Issue 2 is a Wisconsin-style measure to roll back public employee unions, a hard-fought and deeply partisan question in the state, and Huckabee spoke at a Warren County breakfast for the group that backs it, Building a Better Ohio."Make a list. Call them and ask them, 'Are you going to vote for Issue 2 and are you going to vote for it?'" Huckabee advised, according to an audio recording provided by a foe of the initiative. "If they say no, well, you just make sure that they don't go vote. Let the air out of their tires on election day. Tell them the election has been moved to a different date. That's up to you how you creatively get the job done."
This is the kind of joke that might almost be funny if Republicans across the country weren't actively trying to disenfranchise five million voters, including by rolling back early voting in Ohio. When you "joke" about doing something by illegal means that your party has been working to do through means both legal and illegal for years and is pushing especially hard even as you speak, it stops being funny. Because even if no one seriously thinks Mike Huckabee is advocating that you let the air out of people's tires, telling people the election is on a different date is a time-honored vote suppression tactic that was even used in Wisconsin over the summer, with Americans for Prosperity sending out a mailing telling people to turn in their absentee ballots late.
So, you know, ha ha, let's take people's collective bargaining rights away by getting them and their supporters to try to vote on the wrong day! Man, that Republican humor is awesome.
Building a Better Ohio is of course also the group that ran a deceptive ad suggesting that a highly sympathetic Issue 2 opponent was on their side.