by Jeremy Leaming
In a burst of action, federal courts have provided setbacks to the right’s desperate and disgraceful efforts to suppress the vote, as noted here last week. Hardly surprising is that some of the rightwing lawmakers pushing ridiculous voter ID laws, limits on early voting periods and voter registration drives, are going to fight the federal courts to protect their ignoble campaign.
Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted, a loud proponent of Ohio’s efforts to limit early voting opportunities of urban voters, has proclaimed that voting in his state will be “uniform and accessible for hard-working Ohioans.” It’s 
a statement as laughable as it is disingenuous. Ohio, like Florida, Texas, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, has sought to make voting much more difficult for a lot of hard-working residents, primarily those living in urban areas. In Ohio no efforts were made to curtail early-voting for suburban residents.
So when a federal judge recently ruled in favor of the Obama campaign’s legal challenge to Ohio’s restrictions, issuing an injunction against limits on early voting, it was widely received as a much-needed victory against the ongoing campaign to suppress the votes of minorities, low-income people, college students and the elderly.
U.S. District Court Judge Peter Economus held that curtailment of early voting opportunities would close the door to thousands of voters. He added, “Plaintiffs submit statistical studies to support their assertion that low-income and minority voters are disproportionately affected by the elimination of those voting days.” See Ryan J. Reilly’s reporting for TPM on the decision.
Reilly today noted that the Obama administration has lodged a motion with the federal court urging it to ensure that Ohio follow the court order, after Husted said he “wouldn’t set early voting hours until an appeals court” took action. As Reilly reported, the Obama campaign officials argued in their motion that Husted cannot ignore or stay a federal court opinion, a federal appeals court gets to make that call.
University of Maryland law school professor Sherrilyn A. Ifill in a piece for The Root blasted the Republican Party’s “war on voting,” likening it to the efforts employed by pre-civil rights-era Southern states “to manipulate the voting strength of the electorate.”
nents of them say they are really about ensuring integrity of the nation’s elections, by wiping out voter fraud. And besides, those supporters note, we live in an “era when photo identification is routine for many basic things including air travel.”
nd created new burdensome voter identification requirements. Similar laws have been enacted in other states with Republicans in charge, such as Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas and Wisconsin. In all those states, Republicans claim widespread voter fraud is the justification for the onerous restrictions.