title:  GOP’s Attempt At Voter Suppression In Ohio Is Struck Down In Court
text: Fearing that the 2016 presidential election will be a disaster   with Hillary Clinton and Senate Democrats looking pretty favorable   Republicans have, of course, have been working overtime to suppress the vote in a key battleground state: Ohio.As everyone knows, no person elected president has ever won without winning Ohio. Even though Clinton wouldn t need Ohio (as long as she nabs Virginia, North Carolina and Florida) to win, that hasn t stopped Republicans from already attempting to rig the election.However, their hopes of doing just that were destroyed in court, when a federal judge issued a ruling that the state s new laws restricting the collection and counting of absentee ballots and poll workers aiding voters were unconstitutional on racial grounds. Judge Algenon Marble wrote in his decision:Voter suppression tactics have not disappeared but are now merely cloaked in ostensibly race-neutral language.Judge Marble also noted that the state s decision to bar poll workers from helping minorities fill out ballots unless the voter affirmed that he or she was disabled or illiterate was in violation of the Constitution, for it established a  literacy test  on those seeking to vote:The Court agrees with Dr. Timberlake that these inequalities, rooted in historical discrimination against African-Americans, have  significant and far-reaching  effects with specific and direct consequences for voting. Because low literacy levels are also correlated with substandard education and the Court has credited Dr. Timberlake s findings that African-Americans suffer from lower educational attainment than whites in Ohio, the Court concludes that African-Americans would also suffer from higher costs associated with the five-field requirement and the prohibition on poll-worker assistance because they would face disproportionately more challenges filling out the forms.  Because African-Americans move more frequently than whites, they may be more likely to be forced to vote provisionally. They are also more likely to be homeless.  And because they are more likely to have inflexible schedules or lack access.In other words: the state of Ohio, which is run by Republicans, attempted to circumvent black voters by instilling on them an option: know how to spell or your vote doesn t matter.Republicans literally just tried to turn black people away from voting   in 2016.This is what Republicans do: they disenfranchise black voters because they know their days of white rule are coming to and end.Featured image via Andrew Burton/Getty Images