Maddow: Ohio Becomes Front Line in Fight for Voting Rights

by Mike Carvalho  |  August 21, 2012

MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow last night covered the fight for voting rights in Ohio where two members of the Montgomery County Board of Elections were suspended by Ohio Secretary of State John Husted for voting to extend weekend voting hours for the 2012 election — just as they’d done in 2008.

Watch that report here:

AFSCME members joined outraged Ohioans outside the Secretary of State’s office earlier Monday in support of Dennis Lieberman and Tom Ritchie Sr., the Democratic members of the Montgomery County Board of Elections who now face dismissal for taking a stand against Husted’s efforts to curtail early voting. Lieberman and Ritchie joined Maddow to discuss the importance of keeping the polls open on weekends.

During the 2008 presidential election, Lieberman said, weekend voting was “exceptionally important,” adding that one-third of the 28,000 county residents who voted early that year did so during weekend voting hours. That’s why the two Republican members of the county’s Board of Elections originally joined with their Democratic colleagues to support weekend voting. Ritchie told Maddow the reason was simple: “They knew it was the right thing to do at the time they cast that vote.”

See the interview here: