9
Democracy Under Assault
While faculty across Ohio were trying to fend off the charter university initiative, the Republican legislature launched an attack on yet another front. This time the target was the people’s right to vote—confirmation that there were few ideas so bad that the Republicans in the Ohio legislature would not embrace them.
The Republicans passed several bills in 2011 that were designed to suppress the vote under the guise of eliminating fraud that did not exist. Chief among these was House Bill 194, introduced on April 12, 2011, which was a sweeping assault on voting rights. So seriously did we take this threat that progressive groups in Ohio created a new coalition, Fair Elections Ohio, to launch yet another petition drive. This drive would put HB 194 on the ballot to repeal, just like Senate Bill 5. The long and bitter struggle to defend voting rights in Ohio would carry on right through the 2012 election, as Republican Secretary of State Jon Husted gained a reputation for being the “Secretary of Suppression” because of his untiring efforts to suppress the vote in our presidential battleground state.1
Senate Bill 5 was, then, not just a one-dimensional fight to defend collective bargaining but a major battle in a war launched by right-wing ideologues to create a state as the chamber of commerce or multinational corporations would wish to have it.
Veteran House Republicans and ALEC members Rep. Louis Blessing and Rep. Robert Mecklenborg, both of the Cincinnati area, were the cosponsors of House Bill 194, which became popularly known as the “voter suppression act.” Readers will already know Rep. Blessing as one of the chief proponents of Senate Bill 5. Perhaps there is a certain consistency between trying to deny Ohioans their right to organize as well as their right to vote.
House Bill 194 was a sweeping reduction in the opportunity of Ohioans to vote. It would have cut early voting from 35 days before the election to 21 by mail and 17 in person. Most seriously, it also limited in-person voting before the election by barring it on Saturday afternoons, Sundays, and the three days before the election—the times most people tend to vote early.
A little background is useful to understand why Ohio had expanded the opportunities to vote after the 2004 election and just how ruthless was the attempt by the Ohio Republicans in 2011 to limit those opportunities. The expanded voting in Ohio was created specifically to address the rampant problems of the 2004 presidential election. George W. Bush won the state narrowly in an election filled with delays, extraordinarily long lines, and irregularities—many of which are directly traceable to the biased actions of Republican Ken Blackwell, who was then both Secretary of State in charge of the election and the head of the Bush-Cheney campaign in Ohio. Drawing on a detailed congressional report titled Preserving Democracy: What Went Wrong In Ohio, Mark Crispin of Harper’s Magazine did a careful evaluation of the 2004 election in the Buckeye State.2
Every Ohioan should own a copy of the report and commit to memory the offenses to fair elections committed in 2004. Too detailed to cover extensively here, a few excerpts from Crispin’s article make clear the scale of the problems generated by the Republicans in that election:
On September 7, based on an overzealous reading of an obscure state bylaw, [Blackwell] ordered county boards of elections to reject all Ohio voter-registration forms not “printed on white, uncoated paper of not less than 80 lb. text weight.” Under public pressure he reversed the order three weeks later, by which time unknown numbers of Ohioans had been disenfranchised.
Blackwell also targeted provisional ballots:
The Help America Vote Act—passed in 2002 to address some of the problems of the 2000 election—prevents election officials from deciding at the polls who will be permitted to cast provisional ballots, as earlier Ohio law had permitted. On September 16, Blackwell issued a directive that somehow failed to note that change. A federal judge ordered him to revise the language, Blackwell resisted, and the court was forced to draft its own version of the directive, which it ordered Blackwell to accept, even as it noted Blackwell’s “vigorous, indeed, at times, obdurate opposition” to compliance with the law.
Further, Crispin argues that the required recount of Ohio did not really take place because there so many irregularities in so many counties, including the suburban Cincinnati GOP stronghold of Warren County:
Blackwell did manage to ban reporters from a post-election ballot-counting site in Warren County because—election officials claimed—the FBI had warned of an impending terrorist attack there. The FBI said it issued no such warning, however, and the officials refused to name the agent who alerted them. Moreover, as the Cincinnati Enquirer later reported, email correspondence between election officials and the county’s building services director indicated that lockdown plans—“down to the wording of the signs that would be posted on the locked doors”—had been in the works for at least a week. Beyond suggesting that officials had something to hide, the ban was also, according to the report, a violation of Ohio law and the Fourteenth Amendment.
In response to the embarrassing debacle that was the 2004 election in Ohio, the state legislature in 2005 passed laws dramatically expanding early voting opportunities. Republicans were firmly behind enhancing the opportunity to vote—until the election of Barack Obama in 2008. Obama carried the Democratic centers in northern Ohio, and he also won Columbus. But a key to the victory was that, for the first time since the election of Lyndon Johnson in 1964, the Democratic presidential candidate won Hamilton County, where Cincinnati is located. And Obama won the usually Republican county by a good margin, 53 percent to 46 percent (a margin that he repeated in 2012).
The Republican voter suppression effort is rooted in the fact that, with high registration and turnout, the Republican Party is likely to lose statewide elections in Ohio. This was the lesson the Republicans learned in 2008, and it caused the GOP to go from support of expansion of voting access to restrictions on voting access. House Bill 194 was one of many bills that appeared in 2011 and 2012, not just in Ohio but across the country. The bills are linked to model legislation promoted by ALEC.3
House Bill 194 was adopted by the Republicans on May 18, 2011, by a strict party-line vote after a vigorous debate. The bill was introduced by Blessing, and Mecklenborg led the charge as chair of the Committee on State Government. Mecklenborg argued that there was nothing new in House Bill 194 and that the issues it covered had been “vetted” thoroughly. Rep. Ron Gerberry (D-Austintown) then rose to attempt to amend the bill. He noted that the new bill would make the provisional ballot form more complicated, since it would now be necessary to complete five places on a ballot rather than two, and he wanted to amend the bill to say that the information provided would be used only to identify the voter and not to invalidate the ballot if a mistake was made on the form.4
“We were told today that we were going to hear a lot of mistruths,” Gerberry said, adding, “Well, we started right out of the gate” referring to Mecklenborg’s comments. Gerberry denied that there had been an open process for House Bill 194, remarking, “There is a difference between ‘listening’ and ‘hearing.’” He noted that the day before, the committee had received 19 amendments to the bill that “we [the minority] didn’t know anything about.” The previous week, he noted, the Democrats had brought forward 21 amendments that “we felt were very, very important” and discussed them openly with their Republican colleagues. They were all rejected. The Democrats had offered seven or eight more amendments the day before the vote; “All of them were dismissed,” he said. “Now we will be criticized for standing on the floor and saying what this bill really does.”
“I find it ironic,” Gerberry said, “how the United States is so proud of its involvement in the building of democracies across the globe and how we stood proudly when we saw the Iraqis vote, but here in Ohio we are about to pass legislation that will make it more difficult to vote, will discourage people from voting.” He ridiculed the Republican use of the term “reform”: election reform, he argued, should make voting easier.
“What HB 194 says is that we want more participation, but only from certain people,” Gerberry said, referring to the fact that the restricted voting hours would reduce voting among traditionally Democratic voters—the elderly, the poor, and working people. “This bill is not about making it easier to vote,” he said, “but about finding ways to throw out ballots, lengthen voting lines in our urban centers, and further complicate the right to vote.” Now, he said, the legislature was creating a situation in which “if every voter does not cross their T’s and dot their I’s on the ballot, ‘We gotcha!’ because your vote won’t be counted.” Warning that this bill would likely lead to the same kind of election fiasco that Ohio had gone through in 2004, Gerberry concluded that he asked for the acceptance of his amendment and the defeat of House Bill 194. Mecklenborg countered that some Democratic ideas had been put into the bill, and he argued against Gerberry’s amendment because it linked voting and registration. Part of the Republican bill would eliminate “Golden Week,” that period in which voters can register and vote at the same time. Mecklenborg and other Republicans were strongly opposed to same-day registration and voting.
Rep. Ted Celeste (D-Grandview Heights) spoke next about what he called “the voter disenfranchisement bill,” a bill in sharp contrast with legislation considered earlier in the legislative session that sought to make business regulations and rules more simple and to promote common sense. A brother of former Democratic Ohio Gov. Richard Celeste, Rep. Celeste criticized one of the more ridiculous requirements of the bill, which said that poll workers did not need to provide help to voters at the polls. Imagine a business, he said with bewilderment, where employees were ordered not to help the customers. With all the talk from Republicans that government should be more like business, he said, this was an “amazing contradiction. That’s not like business.”
Rep. Matt Huffman (R-Lima), an ALEC Civil Justice Task Force member, introduced the thoroughly discredited arguments about voter fraud. As is true elsewhere in the country, voter fraud is not a problem in Ohio. Nevertheless, Huffman argued that the bill was designed to eliminate fraud that “occurred particularly in the election of 2008 that we know about”—of course, referencing President Barack Obama’s historic victory in Ohio. He also said that the amendment contained language that would allow Ohioans to vote anywhere in Ohio, not just in their precinct. On this basis, Huffman urged a no vote on the amendment.
While trying to discount the criticism of the amendment, Gerberry and Rep. Michael Stinziano (D-Columbus) denied that the bill established same-day registration. “Well, it doesn’t matter,” Gerberry said in exasperation, “You’re going to table it anyway.” Sure enough, Speaker Batchelder soon called for a vote, and the amendment was defeated, 54–38.
Rep. Kathleen Clyde (D-Kent) introduced another amendment. “Let’s call this bill what it really is,” Clyde said, “voter suppression.” Election reform, she said, should be a careful deliberative process with input from both sides of the aisle, and any election should be about the issues and the strongest candidate winning “with as many people participating in their government as possible.”
But House Bill 194 “seeks to accomplish just the opposite,” Clyde said. It changed the “rules of the game” to especially hurt certain groups of voters: elderly voters, urban voters, low-income voters, young voters. “That’s voter suppression,” Clyde emphasized. The bill was especially disturbing, she said, for two reasons. First, it obviously makes it harder for Ohioans to exercise their fundamental right to vote, by reducing the number of days one can vote early in-person from 35 to as few as 6. And eliminating the three days before Election Day is especially bad because they have been the biggest days for early voting. She also criticized the aggressive stripping of voters from the voter rolls. “Is it more important that we have a squeaky clean database or that we defend the fundamental right to vote,” she asked? The second major problem with the bill, Clyde pointed out, is that fewer votes will be counted because HB 194 purposely puts obstacles in the way of voters. It eliminates the requirement that poll workers direct voters to their correct precinct, and it makes the provisional ballot form more complicated, thus increasing the possibility of mistakes that would disqualify the vote. Moreover, poll workers would be prohibited from assisting with filling out the form unless voters could prove they are disabled. “I shudder at the thought of this provision,” Clyde said, shaking her head, adding the question: “Will there be literacy tests on hand?” She was referring to the racist Jim Crow laws used in the South during the segregation era to deny Black Americans the right to vote.
“In the spirit of compromise, even though that has been totally missing from this process,” Clyde proposed an amendment to expand in-person voting (though not back to the original days) to a much less drastic reduction in “something that has proved to be very successful.” Her amendment would also have allowed local boards of election to determine their hours rather than imposing reduced hours statewide.
Rep. Jim Buchy (R-Greenville) said that in recent weeks he had talked to the legislative chamber about history and about economics. “Today, I want to talk about civics,” he said, though he provided no evidence of expertise on these subjects. Buchy, an ALEC member, praised the “astute leadership” of Chairman Mecklenborg, whose committee had “vetted” the bill. “Voting is a sacred right, but with rights come responsibilities,” Buchy said. He harkened back to the days of his youth when voting by provisional ballot was rare and there were no early voting days. He voted for the first time in 1961. “It was your civic responsibility to make arrangements to vote on Election Day,” he said. But now, he argued, it has been made so easy to vote that “we have created a lot of opportunities for mayhem at the polls.” Like other Republicans, Buchy went on to incorrectly claim the existence of widespread voter fraud.
“We have the best system in the world to vote,” he said. “And here we are nitpicking on the false guise of disenfranchisement and suppression. That is not true,” Buchy said adamantly, arguing that it is voters’ responsibility to register correctly and vote correctly. “That is one of the precepts that we have as free Americans,” Buchy said, urging defeat of the amendment and passage of the bill. More than one Black representative during the debate pointed out that in 1961, the year Buchy fondly remembered voting for the first time, millions of Black Americans were denied the right to vote by “the best system in the world.”
Committee chair and cosponsor Mecklenborg urged that Clyde’s amendment be tabled. Huffman moved to table the amendment. Like Gerberry’s, the amendment was tabled by a 54–38 party-line vote.
“When we get these responses to our amendments, we get a little window into what went on in committee,” Rep. Matt Lundy (D-Elyria) said. He was especially critical of the process in Mecklenborg’s committee. Proponents of voter suppression were given all day to sing its praises, he said, but opponents who had traveled from all over the state were interrupted in their testimony and told to “just wrap it up.” Mecklenborg’s committee, Lundy maintained, could not even “demonstrate a reasonable and democratic process,” so it should come as no surprise that the committee had produced a bill that undermined voting rights.
“This bill should actually come with a warning label: ‘Warning: This is not about election reform. It is about voter prevention. Passage of this bill is hazardous to your vote counting in Ohio,’” Lundy said. He noted that if Ken Blackwell were still secretary of state—referring to Blackwell’s notorious involvement in the flawed election of 2004—he would have understood the motivation behind HB 194. “Let’s call this the ‘Back to Blackwell’ bill,” Lundy said, because it would produce long lines on election day and make it more difficult for votes to count. “Maybe we won’t go back to 1961, but we will certainly go back to 2004,” he observed.
Lundy noted that House Bill 194 followed right on the heels of what was known as the “poll tax bill.” Lundy was referring to House Bill 159, another nasty piece of Republican legislation that required Ohioans to acquire a photo ID in order to vote. An estimated 887,000 Ohioans did not have one of the government-issued IDs (which would not include college or university IDs). Of course only the rarest of the very rare examples of voter fraud involve in-person voting so, as critics of the bill pointed out, this bill was in search of a nonexistent problem and designed only to reduce the number of people voting. Given the likely unconstitutional nature of House Bill 159 and the widespread opposition on many fronts, including even Secretary of State Husted, the “poll tax bill” stalled in the Senate.
Rep. Bob Hagan (D-Youngstown) said, similarly, that House Bill 194 was a “weapon of mass deception.” He emphasized that there was no existing problem with voter fraud for HB 194 to fix. No board of elections in Ohio had sought this legislation, he emphasized.
“How can you pretend with a straight face that this is about election reform?” he asked directly of his Republican colleagues. “Who are you kidding? You know what this is about. All you are thinking about is the next election. Look in the mirror tonight and say, ‘I did it for the people of Ohio.’” He encouraged Republicans to be honest with the people who had elected them. Worried about the 2012 election, Hagan said, Republicans want fewer and fewer Democrats to vote. “Your history on the Republican side is real clear. This is happening in three or four states right now. You are getting this from on high. It is the [Karl] Rove issue. You are getting this from somewhere else. You should be ashamed of yourselves,” Hagan said, although he did not mention ALEC, the real source of these voter suppression bills. Hagan went on to cite the low numbers of Ohioans who actually vote, something the legislature should actually be concerned about.
“Subjugation, enchainment, and serfdom,” are words Rep. Tom Letson (D-Warren) used as dictionary synonyms for “disenfranchisement,” to describe the impact of House Bill 194. He proposed an amendment that would prevent ballots from being thrown out because of technicalities with the way they were filled out. Boards of elections could agree on the voter’s intent, he said. The Republicans promptly defeated this amendment.
“This is the Voter Suppression Act of 2011,” said Rep. Matt Szollosi (D-Toledo), and it was clearly an attempt to reduce voting in densely populated urban areas where many Democratic voters lived. From a policy standpoint, he maintained, it makes no sense to reduce in-person voting from 35 days to as little as 6 days or to bar in-person voting during the busiest time on the weekend before the election. But from a “political standpoint, it makes perfect sense,” especially in light of the other radical bills that were being introduced by the Republicans. “This is purely an attempt to suppress the vote and consolidate political power. This bill is bare-knuckled, in-your-face, political hardball, and has absolutely no place in Ohio law,” Szollosi concluded.
A series of Black legislators then attacked the bill and Republican motivations for pushing it through the state house. “I’ve tried to come up with a rationale for this bill but have come up with nothing,” said Rep. Sandra Williams (D-Cleveland). In fact, a thorough examination of the last several elections reveals no problems with voter fraud and no corruption at the polls. Indeed, despite the huge turnout, the election of 2008 had been one of the smoothest on record. “One of our most important duties is to approve bills that improve the lives of Ohioans. These [voter suppression] bills don’t even come close,” Williams said. “This is a blatant tactic to take away the constitutional rights of poor, low-income, elderly, and minority voters,” she said. “No matter how you look at it, this bill will set back equality, and voting rights, and social justice by 50 years,” she said.
Williams noted that while the Republicans had been passing voter suppression and union-busting laws since the session began, more than a quarter million Ohioans had filed for unemployment. “What happened to all the talk about jobs, jobs, jobs,” that got the Republican majority elected in 2010, she asked. “You’ve done nothing about jobs.”
Rep. Alicia Reece (D-Cincinnati) said she needed to voice the concerns of her constituents in Hamilton County because thus far only Rep. Mecklenborg and Rep. Blessing had spoken from the Cincinnati area. Reflecting back on comments about the responsibility to vote, she said that the new process made it likely that those who had fulfilled their responsibility to vote could still have their votes thrown out because of incorrectly filling out a form or some other technicality. And poll workers would no longer be required to help voters find the right place to vote. “We call them irresponsible. We say they are not worth being counted,” she said of those who might need help at the polls, ridiculing the idea. “I am for more access. I am for every eligible vote being counted.”
Rep. Bill Patmon (D-Cleveland) looked back to the Fifteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution that guaranteed former slaves the right to vote. Holding up the text, he read that the right to vote could not be “denied or abridged” by any state. “This bill goes a long way toward denying and abridging” the right to vote, Patmon said, and suggested that the courts would eventually rule against HB 194. Rep. James Barnes (D-Cleveland) remarked that his family comes from a small town in the Deep South, Aliceville, Alabama. His experience with segregation as a small boy was humiliating. At the root of overcoming such a system, he said, is the idea of one person, one vote. “How unreasonable can we be,” he asked. “We all took the same oath of office. Whatever happened to the notion of equal justice, equal opportunity?” He especially took aim at the bill’s provision that no longer required poll workers to help voters. “That is rigging an outcome,” Barnes said.
Rep. Terry Boose (R-Norwalk), ALEC member Rep. Ron Young (R-Leroy Township), Rep. Andrew Brenner (R-Delaware), Rep. Jarrod Martin (R-Beavercreek and member of the ALEC Public Safety and Elections Task Force), and Rep. Cheryl Grossman (R-Grove City and member of the ALEC-Commerce, Insurance, and Economic Development Task Force) all defended the bill by focusing on voter responsibility and minimizing the obstacles presented by House Bill 194.
Rep. Boose, an ALEC Tax and Fiscal Task Force member, said the urban legislators had no monopoly on poor people. His rural district had plenty of poor and unemployed. “I’m tired of hearing that it’s you guys and your districts getting abused by this,” he said. “You’ve said twice that the current system favors the Democratic vote,” he said, countering that Republicans were only making the system fair. “This bill is not discriminatory. It makes us equal,” he said, apparently not recognizing the concept of “one man, one vote.”
Rep. Michael Stinziano (D-Columbus and member of the ALEC Communications and Technology Task Force), a director of the Franklin County Board of Elections, noted many flaws with the bill. He suggested an amendment allowing counties that wish to, to mail out absentee ballot applications. It has been a proven winner in counties that do it, he said. Elections are already not equal county by county, so this local option would not change that situation. Among those who spoke against Stinziano’s amendment was Terry Boose, who, bizarrely, suggested that asking all counties to mail out applications was imposing a “poll tax” on rural areas. Apparently agreeing with Boose’s strange suggestion, the Republican majority tabled the Stinziano amendment by the same party-line vote.
Later amendments proposed by Rep. Reece (D-Cincinnati), Rep. Charleta Tavares (D-Columbus), and Rep. Theresa Fedor (D-Toledo) that aimed to reduce some of the worst abuses of the bill were also defeated by a party-line vote. Debate was closed by a nearly party-line vote, and a final vote was taken to approve the voter suppression bill, 53–39.
On June 23, 2011, the bill was introduced to the Senate. As Sen. Mark Wagoner (R-Toledo) said as he introduced the bill, the version considered now by the Senate included some minor adjustments and reflected the will of both GOP-dominated bodies.
Sen. Shirley Smith (D-Cleveland) minced no words. “We all know this bill is discriminatory, racist, and disingenuous,” she said, and continued in a powerful statement that deserves to be quoted in full:
The oppressive language is without cause and totally unnecessary because there is no evidence of widespread voter fraud. This bill is part of a national Republican agenda, and Ohio is caught in the crosshairs. The Republicans are stacking the deck in order to deliver a 2012 win to their party by, what Malcolm X would call, “any means necessary.” Diehard Republican operatives are working hard to conjure up ways to disenfranchise poor minority voters and pimp the political process for their own gain. I cannot say enough how ashamed I am to say that I am a member of a body that engages in such shenanigans to keep control of a mess of our government that, in fact, they created and continue to perpetuate by the same types of public policy that it is proposing today.
She concluded:
The fight for equal rights began long ago, and it continues today. We don’t care how many beads you make us count, we don’t care how many bubbles we have to count in a bar of soap, and we don’t care what kind of literacy test or poll tax you subject us to, we will prevail. What you’ve done is awakened a sleeping giant. And we will do whatever we need to do. We’ll rise up to the occasion. Poor people, Black people, Latino people, will show you that no matter what you do, your tricks and games will not triumph. They have not in the past, and they will not now. I urge a no vote on this bill.
Sen. Nina Turner (D-Cleveland), after dismantling the bill piece by piece, said that partisanship is part of politics, but it should not be part of drafting election laws:
Partisanship on these issues erodes confidence in our democracy. How can there be a partisan way to approach elections laws? Well, in Ohio, we’ve found out today . . . Over the course of a few months, we’ve dealt with bills that take away people’s rights to collectively bargain, unfair budget bills that take away people’s jobs, and now today we are dealing with election regressions that will take away people’s voices. This new reality in Ohio is not only unfortunate, it should be unacceptable.
The Senate approved House Bill 194, passing it by a party-line vote of 23–10. It was sent to the governor’s office on July 1, 2011, and Gov. Kasich signed it the same day.
Organized by Fair Elections Ohio, in a replay of our successful Senate Bill 5 drive, thousands of volunteers fanned out across the state in an effort to defend voting rights. This time we had the advantage of already having many trained volunteers. Nevertheless, the campaign against the union-busting legislation and the charter university concept was inducing some fatigue in our volunteers, and signature-gathering this time went a bit more slowly than before. I have to admit being among those who thought: “What? We have to do this again? And to protect something so basic as our access to the vote?” Nevertheless, once again the massive signature-gathering drive kicked off and gained momentum.
At the University of Toledo, supporters of both repeals, SB 5 and HB 194, rallied together on Oct. 12, 2011. “We wanted to make a connection between Issue 2, which attacks democratic rights, such as the right to have union representation, and House Bill 194, the voter suppression act, which damages democracy,” Mark Sherry, a professor of sociology, told The Toledo Blade. The story featured a photograph of a UT custodian giving a “No on 2” button to a student.5
On July 18, the first one thousand signatures were submitted, and ten days later, the secretary of state’s office certified those first thousand signatures, which gave our organization until September 29, 2011, to gather enough signatures to put the bill on the ballot for the November 2012 election. Importantly, this meant that House Bill 194 would not be able to restrict voting in either the 2011 or 2012 general elections. Not surprisingly, we were successful in gathering enough signatures to put House Bill 194 on the November 2012 ballot. Secretary of State Jon Husted announced on December 9, 2011, that our coalition had submitted 307,358 valid signatures, more than the 231,150 needed.6
Clearly, the Ohio GOP feared that another referendum in 2012 would bring out Democratic, and independent voters angry with the actions of the Republican legislature in restricting voting access. Early in 2012, rumors began to spread of a bizarre plan forged by Ohio Republicans trying to prevent a—to borrow a Bushism—“thumping” at the polls. There ensued a very confusing effort that would generate a battle over access that would continue right through the 2012 election.
Republicans introduced Senate Bill 295, which would repeal House Bill 194, except for one of its most egregious restrictions, the ban on early voting during the three days before the election—perhaps the most crucial time, when a high percentage of early votes are cast. In a perceptive editorial, the Akron Beacon Journal correctly called this a “sneak attack.” The paper went on to encourage a “clean repeal” of House Bill 194 so that Democrats and Republicans could get a fresh start on potential reforms.7
Finally, on May 8, 2011, Ohio Republicans accomplished an historic first: for the first time in Ohio history, the legislature repealed a bill that was up for a vote of the people on a referendum. Democrats were outraged and unanimously opposed the repeal, which nevertheless passed by a 54–42 vote. “By taking the action that we’re proposing to take today, we discourage people in the future from taking advantage of the initiative and referendum right,” Rep. Dennis Murray, a Democrat from Sandusky, said on the House floor, as The Cleveland Plain Dealer reported. “This goes fundamentally to the question of who it is in this state that holds the power of government. I think that’s the people of this state, and I think the action we’re taking today violates the constitution.”9
Although confusion reigned at the time, in the end House Bill 194 did not appear on the 2012 ballot, but the impact Republicans had in attempting to restrict the vote for those Ohioans who make up the Democratic Party base, the urban voters, undoubtedly spurred the high voter turnout for the 2012 election, when President Obama won reelection in large part because of his victory in Ohio.
One aspect of this episode should be shared before moving on. It was revealed during the campaign against HB 194 that Rep. Robert Mecklenborg, cosponsor of the voter suppression bill and the man who chaired the committee that introduced it, would soon be gone from the Ohio legislature. Although the news only became public in July, on April 23, just days after the introduction of House Bill 194, Rep. Mecklenborg had been arrested for DUI. He resigned in the wake of the incident.[9]
This is not to focus on the troubles of a particular individual. It does, however, shine a bright light on the flawed judgment of those who would try so ruthlessly to deprive thousands of Ohioans of their Constitutional right of access to the polls. Ohioans expect and deserve better judgment from those who occupy seats in the legislature.10