Ohio politicians grovel and dance for Trump

If Ohio was a wholly owned subsidiary of Trump World, faithfully executing the corrupt orders of an unforgiving boss, would Ohioans even blink an eye?

Trumpian taskmasters in the Ohio Statehouse already execute public policy based on the dictates of the MAGA king. So, what is the difference?

Unquestioning obedience to the convicted felon drove Ohio Republicans (with obliging Democrats) to intensify congressional district manipulation and give Trump the gerrymandered advantage he demanded ahead of the 2026 elections.

The boss also ordered red states to make it harder for voters to cast ballots in the midterms. Less turnout is less threatening. Trump fears the results of a referendum on his regime.

The Ohio Senate is in his corner.

State Sen. Theresa Gavarone, as usual, leads the anti-voter brigade on the pretense of election integrity.

She doesn’t even come up with new excuses to erect barriers to voting anymore.

The Bowling Green Republican, behind one of the strictest voter ID laws in the country, longs to get on right-wing radar by going more extreme than MAGA Republicans in Congress to disenfranchise voters with made-up election fraud remedies unsupported by evidence.

Last week, the Ohio Senate passed one of Gavarone’s bills in record time. But Ohio Senate Bill 293 was a rush order from Trump World.

It came with an explicit warning: get rid of mail-in voting or risk the wrath of Trump’s Department of Justice in court.

The only U.S. president who conspired to overturn an election he lost, with lies about widespread mail ballot fraud, is laying the groundwork to delegitimize another election with the same fantastical and false claims about vote-by-mail fraud.

He is again sowing baseless doubts about secure mail-in voting systems used by nearly 1 in 3 Americans in 2024.

All it took for Ohio Senate Republicans to go along was a little federal pressure/extortion.

For no compelling reason, they voted to stop counting legitimate mail-in ballots that arrive after Election Day in Trump-friendly legislation that mirrored his legally shaky executive order in March.

The EO decreed ballots received post-election invalid and commanded voters produce birth certificates or passports as proof of eligibility — to create unwarranted obstacles for millions of Americans who simply want to vote.

Gavarone co-sponsored correlating legislation, Ohio Senate Bill 153, to impose the same burden on Ohioans.

It appears to be on the fast track for passage.

Meanwhile, Ohio Senate Bill 293 is headed to the Ohio House to become another voter suppression law in the state.

It would arbitrarily eliminate the mail-in ballot “grace period” in Ohio and cause legal ballots to be thrown out.

But the eminently absurd Gavarone insisted, “we want all valid votes to count, and the process needs to be done on Election Day” or we will turn into pumpkins at the close of polls.

Republican lawmakers who previously shortened the deadline (from 10 to four days) in which those late-arriving ballots, postmarked by Election Day, were counted now embrace Trump’s edict not to process any ballot received past Election Day — lest unchecked power be checked by incoming ballots.

In 2024, almost 10,000 mail-in ballots from eligible Ohio voters arrived in the four-day window that would be eliminated in SB 293.

That’s 10,000 citizens, enough to flip a race, summarily disenfranchised.

Tough luck if you’re a registered voter in good standing, particularly one who is elderly or disabled or lives in rural areas, and postal delays beyond your control cancel your vote.

It’s crazy. Over a million Ohioans used mail-in ballots to vote in the last presidential election. That’s about 17% of the nearly 5,900,000 votes cast.

More registered Republicans voted by mail in Ohio in 2024, than Democrats did.

Voters 65 and older, Ohio’s biggest age demographic, were far and away the biggest users of mail-in voting, returning roughly 520,000 ballots by mail a year ago.

Why not vote from the convenience of home and bypass lines at the polls?

Voting by mail, which surged to record rates in the 2020 election, is still pretty popular and a majority of Americans favor allowing the option to make it safer, easier and more reliable for people to cast ballots.

They don’t buy Trump’s ravings about mail voting fraud which, in truth, is exceedingly rare.

But after Democratic victories in off-year elections last week Trump again railed baselessly about “rigged” mail voting and called on congressional Republicans to ban it outright “except for military, far away military, and people that are very sick.”

He is seeding the ground for rejection of midterm election results he doesn’t like in a throwback to 2020.

We’ve seen this movie before.

Ohioans should know the part their Statehouse politicians are playing in the Trump sequel, how they dutifully execute legislative assaults on voting rights (or else) to enable rule by fiat not the ballot box.

So is the Statehouse is working for Trump World instead of us?

Mia Lewis, of Common Cause Ohio, asked Trumpian taskmasters directly in recent testimony against SB 293.

“Senator Gavarone often asks, ‘Isn’t even just one instance of fraudulent vote too many?’ Of course. It could theoretically skew the result. Luckily, this is so vanishingly rare it has not had and could not have had any impact. But if someone who is eligible to vote — who wants to vote, does everything legally to vote — if they have their voted ballot cast aside uncounted, isn’t that too many, Senator Gavarone?”