On Tuesday, the Supreme Court decided not to reinstate Ohio’s “Golden Week,” a period in which Ohio residents could register to vote and cast their ballots on the same day. It’s just the latest in a string of contentious voting rights issues in the Buckeye State. The Golden Week came into effect after the 2004 presidential election, when excessively long lines on Election Day disenfranchised Ohio voters. As Mother Jones explained in 2005:
It turns out the Franklin County Board of Elections had reduced the number of voting machines in urban precincts — which held more African American voters and were likely to favor John Kerry — and increased the number of machines in white suburban precincts, which tended to favor the president. As a result, as many as 15,000 voters in Franklin County left without casting ballots, the Washington Post estimated.
In response, the state instituted, among other reforms, a 35-day early voting period. Since the last day to register to vote in Ohio came 30 days before the elections, voters had a five-day window where they could simultaneously register and vote before the general registration deadline.
In 2008, more than 60,000 Ohio residents voted during the Golden Week; that number climbed to over 80,000 during the 2012 election, according to Cleveland.com. Despite the fact that same-day registration was widely used, the Ohio legislature voted to eliminate the Golden Week in 2014 — Secretary of State Jon Husted followed this up with a directive to cut voting hours on evenings and most Sundays — ostensibly to reduce voter fraud, save some money, and make the state’s election system more uniform.
But state Democrats claimed the Republican Party was simply suppressing votes. “Voters shouldn’t have to tip toe around a set of rules specifically tailored to throw out their ballots when exercising their most basic right as citizens. Explicitly or implicitly, this bill disenfranchises those among us who have historically been most disenfranchised,” Representative Dan Ramos told Cleveland.com at the time.
Meanwhile, Ohio Republicans accused state Democrats of playing politics. “We think they’re stoking these things for political gain. We think there’s an effort here to rally the Democratic base in a year that they otherwise wouldn’t be rallying,” Alex Triantafilou, chairman of Ohio’s Hamilton County Republican Party, told the New York Times.
Full Article: What the End of Ohio’s Golden Week Means for Minority Voters.