Ohio is a crucial state in the November election. And Romney isn’t doing well enough there to win. The following analysis may have come from Karl Rove:
On the eve of the Republican convention, a senior strategist with a Republican “super PAC,” who would share the group’s strategic thinking only on the condition of anonymity, said Mr. Romney would need a “real surge” and “a reset to the dynamics there” to gain an edge over Mr. Obama in Ohio.
This is why the Republicans have been fighting so hard to eliminate early voting. But they’ve run into a problem there, too.
…the Republicans had a setback on Friday when a federal judge reversed a new state law that halted early voting on the weekend before Election Day. In 2008, that final weekend was seen as giving Mr. Obama an advantage, especially as African-American churchgoers organized trips to the polls on Sunday.
The early voting accounted for 100,000 ballots in 2008, roughly 2 percent of the total cast. That is no small number in such a hard-fought swing state, especially this year. Republicans said they would appeal the judge’s ruling.
For more than two weeks I had been working on developing a campaign to try to bring pressure on the Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted to drop his opposition to early voting. Then, right before we were ready to press the ‘go’ button, a federal judge ruled that the new Ohio law is unconstitutional. And, while the Ohio Republicans are appealing, once things get in the judicial arena, the opportunities for political action pretty much evaporate.
So, on the one hand, I wasted a lot of time and energy. On the other hand, at least for now, black folks in Ohio can vote after church on the Sunday before the election. And that really is what these voting changes are about. Whether it is limiting early voting or requiring a state-approved photo identification, or it’s purging the voter lists, to beat Obama it is not enough to get the Republican base out to vote. And, since the GOP is having almost no success in winning over Obama voters from 2008, their only path to victory is to suppress the Democratic vote. They have been trying to do that through the law, but they can do it in other ways, too. They can fail to supply an adequate number of voting machines, thereby creating long lines in urban areas. They can arbitrarily strike people off the registration rolls. They can send in hordes of “election observers” to harass and challenge people’s right to vote. Perhaps they can even hack into the vote tabulating computers in certain instances. The GOP will employ most if not all of these tactics in addition to the legal shenanigans they have already pursued.
The good news is that the Republicans have been consistently losing in court. Yet, court battles are not truly decided until the Supreme Court weighs in. With the Roberts Court, I don’t think either side can assume they will prevail in the end.
