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Four Ways Ohio’s GOP Secretary Of State Is Trying To Swing The Election For Mitt Romney

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:

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.

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