Ohio voter power has been assaulted for half a decade because politicians won’t admit Trump lost

Donald Trump lost the 2020 Election. It’s a very simple, straightforward fact of history.

And yet, Ohio’s leading Republican politicians can never say this. They can never acknowledge this basic fact.

They can never be honest with the public, or in public, about that very simple truth.

“Donald Trump lost the 2020 Election.” They can not say it. They’re too scared, too cowardly, too cynical, and too ethically corrupted to say it.

Every time they refuse to acknowledge the truth, they debase themselves as human beings, they debase America as a functioning democracy, and they disgrace themselves and their family name for all of history.

In those moments, all of their most amoral political instincts take hold. It’s pathetic.

Trump’s claims of voter fraud were rejected by 60 courts, Fox News had to pay out $787 million over false stories about vote rigging. That doesn’t matter. None of it matters. No fact matters. They’ve fully embraced epistemological nihilism.

But many go much further than refusing to admit a clear fact.

They repeat falsehoods. They stoke distrust. They play demagogue and paint fellow Americans as enemies. They fan the flames of wild-eyed conspiracy theories no matter the destruction it’s doing to the American Republic, because they know the manipulation is useful for them politically.

Without evidence, they make outrageous allegations of fraud, and then when they have sufficiently riled up the rubes who believe their lies, they claim the American people are “concerned about the safety of elections.”

Then, due to concerns based on their own lies, they carry out an endless string of vast, sweeping policy changes that make it far more difficult for millions of American citizens to vote.

In November 2020, then-president Donald Trump lost a free and fair election. He spent the next two-and-a-half months losing court cases over it and lying relentlessly to the American people.

The relentless lies culminated in the violent Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol attempting to stop constitutional business and overturn the results of the free and fair election.

Trump was impeached by the U.S. House for the second time because of the attempted insurrection and violent transfer of power he instigated, but Republicans in the U.S. Senate refused to convict him for it and he retained his stranglehold over the Republican Party.

Instead of holding Trump accountable for the most egregious betrayal of American democracy ever carried out by a U.S. president, Republican politicians have spent the last six years trying to justify his lies with more lies and punishing voters with new laws restricting their access to the franchise.

In the 2020 Election, Ohio’s own hyperpartisan secretary of state found only 27 possible instances of voter fraud, which represents 0.0005% of ballots cast.

Voter fraud is not a problem in Ohio. The manufactured mass hysteria over the non-existent problem is a cynical political manipulation and nothing more.

What makes it such an absolute betrayal of American democracy is that these overt and blatant lies are being used to attack citizens’ most foundational right in a constitutional republic: the right to vote.

For more than half a decade now, based on lies, Ohio Republican politicians have overhauled elections and voting in Ohio.

They enacted the strictest voter ID law in the country.

They eliminated voters’ ability to use utility bills and bank statements for proof of residency or identification.

They eliminated early voting on the Monday prior to Election Day.

They limited which documents Ohioans could use to register to vote.

They limited curbside voting as strictly as possible so someone has to be disabled to the point they can’t walk into a polling place to use it.

They limited absentee ballot drop-boxes to one per county, and it doesn’t matter if there are 12,000 voters in that county or one million.

They limited who could return an absentee ballot for someone else.

They mandated new paperwork for any family member assisting relatives.

First they changed the grace period for absentee ballots post-marked by Election Day from having 10 days to actually arrive at boards of elections, down to four days. Then they eliminated the grace period entirely.

This summer, Ohio Republican lawmakers passed a bill to require photo ID for mail-in ballots, but it was vetoed by Gov. Mike DeWine, though the gerrymandered Republican supermajority is considering overriding his veto.

And even though they’ve already enacted the strictest voter ID law in the country, Republican lawmakers have put a duplicative constitutional amendment on the ballot this November in an effort to juice GOP turnout based on the election fraud fears Republicans have drummed up that are based on all their relentless lies about the 2020 Election.

The amendment actually goes further than the law by requiring photo ID but failing to include a provision for free ID to those who would need it.

Furthermore, it telegraphs a desire to eliminate early voting opportunities by asserting that lawmakers are not required to provide any opportunity for voting other than in-person at polling places on Election Day.

Eighty Ohioans testified against the proposed amendment and only two spoke for it. That didn’t matter. It never does. It could be 1,000 to zero. They don’t care. They passed it anyway. It will be on the ballot in November.

Maybe you think all these election changes are a good thing. Maybe you don’t. But what I can’t get over is that none of them have been made in good faith.

A problem didn’t exist. It was already very hard to cheat, but now voting in Ohio is much harder because of lies.

All of these restrictions on voters and changes to Ohio elections have been built on a mountain of the most shameless lies.

And all those lies are a direct and open attack on the health and wellbeing of American democracy itself.

It’s all so reprehensible and indicative of the absolute worst in people, I just wonder when this madness in America will end. How much more pain will it take? And what will be left for future generations when it’s finally over?

This story is republished from the Ohio Capital Journal under a Creative Commons license. View the original article.