Voter Suppression tactic: No Restrooms. Ohio flurry of restrictions leaves no doubt intent.

I think this bizarre attempt at voter suppression might be the best tactic yet:

During the 2012 presidential election, voters reportedly waited on line for upwards of six hours. That wait alone is enough to deter would-be voters from going to the polls. But now residents in Florida’s most populous county will have another disincentive: they won’t be able to go to the bathroom.Earlier this year, the Miami-Dade County Elections Department quietly implemented a policy to close the bathrooms at all polling facilities … the policy change was in “direct response” to an inquiry … whether they had assessed accessibility of polling place bathrooms to those with disabilities.

The county would close all restrooms at polling places “to ensure that individuals with disabilities are not treated unfairly,” a January email stated. “[T]he Department’s policy is not to permit access to restrooms at polling sites on election days,” Assistant County Attorney Shanika Graves said in a Feb. 14 email. Elections Department officials did not immediately respond to ThinkProgress inquiries. 

The state’s next-most populous counties, Broward and Palm Beach, told the Sun Sentinel they would not implement this policy. 

Ohio is still working on holding down the vote. This is already beyond surreal. Rachel Maddow explains:

Look who got all the votes in 2012.

Oh sure, now I'm getting good grades...

Yeah, I passed:

Early Votes going Big for Obama in Wisconsin and Iowa

Here's a nice breakdown of the MSNBC/Wall Street Journal poll numbers on early voting in Wisconsin and Iowa from Rachel Maddow.

It looks like there aren't a whole lot of people heading out early here.

Republican thinks Military not motivated or responsible enough to vote!!

From the sound of this right wing Newmax story, you’d think that without “government assistance,” soldiers are not capable of casting a vote because they’re too…what? Dumb, irresponsible? Lazy?

Requests from military voters for absentee ballots have dropped significantly since 2008 — and by as much as 70 percent in Virginia and Ohio — leading a GOP senator, Jon Cornyn, to conclude that they are yet another example of how the U.S. Defense Department under President Barack Obama has failed the nation’s military. Cornyn, a Republican member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said the numbers marked a "serious failure" by the Pentagon. "This is an unacceptable failure by Pentagon leaders to comply with the law.

So conservative military types are not at fault for requesting fewer absentee ballots? It’s the party of “blame someone else.” By the way:

Cmdr. Leslie Hull-Ryde said that a similar number absentee ballots had been downloaded from the central military website the last time an incumbent president sought re-election back in 2004. "We are in complete compliance with the law," Hull-Ryde told Fox in a statement.

Waukesha County Clerk Kathy Nickolaus Trashes Vote count Again!!!!

This is one of those OMG moments, again, from Waukesha County Clerk Kathy Nickolaus. Why she didn’t wait to screw things up this bad in November is anyone’s guess. Does what you see here instill any kind of confidence, or that your vote will ever being counted? Nickolaus is a train wreck.

Brookfield Patch: Waukesha County Clerk Kathy Nickolaus said her plans to directly upload results from local government election machine packs failed to work, causing hand-tabulation and delays in releasing results, according to this report from JSOnline.com reporter Laurel Walker, who was at the County Administration Building last night. Nickolaus faces challenge to her re-election bid on the November ballot.

The results, however, were tabulated by a Patch writer who added the numbers from voting machine tapes at the Waukesha County Administration Building.

The Waukesha County clerk's office, which said it would post local results online, posted few results, and asked the media and political campaigns to hand-count, using voting machine printouts taped to the walls around a room.