The Republican speaker of the Ohio House of Representatives wants a fellow Republican legislator who sponsored a voter ID bill and was charged with drunk driving to resign from his seat.
Speaker William G. Batchelder said that he doesn’t think Rep. Robert Mecklenborg will “come back to the capitol building,” Jim Siegel of the Columbus Dispatch reported.
Mecklenborg was arrested back in April on drunk driving charges in neighboring Indiana while he had a 26-year-old woman in the car with him. He failed several field sobriety tests and refused to take a breath test. A blood test indicated he had Viagra in his system. Video of his arrest was later released by the Dearborn County Prosecutor’s Office.
But reports of his arrest didn’t emerge until late June, after Mecklenborg had sponsored a strict photo-ID requirement. Ironically, under Indiana’s DUI law, Mecklenborg’s license was likely confiscated and suspended.
Just as Mecklenborg’s future is unclear, so is the future of the voter ID measure he sponsored. As the Dispatch reported:
House leaders wanted to get a photo ID requirement passed, but the two chambers do not agree on how strict to make it. The House wants a photo ID to be required, while the Senate has proposed alternatives that would allow voters to cast provisional ballots if they don’t have a photo ID.
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