Once upon a time, there existed in Ohio something called the “Golden Week;” a period before Election Day during which citizens were able to register and vote on the same day. “Golden Week” no longer exits in Ohio, but a federal lawsuit filed last month aims to bring it back, as well as reverse several other regulations that some claim are limiting the ability of certain Ohioans to vote.
Concerns over Ohio’s early voting system are not new. The most recent changes to early voting were criticized as deliberate impediments on African-Americans, women and young people, groups that typically vote for Democrats. But those concerns were largely alleviated by a settlement in April between Secretary of State Jon Husted’s office and the NAACP. This new lawsuit, as Time pointed out last month, bears the mark of both the Democratic Party and Hillary Clinton.
Many of the lawyers who filed the lawsuit are tied to the Democratic Party, and one of them, Mark Elias, is the Clinton campaign’s top lawyer. Husted was happy to note the Clinton connection when decrying the lawsuit, saying, “Mrs. Clinton’s political associates are simply intending to interject chaos into Ohio’s nationally recognized voting system,” in a statement last month.
But as far as the Clinton campaign is concerned, they had nothing to do with it. When BuzzFeed’s Chris Geidner wrote about the obvious links between Clinton and the lawsuit, the campaign quickly denied it was involved, even though it “shares the concern about undue burdens being placed on the right to vote in states across the country, including Ohio.”
So the Clinton campaign won’t take ownership of the lawsuit. That’s fine, but it begs a certain question: why not?
At a time when Hillary Clinton needs to convince Democratic voters that she is not only a classic liberal, but a new progressive liberal, this lawsuit is a perfect opportunity. The future of the Democratic Party is women, minorities and young people, groups who believe their right to vote is being restricted by state legislatures and who want someone to challenge those restrictions. Someone is challenging them, someone with ties to Hillary Clinton, but yet her campaign wants nothing to do with it.
The Clinton campaign has essentially distanced itself from something that would make Hillary Clinton more popular with liberal progressive voters.
Of course, it’s possible that the Clinton campaign really didn’t have anything in particular to do with the lawsuit, even though it’s clearly a Democratic move. That’s all well and good, but if Team Clinton wasn’t involved, why not capitalize on a move everyone assumes they made anyway? And if they were behind it, why not take the opportunity to portray Hillary Clinton as a liberal progressive hero?
It’s going to be a much harder task otherwise.