Early voting in Ohio was supposed to start tomorrow, a full 35 days before Election Day. But today, the U.S. Supreme Court, by a 5-4 majority allowed the state to carry out voting law as passed by the legislature instead of what a group of misnamed "civil rights" groups wanted.
The final paragraph of Ann Sanner's Associated Press coverage of the ruling illustrated how absurd this controversy has become. It related to the lower court ruling the Supremes reversed, and showed that to so many members of the press and public, world history apparently started less than a decade ago.
Here is that final paragraph:
On Sept. 4, (U.S. District Judge Peter) Economus sided with the plaintiffs' request for a preliminary injunction and said the measures were unconstitutional and in violation of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. The state is appealing to the full 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati.
Let's absorb that for a second.
Ohio had no early voting of any kind until 2006. The system was simple: Vote on Election Day or vote absentee if you had a valid excuse out of a list about ten possible reasons for doing so. No one complained until a George Soros-backed group attempted to impose an early-voting and redisctricting regime on the state through the initiative process. The "Reform Ohio Now" initiatives went down by 2-1 margins.
Nevertheless, Ohio's current voting regime is about as easy as can be — too easy, in yours truly's opinion:
During the 41 years after the Voting Rights Act's passage, no court ruled that Ohio's election system violated. Now, according to activist judge and Clinton appointee Economus, having 28 days of early voting instead of 35 does. Don't try to make any sense of that, because it makes none.
Ann Sanner of the Associated Press apparently has no idea how absurd Economus was, or simply didn't care to note how Ohio election law worked, and perfectly legally, for over four decades. She's hardly alone among journalists.
Cross-posted at BizzyBlog.com.
