Ohio State Legislature repeals part of House Bill 194 state law that slashes time for early voting this November in half by passing replacement law dubbed Senate Bill 295 that allows some early voting but keeps provision to stop early in person voting the weekend before presidential election, Congresswoman Fudge, community activists, voting rights and Civil Rights advocates demand that weekend voting be allowed, activists say Republicans are pushing last minute state laws in Ohio to silence Black, Democratic vote for Obama in Ohio, ballot initiative to seek to repeal HB194 by Ohio voters will allegedly go forward for November general election
COLUMBUS, Ohio-The Republican controlled Ohio State Legislature passed a state law on Tues. titled Senate Bill 295 that repeals parts of a controversial election law dubbed House Bill 194 that the same group of lawmakers passed last year that restricts early voting and makes other changes, though the new law permits some early voting but keeps intact the old law's provision against it the weekend before the November general election, a measure that Democrats say should motivate Ohioans to vote to repeal HB194 at the November ballot box this year.
"HB 194 was an attack on voting rights and should never have been enacted in the first place,” said U.S. Rep. Marcia L. Fudge, a Warrenvillle Hts Democrat who, though a federal lawmaker, has been in the forefront on the bi-partisan state legislative issue, one deemed by Civil Rights leaders and voting rights advocates as a blatant attempt to restrict voting opportunities to hurt the poor and Black communities, groups that Republicans routinely target to disenfranchise in Ohio and elsewhere during presidential election season. “While I am pleased that Ohio voters will now be spared from measures that cut the early voting period in half, make it harder to vote by mail or find the correct precinct, it should be noted SB 295 is not a full repeal. It leaves intact the ban on early voting in the three days prior to an election. If Ohio lawmakers truly wanted to make the ballot accessible to all, this restriction must be removed as well.”
After previously passing the Senate, SB295 passed 54-42 this week in The Ohio House of Representatives, with the Democrats unanimously opposing it.
It now heads to Republican Gov. John Kasich, who is watering at the mouth in approving it, allegedly with the hope that the new law will bring the Republicans more votes from Ohio during a presidential election year by precluding weekend voting.
Whether the new law (SB295) is legal since it restricts early in person voting and that issue, among others , is also before Ohio voters via the old law (HB19), and state law requires that HB 194 must be put on hold and not implemented because it will be before Ohio voters in November, is not clear.
Republican state legislators claim that their anti-voting rights scheme is constitutional and statutorily valid, and that in passing SB295 the state legislature has, in effect, rendered the November ballot initiative null and void, a posture that the Democrats disagree with.
Never in America’s history has a state legislature passed a new election law as Ohio lawmakers did Tues. to try to circumvent the authority of Ohio voters to potentially repeal a previous state law on the matter at the ballot box, an indication, say political pundits, of how serious the presidential election has become, and a hint that the Republicans are fighting tooth and nail to try to oust the nation's first Black president from the White House by any means necessary.
“SB295 is a new law that the Republicans passed to try to stop the repeal of HB194 in November because since HB194 is on the ballot it will likely bring out more voters for President Obama and Senator Sherrod Brown,” said Larry Bresler a voting rights and poor people’s advocate who leads Organize Ohio and the Northeast Ohio Poor People’s Economic Human Rights campaign, and who helped organize activists that attended a U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee Hearing in Cleveland on Mon. for testimony before Brown and U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois on the pros and cons of voter suppression state laws such as SB295 and HB194 that are popping up around the country.
Reach Journalist Kathy Wray Coleman at editor@clevelandurbannew.com and by phone at 216-932-3114.
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