Jennifer Brunner on GOP voter suppression overreach

http://www.truth-out.org/how-ohio-gops-attempts-game-voting-rules-backfi...

Former secretary of state Jennifer Brunner has a good piece up at AlterNet, relating the recent history (since 2005) of Republican attempts to screw with voting in Ohio and how their attempts to make voting more difficult have (mostly) backfired.

She goes back to the sadly failed Reform Ohio Now efforts of 2005 (which failed for a lot of reasons, including the calculation of some Democrats, like Cuyahoga County party chair Jimmy Dimora, that keeping the current unfair system of districting would benefit Democrats in 2010 — so they failed to support them).

She believes that the recent mumbling from the GOP about repealing HB 194 — which has already been approved for referendum this November — on their own in the legislature and "replacing" it with God only knows what will back fire too. We'll see. She says that Fair Elections Ohio, of which she is part, is prepared to go to court to challenge any potential end run around a referendum.

She says, "Perhaps the Ohio GOP would be best advised to put its efforts into winning an election than changing its rules."

Unfortunately for them, that would probably require dialing down the crazy, stopping the attacks on women and working people, and offering some pragmatic solutions to real problems like unemployment, foreclosure, and a still-reeling economy. So far, they don't seem inclined to do that.