Voter suppression is alive and well in Ohio

Voting rights advocates in the Buckeye State are rightly opposed to Ohio House Bill 294 which is designed to place additional limits on access to the ballot.

The bill is defended by the usual conservative talking points about “securing the ballot.” But the bill is also part of a nationwide conservative reaction to President Joe Biden’s defeat of Donald Trump in the recent general election. The aptly-named Wallbuilders and the well-know American Legislative Exchange Council, two right-wing bill mills, have enabled a proliferation of voter suppression bills like HB 294. There are some positive things about HB 294 but it contains restrictions on requests for ballots and early voting. Instead of expanding the popular use of ballot drop boxes, the bill seeks to limit the access to the boxes.

But to understand the Ohio situation, it is useful understand our historical context. Expanded voting options were created after the 2004 election to address rampant problems that occurred. George W. Bush won Ohio narrowly in an election filled with delays, extraordinarily long lines, and irregularities — many of which were directly traceable to the biased actions of Republican Ken Blackwell, who was head of the Bush-Cheney Campaign in Ohio as well as Ohio secretary of state in charge of the election.

Coming out of the state’s embarrassing debacle, the legislature in 2005 passed laws to expand early voting opportunities. Chastened by their actions in 2004, Republicans were firmly behind the democratic reforms — that is, until Barack Obama was elected in 2008. Then, just like today, the Republicans launched an ambitious campaign to restrict voting access.

House Bill 194 was a radical bill. It would have cut back drastically early voting and also reduced mail-in voting. Mostly importantly, it would have eliminated the days right before the election as well as Saturday afternoons and Sundays. It clearly seemed to be targeting the times when large numbers of African-American voters go to the polls. More bizarrely, the bill even failed to require poll workers to help people vote at the polls, such a directing them to the correct precinct. With Republican majorities, the bill passed both houses by a party line vote and Gov. Kasich signed it into law on July 1, 2011, almost exactly a decade ago. Debates in both the House and Senate were harsh just as they have been recently. There is no little irony in the fact that the two bill numbers are so similar — House Bill 194 in 2011, House Bill 294 in 2021.

Of course, Biden didn’t win Ohio like Obama did but Ohio Republicans nevertheless seem to be reacting in a similar way after a Democratic presidential victory and are taking another bite at the apple with House Bill 294.

It is important to understand what happened in the wake of the passage of what was dubbed by its opponents, “The Voter Suppression Act of 2011.”

Organized by Fair Elections Ohio, people across the state stepped up to defend the right to vote and repeal House Bill 194 by referendum. Thousands of volunteers spread out across the state. Organizers had until Sept. 29 to gather signatures. The work went fast since many of those working on this campaign had worked on repealing union-busting Senate Bill 5. According to the law, volunteers had to gather at least 231,150 valid signatures to put the bill on the November 2012 ballot. On Dec. 9, 2011, Secretary of State Jon Husted certified that the campaign had submitted 307,358 valid signatures and would be on the ballot for potential repeal by the people of Ohio.

Clearly, the Ohio GOP feared that the referendum in 2012 would bring more Democrats and independent voters, angry with the restrictions on voting, to the polls and assist another Obama victory. So the Republicans took an historic action. For the first time in state history, a bill was repealed by the Ohio legislature before it went into effect. Democrats were opposed to the Republican repeal because they viewed it as an effort to prevent the people of Ohio from expressing their opposition to voter suppression. Nevertheless, on May 8, Republican majorities repealed the HB 194, the restrictive legislation they had passed only months earlier with great fanfare.

What is the lesson that should be learned from this earlier attack on voting rights? It seems clear that restrictions on the right to vote are not supported by most Ohioans and both parties should, together, be looking for ways to expand voting access and not restrict it. The Ohio legislature should not be going rogue but should listen to Ohioans.