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A federal judge issues a final ruling ordering Ohio to restore early-voting on the Sunday and Monday before Election Day.

(Al Behrman, The Associated Press, File)

U.S. District Judge Peter C. Economus made the right call Wednesday when he ordered Ohio to keep offering in-person early voting on the Saturday, Sunday and Monday immediately before all elections.

And Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted, a Republican who is the state's chief elections officer, made another good call. Husted decided not to appeal Economus' order and forthrightly announced he'd follow it.

In effect, the judge's decision closes the book on litigation that began in 2012. Economus' ruling also affects a Husted order, issued Feb. 25, that didn't authorize in-person early voting on any Sunday, or on the Monday immediately before Election Day.

For the Nov. 4 general election, for instance, the February order scheduled 20 days of in-person early voting. Eighteen of those days are weekdays. Two are Saturdays, including the Saturday immediately before Election Day. Husted set those hours and days based on recommendations by the bipartisan Ohio Association of Election Officials, he said, after the General Assembly failed to agree on a plan of its own. That order now must be modified as a result of Economus' ruling.

The in-person, early voting on the Sunday immediately before Election Day that Ohio began to offer after the 2004 election has become a feature of Ohio politics -- especially among African-American churchgoers in Cuyahoga and other populous counties. The effect of Economus' order is to preserve in-person early voting on that Sunday, as well as on the Saturday and the Monday that bracket it. He also ordered that voting hours on those days be uniform in all of Ohio's 88 counties.

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Broadening opportunities for people to vote, whether in person or with mailed-in ballots, is commonly believed to increase turnout by Democrats. Republicans, understandably, aren't keen on that. General Assembly Republicans have done what they can, when they can, to whittle down the days, times and manner in which Ohioans may vote.

For instance, beginning in 2011, before the 2012 presidential election in which Barack Obama was re-elected, the legislature tried to abolish in-person early voting in Ohio on the Saturday, Sunday and Monday immediately before Election Day. Economus, however, preserved those three 2012 days at an earlier stage of the lawsuit that was finally decided on Wednesday.

That's not to say Ohioans don't have more days, times and modes to vote than do voters in some other states. But litigation is decided based on the facts and arguments it elicits. And Economus concluded that the result of what some Republicans wanted to do in limiting in-person early voting just before an Election Day violated the Constitution's Equal Protection Clause.

Perhaps understandably, a General Assembly with districts gerrymandered to elect Republican legislative majorities, often from small-town Ohio, may not understand mostly Democratic, urban Ohio. And those legislative majorities may not care to. But everyone in the legislature must understand this: Voting is a fundamental right. And it's impossible to reconcile the oath all Ohio General Assembly members take – to uphold the Ohio and U.S. Constitutions – with seemingly continual attempts to fetter that right.