DAYTON, Ohio — “Today is the first day in the last seven that I’ve been outside,” David Ellis, a heavy-set African American man, told me as he waited at the back of the line in Springfield to vote. Ellis had just been released from the hospital earlier that day following major surgery. “I can’t stand out here long,” he said as he leaned on his black cane.

What if there weren’t early voting on Monday, I asked.

“I would’ve been a no-vote,” Ellis said, letting out a hearty chuckle.

Whether he knew it or not, Ellis came within a hair’s breadth of being a no-vote. For the past few months, Secretary of State Jon Husted has fought to eliminate the final three days of early voting in Ohio. His efforts were mostly blocked by a federal appeals court, but Husted succeeded in restricting voting hours on those final days leading up to November 6th. In total, 1.6 million Ohioans had voted early through Sunday, but because of the limited hours (Sunday voting was just 1-5pm), extremely long lines were commonplace.

ThinkProgress traveled around southwest Ohio Monday, when voters were allowed to cast ballots from 8am to 2pm, to speak with people waiting in line at early polling locations.

Voters in line at the 1.5-hour wait mark in Greene County

“I got work tomorrow,” explained Rob, who’s employed at a marketing firm in Cincinnati, at the early voting center in Greene County. He wasn’t sure if his boss would have allowed him time off to vote tomorrow, considering the hour-long commute between work and his polling station. “I might not have been able to vote without Monday voting,” he said.

However, the shortened early voting hours brought about long lines. In Greene County, the line stretched approximately two hours this morning. One older gentleman was forced to leave after standing in line for 20 minutes. “Too long a wait and I got a bad hip,” he explained as he limped back to his car. He hoped he would be able to make it out on Tuesday, but wasn’t sure.

Still, some took the long lines in good cheer. “A little line never hurt nobody!” offered Shirley Martin, a middle-aged woman from nearby Yellow Springs.

In Clark County, home to Springfield, a minority-heavy city decimated by the decades-long decline in manufacturing jobs, the line stretched to 150 long around 11am.

So many voters showed up on the final day of early voting in Clark County that the line snaked outside and down the sidewalk

I approached Joe Crowell, one of the few white men standing in line, and asked why he’d chosen today to cast his ballot. “I drive a truck and took the day off,” he said as he cradled his Big Gulp, “otherwise I could’ve been sent to Pennsylvania or Wisconsin or wherever tomorrow.” If he’d waited another day for Election Day, he would’ve lost $300 in pay.

His response was echoed by voter after voter throughout the day. Sarah, who works 11-hour days at the Elks Lodge, had Monday off but not Tuesday, as did Felicia, a phlebotomist at the nearby hospital in Springfield. Some, including Curtese Hunter, who works two jobs at Sinclair Community College, said they would’ve still done their best to show up on Tuesday had Monday voting not been an option, but were relieved not to have to choose between their paycheck and their civic duty.

The longest line of the day, unsurprisingly, was in Dayton, where 150 people stood in the parking garage alone, waiting to join the voting line inside.

The voting line in Montgomery County was so long that it snaked out through the parking garage

A young couple, Cynthia Develvis and Brian Latimer, arrived at 1:50pm with their seven-week-old baby girl in tow. “We both had work off today and hoped to avoid the long lines and as much noise for her sake,” Develvis explained, motioning to her daughter. They were understandably disappointed to be waiting in line 10 feet from where they’d parked their car.

Despite the long lines, poll workers did an exceptional job of keeping it moving and taking other steps to make the process as smooth as possible. As she passed out water bottles to voters in line, one worker in Dayton said that all employees had been instructed to move their cars out of the garage in order to open up more spaces, which were already scarce, for voters.

Because of the restricted early voting hours that Husted succeeded in implementing, more than 30 voters were turned away from the polls after arriving too late. One elderly African American couple who arrived a few minutes past 2pm were disheartened after being told they couldn’t vote today. “We couldn’t find a parking space!” the wife explained, to no avail.

The final voter in Montgomery County was Kysiah, a young African American woman who owned her own company and made it in line five seconds before the 2pm cutoff. Tomorrow is very busy, she explained, relieved to have made it in at the nick of time today. “This is my business day to handle all my business,” she said. One hour and approximately 250 voters later, Kysiah cast her ballot at 3:03pm.

Whether because of work constraints, school constraints, or other factors, voters across southwest Ohio were glad to have the opportunity to vote Monday. Even if it meant long lines, many reasoned that they would pale in comparison to what was to come on Tuesday. Few were aware of Husted’s push to roll back early voting, which would have prevented them from casting their ballot today; most, like Ellis, couldn’t believe that one of their elected officials would try to cut the number of voting days.

Still, despite being just hours out of the hospital, his was the face of determination. “As long as I’ve got an ounce of strength in me, I’m going to get out and vote.”

Two teachers at Moraga middle school in northern California sexually abused Kristen Cunnane in the 1990s. One, former P.E. teacher Julie Correa, received an eight year sentence for committing multiple sex crimes against Cunnane. The other, former science teacher Daneil Witters, committed suicide after several students came forward with allegations against him in 1996.

Now an adult, Cunnane filed a lawsuit against the school district that employed these two teachers, seeking compensation for being raped and abused for several years. In response to her legal complaint, the district offered a surprising defense:

Defendants allege that Plaintiff was herself careless and negligent in and about the matters alleged in the complaint, and that said carelessness and negligence on said Plaintiff’s part proximately contributed to the happenings of the incident and to the injuries, loss and damages complained of, if any there were . . . .

[Alternatively, d]efendants allege that Plaintiff was herself responsible for the acts and damages of which she claims herein, and by reason thereof is estopped from obtaining any damages as result thereof.

Just in case this dry legal language is not clear, the school district claims that Cunnane was “herself responsible” for the fact that she was repeatedly sexually abused by her school teachers, beginning at age 12. Or, just in case a jury won’t buy that claim, that she was “careless and negligent” in the matter of her own rape.

To be fair, the most likely explanation for how the school district could have come to make such a claim is more of an indictment of the district’s lawyers than of its administrators. The school district’s legal filing is almost entirely boilerplate language of the kind that careless attorneys might copy and paste into a document without considering its implications — or its likely emotional impact on a child sex abuse victim. The district, however, is not apologizing for its claims. Instead, it released a statement claiming that “this is a significant case that could have serious consequences for our school district. . . . As a result, at this point in the proceedings we have an obligation not to waive any potential legal lines of defense.”

Justice Nathan Hecht is the longest serving justice on the Texas Supreme Court, the highest court in that state for civil matters. Judge Sharon Keller is the presiding judge of the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, which makes her the highest ranking judge in Texas who hears criminal cases. Both judges received major fines years ago — a $100,000 fine for Hecht and a $29,000 fine for Keller — after a state ethics commission determined they violated their ethical duties. Yet both judges avoided paying those fines for years due to Texas’ labyrinthian process for appealing ethical decisions against judges:

Hecht, the longest-serving member of the Supreme Court, was fined by the Texas Ethics Commission for accepting and failing to report an illegal political contribution from a major law firm. The same panel fined Keller for repeatedly failing to disclose more than $2 million in personal holdings on her financial disclosure forms. . . .

Individuals fined by the ethics panel can appeal by suing in state district court. Once that happens, cases are treated as if they are brand new, and attorneys are given time to gather evidence and witness statements to be presented at trial.

Hecht was fined in December 2008 and started his appeal the next month. Keller’s appeal began in June 2010, about three months after she was fined. Both cases have been assigned to a judge, but neither has been set for a trial date.

Judge Keller, for her part, is no stranger to allegations of misconduct. In 2007, Keller allegedly made a misleading statement to an attorney to prevent a death row inmate from receiving a stay of execution from the United States Supreme Court. The Texas State Commission on Judicial Conduct initially gave her a “public warning” to Keller for her actions, saying that Keller’s actions “cast[] public discredit on the judiciary or the administration of justice” and “constitute[] willful or persistent conduct that is clearly inconsistent with the proper performance of her duties as a judge of the Court of Criminal Appeals.” This warning was eventually dismissed on appeal.

A coalition of civil rights groups have asked the U.S. Department of Justice to monitor an effort by the state Republican Party and a local Tea Party group to send poll watchers disproportionately to predominately African American precincts, the Philadelphia City Paper reported Monday. A partial list of targeted precincts, obtained by the groups, suggests that the Pittsburgh Tea Party and the Pennsylvania Republican Party will send observers to watch for “voter fraud” at precincts where African American voter registration is over 79 percent.

According to the letter:

The Pittsburgh Tea Party Movement conducted this training, on behalf of the Republican Party, as part of its program to combat alleged voter fraud in Allegheny County. We understand the Republican Party has targeted approximately 111, out of a total 1,319 precincts, in that county. The partial list, which is attached hereto as Exhibit A, includes 59 of the total 111 precincts targeted by the Republican Party. We are unaware of any history of voter fraud at any of these 59 locations. We are concerned that these locations are being targeted for impermissible, racially-motivated reasons.

A comparison of the 59 Republican Party targeted precincts to the other precincts in Allegheny County reveals that the targeted precincts disproportionately contain African-American voters. Specifically, the targeted precincts are over 79% African-American. By contrast, the nontargeted precincts contain, on average, less than 11% African-American registered voters

The Department of Justice will already be monitoring Allegheny County for potential voter suppression. The Pittsburgh Tea Party Movement website warns that because “the other side cheats,” volunteers must “insure the other side is not sneaking votes onto the machines.” Republican elected officials in Pennsylvania have conceded that they cannot point to examples of any such “voter fraud.”

Last month, GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney cut an ad calling upon Indiana voters to “join me in supporting Richard Mourdock for U.S. Senate.” Two days later, Mourdock said at a debate with his Democratic opponent that pregnancies resulting from rape are a “gift from God.” Yet, even after this offensive comment, the Romney campaign released a statement indicating that Romney “still support[s]” Mourdock’s bid for the Senate.

This weekend, Romney cut a second ad for another GOP senate candidate, Rep. Rick Berg (R-ND), in which he similarly calls up North Dakota voters to “join me in supporting Rick Berg for Senate.” Like Mourdock, Berg is a hardliner on reproductive freedom who opposes abortion even if a woman is raped. Yet Berg’s views may be even further to the right than Mourdock’s. As a member of the North Dakota House, Berg was one of a handful of members who supported a bill that would make it a felony for a woman who is raped to obtain an abortion.

Watch Romney’s ad supporting Berg:

In the lead up to the 2000 presidential election, Florida’s Republican Secretary of State Katherine Harris hired a private company to create an error-laden “scrub list” of so-called ineligible voters, eventually wrongly purging as many as 7000 voters from Florida’s rolls — or 13 times George W. Bush’s post-Supreme Court margin of victory. Moreover, because Harris’ list “invariably target[ed] a minority population in Florida” that was overwhelmingly likely to vote for Al Gore, it is likely that her voter purge gave the presidency to Bush. Four years later, Ohio’s Republican Secretary of State Ken Blackwell engaged in similar shenanigans to suppress the vote in his crucial swing state — including at one point saying he would reject voter registration forms if they were not printed on 80-pound thickness cardstock.

This election, the role of Kathrine Harris and Ken Blackwell is played by Ohio’s new Republican Secretary of State, Jon Husted. Here are just a few of the steps Husted took to try to swing Ohio’s crucial electoral votes to Mitt Romney:

• Trashing Provisional Ballots: In a last-minute directive that directly conflicts with Ohio law, Husted ordered all voters who make a mistake when filling out a form accompanying provisional ballots to be disenfranchised. As the majority of provisional ballots are cast in Ohio’s five largest counties — all of which favor Democrats — and because low-income and transient voters are also more likely to vote provisionally, Husted’s directive will likely disenfranchise many more Democrats than Republicans.
• Restricting Early Voting: Husted fought tooth and nail to limit opportunities to vote early in Ohio, although most of the restrictions on early voting Husted advocated were eventually blocked by a federal appeals court. Nevertheless, Husted still limited the number of hours available for early voting even after he lost in federal court, and he told an election law symposium last month that the court decision restoring early voting periods was an “un-American approach to voting.” Early voters in Ohio overwhelmingly support President Obama. As the federal court restoring early voting explained, “early voters have disproportionately lower incomes and less education than election day voters,” and thus are less likely to work flexibility to take time off to vote on election day.
• Defying Court Orders: After a federal district court declared Ohio’s efforts to suppress early voting unconstitutional, Husted openly defied this order — ordering local elections officials not to comply with it. Husted eventually backed down after federal Judge Peter Economus ordered Husted to personally attend a court hearing concerning his refusal to comply with the law.
• Retaliating Against People Who Oppose Him: Husted fired two Montgomery County board of election members after they voted to allow early voting on weekends when Husted opposed it.

It does not have to be the way. Unlike Ohio, where elections are run by a partisan official with few checks on their ability to use their power to influence elections, Wisconsin’s elections are governed by a nonpartisan Government Accountability Board made up of retired judges. In light of the GOP’s longstanding record of using partisan voting officials to skew elections, Wisconsin’s system is a far better alternative.

According to a report by Phoenix, Arizona’s NBC affiliate, Rep. Jeff Flake’s (R-AZ) U.S. Senate campaign called Democratic voters telling them to vote in the wrong precinct — in some cases as much as 11 miles away from their actual polling place. After telling the Democratic voters to vote in the wrong place, the calls also encourage the voter to “vote Flake for U.S. Senate.” Watch the report:

It’s unclear whether these calls were made accidentally or as part of an intentional strategy to depress the Democratic vote.

[HT: Lee Fang]