Righting Voting Wrongs

Two major rulings on voting rights were recently handed down, and they're good news for anyone who thinks voter ID laws are too restrictive, too exclusive, and too racist.  That is, anyone who's not a Republican.

In Ohio, U.S. District Judge Peter Economus ruled that the state can't end early voting on November 2, the Friday before Election Day, for everyone except members of the military, and that it has to allow it for all voters over the weekend before the election.  In Florida, U.S. District Judge Robert L. Hinkle announced plans to grant a motion to permanently remove restrictions on third-party voter registrations as soon as he receives confirmation that a federal appeals court has dismissed the case in the wake of the state government's agreement to dismiss its appeal.  This means that people who have trouble voting on November 6 in Ohio - mainly working people who vote Democratic - can vote a few days earlier and not have to worry about making time to vote on a Tuesday, a day when they're at the jobs they're lucky enough to have.  Also, independent voter registration groups working in Florida, like the League of Women Voters, no longer have to go through a labyrinth of rules an regulations that the League of Women Voters itself found so onerous and cumbersome that it gave up registration activities rather than comply with the law.

Democrats don't have time to savor these victories, however.  Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine - the former two-term U.S. Senator currently not serving a third Senate term because he got his butt handed to him by Sherrod Brown in the election of 2006 - has vowed to appeal the ruling, saying the early voting restrictions are needed to combat fraud (though he seems to think only civilians, not servicemen, are capable of defrauding poll workers).  Meanwhile, there's  only a month or so before the voter registration deadline in Florida, so registration group volunteers have to get off their own butts and jump right in if they're going to get more voters on the rolls.

But thanks to two U.S. district judges with humorous, spell-check-unfriendly surnames, the presidential and congressional elections just got a little fairer.