At least Ohio GOP Election board member Doug Priesse is honest. In an email to The Columbus Dispatch he admitted that he's not really interested in extending early voting. Here is his reason:

“You would almost have to be as blind as a bat not to see the politics,” said Anthony, former chairman of the county Democratic Party. “Listen, call it what it really is.” “What it really is” to many Republicans is simply an attempt to help President Barack Obama win re-election. “I guess I really actually feel we shouldn’t contort the voting process to accommodate the urban — read African-American — voter-turnout machine,” said Doug Preisse, chairman of the county Republican Party and elections board member who voted against weekend hours, in an email to The Dispatch. “Let’s be fair and reasonable.”

I see. Fair and reasonable. Of course. That would be fair and reasonable to Republicans, because black people tend to vote for Democrats, and those dirty urban voters should not under any circumstances, not any, no way no how, be allowed to vote if it is possible to exclude them.

Republicans would argue that they're not excluded because of absentee voting by mail. Yes, we have absentee voting by mail here in California too, but the number of ballots returned by mail is far less than the number sent. They get buried on the table, put somewhere, set aside and then suddenly the date has passed! Just that fast.

There is something more substantial about going to a polling place, casting a ballot, and handing it to an elections official. Even if that official is possibly corrupt. African-Americans traditionally go to polling places and cast ballots. In 2008, the Obama campaign understood this and made sure they got to a polling place to vote, because early voting meant they had access to one long before Election Day.

But in Ohio, keeping the early voting open through Election Day is somehow "contorting the process."

So let me "call it what it really is." It's an effort to silence the will of African American voters, and you heard that straight from the keyboard of a Republican election official in one of the most hotly contested states in this year's election.

I think that's "really called" racism.

Digby:

I don't think there's another democracy in the world in which an election official would publicly make a statement about suppressing the vote of his political rivals. It's shocking.

My theory is that Republicans have adopted the old Soviet-style warfare strategy. Carpet-bomb the nation with crazy until everyone has to stop to regain their grasp on reality. Problem is, by then it will be too late.