Democrats are sounding the alarm over Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose’s ® decision to purge almost 27,000 voters from the rolls after early voting had already begun.
I wish so much that this type of headline would end with “Leads to Federal Election Tampering Charges”.
I’m going to be pedantic and technical but it would be state not federal but it would make me very happy to see the DOJ investigate disenfranchisement strategies like this
Larose has been trying to fuck up the election the whole time. Hope they put this piece of shit behind bars. Republicans know they are in the minority and are trying desparately to hang on to power any way they can and rule against the will of the people.
Ohio has been consistently trending red unfortunately. Let’s hope this starts the opposite trend.
Please remember we are gerrymandered to the hilt in Ohio. Elections are not reflecting the general populace.
Which is part of my point about republicans clinging on to power by any means necessary.
My understanding is that gerrymandering affects house and state legislature elections. The Senate and ballot initiatives shouldn’t be affected by gerrymandering because they aren’t decided by drawn districts. Unless I’m mistaken somehow.
You are correct, if elections happened in a vacuum. But disenfranchisement (which is the goal of gerrymandering) has a broader effect on things like voter turnout. So it’s more of an indirect effect that drives voter apathy.
Voter apathy is in my opinion the most dangerous thing in American politics
those gerrymandered state legislative elections do affect state-wide votes because those are the people that make their state’s election and voter registration laws.
Perhaps there’s an indirect influence but you can’t argue gerrymandering has the same effect on statewide elections that it has on district races, right?
It does, it has a cooling effect. It takes a lot of voter will to overcome that cooling effect.
I would argue that’s the definition of an indirect influence.
Thats my understanding too, well put.
Last I heard they had a ballot initiative to do an independent citizens redistricting council. It’s what happened in Michigan to turn it blue and I think some of the same people and elements were behind it down there. If that’s still the case it could be more than their right to control women’s bodies on the line, which could explain how blatant and desperate this is.
Edit: I looked it up, the state dragged it’s feet so it didn’t make it on this year. 2024 hopefully!
They should have been ralsed better than that.
I feel this is objectively bad, but I also get called every cycle about Ohio elections and I haven’t lived there for 15 years. I would speculate that these voters were purged from more left leaning areas, while I lived in a right. Maybe they just don’t care about “safe” right areas?
