate “burden on African Americans’ right to vote,” and violate both the U.S. Constitution and the 1965 Voting Rights Act.
No wonder Husted was quick to complain when Trump said the election was rigged against him.