Quiet Part…Out Loud.

A Confession on Voter Suppression

“[T]he founding fathers did not want everyone voting.

Here’s why?…”

This was the opening of an email forwarded to me yesterday by an Ohioan amid the fierce debate in Columbus about yet another round of voter suppression bills.

You see, once again, Republicans have been pushing: 1) to add even more limits to the use of voter drop boxes; 2) to further limit early voting, both in person and by mail; and 3) to add a strict photo ID law, something Ohio has never had.

The email continues:

“…Because they felt that people who were not serious enough to understand how and when to register, would also not be serious enough to look across the candidates and vote for people who are best….”

But as they race forward on these voter suppression measures, Ohio Republicans have a problem. They have been the ones running elections in Ohio for years. And after every election, they can’t help but brag about what a good job they have done.

Secretary of State Frank LaRose’s own website and press releases tout Ohio as “one of the nation’s leaders in secure, accurate and accessible elections.”

In Ohio, they’ve assured us, it’s “easy to vote and hard to cheat.”  Ohio “got it right,” LaRose said in an ad after 2020, while (misleadingly) suggesting other states did not.

More from that email about the Founders:

“…They were concerned that unserious people would elect unserious or even bad candidates. In the founders writings, they called them the Hoi Polli…”

So, given how much Ohio’s Republicans  brag about Ohio’s elections, they can’t point to fraud to justify their actions. Because voter fraud’s not happening here—not with the current drop box rules, not with the current early vote window, not with the current voter identification rules.

The email goes on:

“…I guess I would ask, do we really want people voting who don’t take registering to vote seriously? Is that good for our representative republic?”

And then, of course, the measures they push always have a disproportionate impact on Democratic voters—and Black voters in particular.

Drop boxes. Early vote. They systematically select the means by which Black voters disproportionately vote, and make those forms of voting more difficult.

And again, there’s absolutely no showing that Democratic or Black voters have been involved in any type of voter fraud. Heck, Trump didn’t even make that accusation regarding Ohio after 2020—and he thinks it’s happening everywhere.

Yet, voters of color always end up as the target of these laws.

So it leaves you wondering: what are all these new rules and laws about if their proponents can’t even claim that they’re about stopping non-existent Ohio voter fraud?

Here’s the last sentence of that email:

“Do we want uninformed or unserious people voting because the founding fathers of this country did not?”

And that’s where this email I’ve been quoting is so helpful.

It didn’t come from just anyone.

It came from an Ohio State Rep. named Nino Vitale, and he sent it to a constituent who’d written him expressing concerns about the laws being pushed at the Statehouse. Here’s his full response:

Helpfully, State Rep. Vitale makes very clear in his reply what the motive behind these laws is. Hint: it has nothing to do with fraud. Instead, he not only explains his theory about “uninformed” people being unworthy of voting; but, given who these laws always target, he betrays his assumption about who those “unserious” and “uninformed” Ohioans are.

Only hours ago, Vitale was one of the Republicans who voted to pass the very voter suppression measures described above.

The bill will now go to Governor DeWine’s desk. And both common sense and Vitale’s email make perfectly clear what these measures are all about.

If you can, please call the Governor and demand that he veto this new round of voter suppression.

Call 614 466-3555 and tell the Governor to veto voter suppression, passed on motivations and assumptions that have no place in America and Ohio today.

Thank you!