MIAMI, Florida — As Mitt Romney spent yesterday promising to create conditions deplorable enough for undocumented immigrants that they will engage in “self-deportation,” former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush (R) warned that his party’s rightward shift on state-based immigration legislation “turned off” Hispanic voters.

ThinkProgress asked Bush about Alabama’s new anti-immigrant law, HB 56, which includes provisions requiring officials to check the immigration status of children enrolling for school and prompting local utilities to shut off residents’ water service unless they prove their citizenship.

Bush said that Hispanic voters “see the ramifications of the Alabama law and other things like that and get turned off.” The former Florida governor went on to declare that, given the growing influence of Hispanic voters, “it makes no sense to me that we are sending these signals:”

BUSH: The problem is that the federal law’s not being enforced. The more that’s being done to enforce the borders and to enforce the laws, the greater probability that this issue begins to subside. From a conservative point of view, I think that’s appropriate and important because Hispanic voters hear these debates and see the ramifications of the Alabama law and other things like that and get turned off. It’s not a good thing — I know this will sound a little crazy — but I happen to believe that if swing voters decide elections and swing voters in swing states are the most important voters in the presidential race, and if you send a signal that turns them off, that’s a bad thing. So from a practical political view, putting aside the policy, it makes no sense to me that we are sending these signals, not withstanding the frustration that people feel that the federal government’s not enforcing the immigration laws of the country.

Watch it:

Still, Bush’s sensible warnings on immigration policy are falling on deaf ears among many in his party. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the presidential race, where Republican frontrunner Mitt Romney has made anti-immigrant rhetoric a centerpiece of his campaign. He has pledged to veto the DREAM Act, his immigration plan involves forcing “self-deportation,” and he has trumpeted the endorsement of Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, the author of not only Alabama’s immigration law, but Arizona’s draconian SB 1070 bill as well.

Though Bush has tried to steer his party away from its anti-immigrant tendencies, the proliferation of state-based bills has continued unabated. In December 2010, after Arizona’s SB 1070 bill passed, the Denver Post reported that “Bush said if his children walked the streets of Phoenix they might look awfully suspicious to police.” (Bush’s wife was born in Mexico and his children are Hispanic.)

With Romney as the favorite to soon lead his party, Republicans may have difficulty winning Hispanic voters in the fall as moderate voices like Bush get pushed to the wayside.

To learn more about the Republican presidential candidates’ views on immigration, check out ThinkProgress’ regularly-updated page here.

Earlier this year, Ohio Gov. John Kasich (R) signed a radical elections law that shortens the state’s early voting period, bans in-person early voting on Sundays, and prohibits boards of election from mailing absentee ballot requests to voters. If this law had been in effect in 2008, over 200,000 voters in Columbus, Ohio alone would not have been able to cast their ballot in the way that they did.

Kasich’s plan to make it harder to vote is now facing a surprising dissenter, however, his fellow Republican and Ohio’s secretary of state:

Ohio’s top election official says state lawmakers should repeal and replace a controversial new elections law rather than allowing voters to weigh in on it in November.

Republican Secretary of State Jon Husted told a gathering of election officials Wednesday that he believes Ohio should start over on the process after the 2012 presidential election. He made the call despite the legislation containing many of his own ideas.

The new election law shortened Ohio’s early voting period, among other changes to the state’s election procedures.

If the state legislature doesn’t follow Husted’s advice, it is fairly likely that the people of Ohio will. Kasich’s anti-voter law is currently suspended after hundreds of thousands of Ohio voters signed petitions seeking to have the law overturned by referendum. The law will go before the voters this November, where it could face the same fate as Kasich’s anti-union law that was defeated in a similar referendum last year.

Since the 1970s, New Hampshire police have operated under a progressive policy for handling domestic violence cases that has saved countless lives. Under current law the presumption is that an arrest will be made when police observe evidence of abuse. They have a large degree of discretion and don’t need to witness the assault firsthand or obtain a legal warrant before they can separate the alleged attacker from his victim.

All that will change if Republicans get their way. The state’s GOP legislators are pushing two bills that will reverse a half century of progress, the Concord Monitor reports:

Domestic violence is no longer taken lightly legally or by society. That’s the way it should be, but two bills under consideration by this most unusual of legislatures, would undo that progress and put lives in danger. Both deserve a speedy defeat.

House Bill 1581 would turn the clock back 40 years to an age when a police officer could not make an arrest in a domestic violence case without first getting a warrant unless he or she actually witnessed the crime. That’s an exceedingly dangerous change. Consider the following scenario, one outlined for lawmakers by retired Henniker police chief Tim Russell:

An officer is called to a home where she sees clear evidence that an assault has occurred. The furniture is overturned, the children are sobbing, and the face of the woman of the house is bruised and bleeding. It’s obvious who the assailant was, but the officer arrived after the assault occurred. It’s a small department, and no one else on the force is available to keep the peace until the officer finds a judge or justice of the peace to issue a warrant. The officer leaves, and the abuser renews his attack with even more ferocity, punishing his victim for having called for help. [...]

It’s impossible to say how many lives the policy, in place since the 1970s, has saved or how many injuries it’s prevented. If they adopt House Bill 1581, lawmakers might find out, but the price paid could be extraordinarily high.

The other bill Republicans have proposed, HB 1608, limits judges’ ability to order the arrest of someone who has violated a domestic violence restraining order by contacting or abusing the person named in the order. It would also prevent judges from ordering defendants to surrender their weapons or block them from buying guns.

Police say the bill stops them from intervening to protect victims. For instance, they would be stripped of their power to arrest someone who is threatening to use violence against a victim or child. It’s unclear why New Hampshire Republicans have set their sights on repealing protections for abuse victims when promised to focus on economic priorities.