* Which Ohio elected official has been the subject of rumors, and accusations?
Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted has become part of the political rumor mill.
Foxyoungstown:
Ohio's elections chief has squelched rumors he might be preparing to challenge Gov. John Kasich in a Republican primary two years from now.
Secretary of State Jon Husted told reporters Thursday that if he runs for anything in 2014 it would be for re-election to his current job, where he oversees business filings and elections in the battleground state.....
Yeah, right. We all know that Husted is a very ambitious politician that has big plan for his future. It was no surprise that Plunderbund published a post on November 29th that mentioned Husted's plans.
Plunderbund:
In the middle of a very good New York Review of Books article about the 2012 elections I discovered this very interesting sentence:
My own selection for pin-up boy of the vote-suppressing camp of 2012 is Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted, a baby-faced forty-five-year-old who has ambitions to run for governor in 2014.
Really. You wonder how these rumors about Husted get started, unless there is some basis for it.
Jon Husted's role as Ohio Secretary of State has been that of a person that has tried to make it as difficult as possible for Ohioans to vote. There have been many news articles (see below for sample links) that have accused Husted of making it hard to vote, prove one's right to vote, and appealing to courts to allow his restrictive rules to be enforced.
Here are a few links about Husted's election interference-----
Think Progress:
....Husted is now facing accusations that he is illegally tossing provisional ballots.....
Cincinnati Herald:
...House and Senate Democrats joined together Nov. 5 to demand that Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted comply with the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and stop rejecting provisional and absentee ballots because of minor paperwork mistakes...
Cleveland Leader:
Ohio's Republican Secretary of State Jon Husted is so determined to restrict early voting as much as possible, that despite two federal courts ruling that the Ohio GOP's effort to restrict early voting opportunities must not go into effect, he's taking action once again to reduce opportunities for Ohioans to cast their ballots ahead of the November 6 election....
Toledo Blade:
A number of Toledo area elected Democrats today lambasted Secretary of State Jon Husted’s decision to put all 88 Ohio counties on the same early voting election schedule — cutting the times people can vote early compared to four years ago.
State Sen. Edna Brown (D., Toledo), led a morning news conference calling for longer hours while she criticized the limited early voting hours under Mr. Husted’s directive....
Esquire:
.....Jon Husted hasn't been merely a clumsy partisan (see: Harris, Katherine), and he hasn't simply been a bureaucratic weasel, although he undeniably has been one of those. He has actively, publicly defied the courts, over and over again. Purely out of partisan spite, Husted is draining of public credibility whatever the official result of the election in Ohio turns out to be. This isn't partisan vandalism. It's partisan arson. The electoral process cannot stand much more of this. It's time for a judge to bring this guy to heel.
David Brennan of White Hat Management, the charter school group, has contributed huge sums of campaign contributions to Husted's previous political campaigns. With Husted so beholden to the owner of the largest charter school company in Ohio, you wonder how he'd repay that financial support.