Secretary of State Jon Husted's efforts to appear as a "Reasonable Republican," are being destroyed by his wild use of demagoguery in explaining his Hunter v Hamilton ruling.
After federal judge Susan J. Dlott made her ruling in the Hunter v Hamilton County Board of Elections case, reported here, that 300 additional provisional votes must be counted, the Hamilton Board split — 2 Republicans v 2 Democrats — on whether the ruling should be appealed. Now Republican Secretary of State Jon Husted has agreed with the two Republicans that the case should be appealed to the Supreme Court.
Secretary Husted said in a statement that he agreed with the GOP members of the board that Dlott’s ruling should be appealed, because he had to take a stand “on principle rather than expediency.” Nice sounding words. But, his reasons for choosing to appeal the decision, so far as I can tell, makes no sense.
Judge Dlott’s 93 page explanation, as I read it, boils down to a fundamental rule of constitutional law — citizens deserve equal protection under the law. The Hamilton Board of Elections, in the initial counting of the ballots, agreed 4-0, that because of obvious errors occurring at the Board of Election office, 22 provisional ballots, that, according to Ohio’s “wrong precinct” law, should be discarded, instead, would be counted. Then, the same Hamilton Board voted 4-0 that 300 other ballots with exactly the same error — caused by poll workers in individual precincts — should be discarded.
Judge Dlott ruled that the board had violated the constitution by picking and choosing which votes to count. If the board had uniformly discarded all of the provisional ballots, the plaintiff would have had no legal standing.
In response to Dlott’s carefully explained ruling, Husted proclaimed: “I cannot and will not back down when it comes to our state’s right to administer elections, nor can I stand by while the federal government drops yet another conflicting standard on our doorsteps.”
Huh? Only someone totally ignorant of the facts in this case could think that Husted’s self righteous ravings make any sense. States at one time argued that because of “state’s rights,” they could “administer elections” via the use of poll taxes and literacy tests. This matter is not about a “state’s right” to administer elections, it’s about a state’s requirement to follow the U.S. constitution.
Secretary Husted said he was concerned about a federal court “dabbling in how to count ballots in a local judge race” with an order “contrary to laws passed by the Ohio General Assembly and affirmed by the Ohio Supreme Court.”
“This decision in Hunter has broader implications than the outcome of one race in Hamilton County,“ Husted said. “From an elections administration standpoint, the only way our state can adhere to Ohio law, comply with the federal court’s ruling and avoid future costly legal battles over the counting of ballots, would be to mandate single-precinct polling locations in every county in Ohio. This would significantly drive up the cost to counties of running elections, and inject even more confusion for voters during a presidential election year.”
Again, for a reader who knows nothing about the case, Secretary Husted’s demagoguery may sound like the words of a concerned government official. But his words make no sense. To enforce the Dlott decision, Secretary Husted only needs to make sure that each local board of election enforce Ohio’s “wrong precinct” law uniformly — and not pick and choose which ballots to count.
Encouraged by Dlott’s comments, what’s looming on the horizon is a challenge to the constitutionality of Ohio’s “wrong precinct” law. Maybe Husted’s actions can best be explained as a cover for a strategy to maintain the status quo in Ohio by putting the whole matter in the hands of the Republican leaning U.S. Supreme Court.
Husted must have some underlying motivation, but, to anyone who knows the true facts of the case, Husted’s wildly unfair public comments about this matter are costing him a lot of credibility.
Counting the additional 300 votes may determine the outcome of the race. The plaintiff, Democratic candidate Tracie Hunter when the vote counting stopped was only 23 votes shy of winning the election. But the importance of this case — what it reveals about the extent that Republicans will go to maintain a patently unfair system of voting — now far exceeds who is elected a Juvenile Judge in Hamilton County.
