Monday, January 20, 2014
Democrat vying for Ohio AG eyes voting rights
COLUMBUS (AP)
State attorney general candidate David Pepper said on Monday he would make advocating for voter rights a priority if elected this fall and criticized incumbent Mike DeWine for his record on election law issues.
Pepper, a Cincinnati Democrat, said DeWine, a Greene County Republican, has repeatedly defended state-passed election laws that were found unconstitutional or blocked by the courts, including those addressing early voting hours, provisional ballot handling and third-party ballot access.
“If this was the way a company was run, the head of the company would look at who the in-house counsel was and ask why they kept losing,” said Pepper, son of a former Procter & Gamble CEO. “And maybe they’d say it’s time for someone new.”
Pepper said that if elected Ohio’s top law officer he’d stand up against laws he deems as an attorney to be unconstitutional — a promise Republicans criticized as uninformed.
It was one of a series of voter-related goals Pepper laid out Monday.