Ohio's Not a Super Tuesday State, But It Served Up an Ominous Super Tuesday Warning
ASHEVILLE, NORTH CAROLINA—Ohio will not be chiming in on the Democratic primary process until St. Patrick’s Day. But there was a court decision there on Tuesday that indicates that the margin of finagling will continue to be substantial in that benighted state. The Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals issued a decision that was simply naked voter suppression. For nearly 50 years, a Supreme Court decision held that people detained before trial on election day had a right to vote. Of course, it was easy for municipalities in states like Ohio to euchre people out of this right. All they had to do was not supply a ballot to the people awaiting trial. What was the poor sap in the cell going to do? Call a cop?
Actually, a couple of them called the folks at Demos, who took their case to court—only to have the Sixth Circuit declare that a government’s right not to be overly inconvenienced supersedes the right to the franchise of a couple of people in jail, who, of course, are innocent until proven guilty. From the decision:
The State’s interests in efficiently allocating its election resources and administering elections in an orderly manner outweigh the moderate burden its disparate treatment of confined electors places on Mays’s right to vote.
It’s hard for me to see how denying someone the right to vote is merely a “moderate burden” on the fellow’s right to vote, but I am not a federal judge, and there are a lot of reasons why that is not the case. This is a reminder of the institutional barriers facing anyone who wants to vote this fall, and also facing whatever candidates for whom they want to vote. Kudos to kindly Doc Maddow for beating the voter-suppression issue with a hammer on TV.
Outside of Alabama, where Joe Biden ran away with another southern state, the next batch of contests brought us into Too Close To Call Land. Ominously, for Elizabeth Warren, she seems to be tangled up with Biden and Sanders in Massachusetts. (More kudos to kindly Doc Maddow for calling out MSNBC for illustrating that race with only the pictures of the two men.) Things come at you fast, and I’m wondering if that campaign was ready for it.
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