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Obama
Election Manipulation in Swing State Ohio
by Matthew Vadum
An
Ohio election law that eliminated an unfair
advantage enjoyed by the Obama campaign has been struck down by an
unelected
federal judge under the guise of fairness.
The
heavy-handed court ruling probably gives
the Obama campaign an edge in the vitally important battleground state.
Acceding
to a lawsuit from the Obama campaign,
part-time, semi-retired liberal judge Peter C. Economus last week
voided
provisions of an election reform law enacted in Ohio last year that
gave
military personnel extra time to vote in person.
Although
the U.S. Constitution says nothing
about early voting –in-person or otherwise– Economus ruled that Ohio’s
new
early voting legislation violates the Equal Protection Clause of the
Fourteenth
Amendment by giving military personnel an extra three days of in-person
early
voting. This amounts to a denial of non-soldiers’ “right to participate
equally” in elections, wrote Economus, who was named to the post by
President
Clinton in 1995.
In
2011 Ohio enacted election reforms aimed at
reducing long lines and giving poll workers an extra few days to update
voter
rolls. The new law eliminated in-person early voting on the weekend
before
Election Day and made the in-person early voting period uniform
throughout the
state.
The
Ohio legislation removed Democrats’ unfair
urban voting advantage. This standardization of early in-person voting
days
throughout Ohio had the effect of taking away three days for early
in-person
voting before Election Day that voters in only six, densely populated,
Obama-leaning counties, had enjoyed.
Instead
of all voters in those six Democratic
counties being allowed to vote in the final days before Election Day,
the new
Ohio law allowed only the relatively few registered voters covered by
the
federal Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voter Act to vote
early
in-person up until the day before Election Day.
According
to conservative commentator Mark
Hyman, the Obama campaign’s lawsuit has never been about equal access
to the
polls. It was calculated to “give a voting advantage to Obama
strongholds” in a
vote-rich swing state.
In
the 2008 general election, in-person early
voting was permitted in the five weeks leading up to Election Day. Of
Ohio’s 88
counties, 66 voted for Republican John McCain. The other 22 counties
voted for
Barack Obama.
Only
six counties in the state opened their
polling places the weekend before Election Day. All six were heavily
populated
and were carried by Obama. Those counties were Cuyahoga, Franklin,
Hamilton,
Lucas, Montgomery and Summit within whose boundaries are the cities of
Cleveland, Columbus,Cincinnati, Toledo, Dayton, and Akron,
respectively, Hyman
notes.
“Ohio
is a swing state,” notes Hyman. “Whatever
happens there affects us all.”
Commenting
on the court decision, Ohio Attorney
General Mike DeWine said the federal government should not micromanage
elections at the state level. “We believe states should have some
ability to
set powers of election,” he said. “Unless we’re going to turn this
entirely
over to the federal (government) to determine Ohio voting, we have no
choice
but to appeal this.”
DeWine
said Americans have always made special
accommodations for military personnel.
“Since
the time of Civil War we’ve made a
distinction in this country between the availability and access for
people who
are in the military versus the rest of us to vote. And we made that
distinction
because of the unique situation people in the military are in,” DeWine
said.
“This (law) is not anything new.”
DeWine,
a former U.S. senator, said he plans to
appeal the order because “My job as attorney general is to defend the
laws of
the state of Ohio and to defend the right of the state of Ohio to set
its own
rules and its own laws.”
Former
Justice Department lawyer J. Christian
Adams said the ruling was “a blatantly political decision and judicial
activism
at its worse.”
“Disregarding
precedent and upending state law,
the liberal federal judge, at the stroke of a pen, increased the early
voting
period for a three day period across the state, imposing additional
duties and
an unfunded mandate on local and state election officials without any
authority,” said Adams, author of Injustice: Exposing the Racial Agenda
of the
Obama Justice Department.
Strangely,
no outside groups such as the ACLU,
Demos, NAACP, or ACORN-affiliated Project Vote participated in the Ohio
case
alongside the three plaintiffs Obama for America, Democratic National
Committee, and the Ohio Democratic Party. Not one left-wing group even
filed an
amicus brief.
But
underscoring the importance of this issue
to America’s fighting men and women a battalion of pro-soldier groups
including
AMVETS, Army Reserve Association, Marine Corps League, National
Association for
Uniformed Services, Non Commissioned Officers Association of the USA,
Special
Forces Association, and the U.S. Army Ranger Association Inc., all
intervened
as defendants in the case.
Obama’s
lead counsel in the lawsuit is Robert
F. Bauer of the law firm Perkins Coie. Known for his in-your-face
approach to
lawyering, in 2008 Bauer asked the Department of Justice to prosecute
Obama
critics and fine television stations for running an ad about Obama’s
close
personal friendship with Weather Underground terrorist Bill Ayers.
Bauer has
been instrumental in whitewashing Obama’s radical roots by filing
lawsuits
keeping a bewildering array of the president’s personal papers hidden
away. In
2008 Bauer claimed that John McCain engaged in voter suppression merely
by
criticizing ACORN.
Perkins
Coie is one of the Obama reelection
campaign’s biggest vendors, generating just under $2.3 million in legal
bills –
a number that is bound to shoot up even higher as Obama’s legal warfare
escalates between now and Election Day.
Source:
FrontPageMag
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