| The Senate passed HB 2464 today to allow for early voting satellite precincts. Seems like a good idea to me. Anything that makes it easier for people to vote, from vote by mail to early voting at satellite precincts so people don't have to drive all the way to the couty seat should be supported by anyone who wants people to use their constitutional right to vote.
In a March 19 blog post at the Republican Gazette, WV GOP executive director Gary "Goodbye America" Abernathy wrote on the issue:
A bill designed to expand the number of places where voters can cast early ballots amounts to nothing more than a ploy to place voting locations in precincts and regions that are heavily tilted toward high Democrat registration. The ill-conceived legislation has been slowed up in the state Senate due to cost issues, but it should be killed on its lack of merit. (emphasis mine)
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The cost of the bill, and the opportunity for political favoritism in the choice of new and selective voting locations, makes this bill an unnecessary and counterproductive political ploy.
Political ploy for Democrats? The County Clerk who pushed hardest for it was Jackson County Clerk Jeff Waybright, a Republican. So it's a political ploy in Abernathy's view for bills to be pushed by Democrats and Republicans. The rest of the world would call that bipartisan.
The House version of the bill passed the Senate today on a 34-0 vote.
Wait a minute...what? That means every Senate Republican voted for an issue that the Republican Party's executive director called an "unnecessary and counterproductive political ploy." Not one voted the way he wanted on this. We've not won every issue we've pushed on this blog, but I don't remember any shutouts nor are any of us the executive director of the party for the state.
Abernathy opposes early voting in general. I don't know if Ohio has early voting or not, but I think it's safe to say that those of us who live in West Virginia, Democrats and Republicans, like the convenience of early voting.
People who live in West Virginia like it so much that the elected leaders of Abernathy's own Republican Party in the Senate voted today to expand it. He recommended that it should be "killed on its lack of merit" and it passed unanimously. Apparently he's not only out of touch with West Virginians on the issue, but with his own party. |
