Ohio was on a dangerous path toward a tainted Election Day

Give Secretary of State Jon Hus- ted credit for recognizing that Ohio was headed down a road that was going to end with nationwide attention on whether the state had conducted a fair election in yet another close presidential race.

His response this week — while imperfect — has probably allowed the state to avoid that stigma. Ohio is not even in the same class as Pennsylvania, where the House Republican majority leader, Mike Turzai, boasted in June that a GOP voter ID bill would allow Gov. Mitt Romney to win Pennsylvania. His remark got applause from his Republican audience.

Ohio was fighting the voter-ID battle a year ago, and at that time Husted supported common sense alternatives to a state-issued photo ID, to the dismay of some in his party. We suspect that not everyone in the Republican Party is happy about Husted’s latest attempt to impose uniform early voting hours in all 88 Ohio counties.

Each of Ohio’s county boards of elections has four members — two Republicans and two Democrats. In the case of a tie, the secretary of state casts the deciding vote.

Partisan splits

An alarming pattern was emerging across the state. The two Democrats in some heavily Democratic counties were voting for extended daily and weekend early-voting hours. The two Republicans voted against. And Husted, a Republican, when called upon to break the tie, voted against extended hours.

This happened in Cuyahoga, Franklin, Lucas and Summit counties (Cleveland, Columbus, Toledo and Akron) and may have happened in Hamilton County had it not been for the exposure brought to the trend by the Cincinnati Enquirer.

Before the national attention — which included an uncomplimentary New York Times editorial — could get any worse, Husted issued a directive requiring uniform days and hours for Ohioans to vote in person during the absentee voting period.

Early voting begins Oct. 2, and that week, all boards of elections will be open from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Oct. 9, they will be open from 8 a.m. to 9 p.m., to allow for late voter registration. For the rest of that week and all of the following week, normal hours will be followed.

From Oct. 22 through Oct. 26 and Oct. 29 through Nov. 1, all boards will be open from 8 a.m. to 7 p.m. Friday, Nov. 2, they will be open from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m.

Election Day is Tuesday, Nov. 6, when the polls will be open from 6:30 a.m. to 7:30 p.m.

There will be no Saturday or Sunday voting under Husted’s plan, which already has come under fire from Democrats. He said he talked to a number of boards of elections and most favored extended daily hours rather than weekend hours because of the cost factor.

Uniformity is essential

Husted gets credit for bringing uniformity to the process, and he also gets credit for his announcement earlier this year that every registered voter will receive an absentee ballot. Saturday voting had, however, been a popular option in the 2008 presidential election, and we don’t see where one Saturday would have killed the counties, even those that are cash-strapped. If boards of elections don’t have the ability to flex their workers schedules to keep the costs low, perhaps they should be looking at that between now and 2016.

Only a few years ago, the concept that more people voting was better had bipartisan acceptance. If recent events had uncovered instances of voter fraud that could be attributed to deficient ID or extended polling hours, the shift in the Republican position would be understandable and clearly defensible.

Absent such evidence, however, it looks increasingly like a strategy of voter suppression based on the opposing party’s demographics.

Husted almost got caught up in something unAmerican. That is not too strong a word. A nation that holds itself up to the rest of the world as a model of democracy has to give more than lip service to universal suffrage.