For Ohio Republicans, Georgia Election Bill is Just a Starting Point
April 19, 2021
Caught in the act, Republicans in Columbus are trying to walk back draft legislation that would implement some of the most extreme attacks on voting rights in the country. Regardless of public posturing, we know some form of new anti-voter legislation is coming, and it’s important to remember: for Columbus Republicans, the radical Georgia election bill is just their starting point.
“Ohio Republicans created the anti-voter playbook for states like Georgia to copy. For years, Republicans in Columbus have attacked Ohioans’ voting rights by implementing some of the most extreme measures in the country. And now that other states are taking notes, GOP lawmakers refuse to be outdone. Once again, we know Ohio will be on the forefront of the fight to protect voting rights and our work to protect Ohioans’ right to vote is more important than ever,” said Malik Hubbard, Executive Director of the Ohio Democratic Party.
While the Georgia election law was widely panned as a radical effort to attack voting rights, many of those provisions are already the law of the land in Ohio. For example:
- Georgia’s voting law reduces the absentee voting period from 49 days to 29 days prior to the election. Ohio’s absentee voting period is already limited to less than one month prior to Election Day.
- Georgia lawmakers placed severe limits on dropboxes, but still allows for more than one dropbox per county. Frank LaRose has prohibited counties from installing more than one dropbox per county.
- The Georgia voting law gets rid of signature match requirements, Ohio still rejects ballots due to the questionable and subjective practice of signature matching.
- Georgia is now requiring voters to submit a driver’s license number or other ID number to cast an absentee ballot, joining Ohio as only one of four states that require voters to do so.
In addition, Columbus Republicans eliminated Golden Week in 2014, a week in which voters could register to vote and cast a ballot at the same time. And LaRose continues to purge a huge number of voters from the voting rolls, even after major errors in the system were discovered.
As a reminder, all of these provisions are solutions in search of a problem as even Republican Jon Husted admitted, as he reported that only 153 “irregularities” were found during Ohio’s 2016 election out of 5.6 million ballots cast. That represents .00002% of ballots cast.