Emails in which Secretary of State officials deliberate on which groups should receive an educational document containing information about the state’s new voting protocol go into impressive detail on Republican-aligned organizations — Second Amendment groups, Right to Life, Tea Party, Conservative Groups, hunters, YR [Young Republicans], the Republican-aligned National Federation of Independent Business, and the Ohio Voter Integrity Project (a voter-fraud focused group that has been accused of harassing voters) — and then simply lists “minority groups” with apparently just one specific example [the reference to Rev. Pierce]. At one point, the Secretary of State’s communications director asks whether the office should exclude all non-Republican legislators in the dissemination of voter education material.
“Why wouldn’t you send this to Democratic legislators?” asks Mike Brickner of the ACLU of Ohio, which last week filed a lawsuit on behalf of several civil rights groups and African-American churches asking a federal judge to strike Husted’s new restrictions on early voting. “The Secretary of State’s office should be providing this material to basically every group in the state that works with people who are 18 or older regardless of their background or their political beliefs. Looking at these lists there seems to be more emphasis on getting this voter educational material to what are traditionally conservative groups.”
Full Article: Exclusive: Ohio GOP’s secret voting scheme deliberations – Salon.com.