One voter suppression bill wasn’t enough for Ohio Republicans, so now they have two: voter suppression-lite and voter suppression-extreme.

The new bill is being championed by GOP lawmakers like Rep. Scott Wiggam, who has also been pushing for Ohio to conduct an Arizona-style audit on the 2020 election even though the state’s top election official—also a Republican—says it’s absolutely unnecessary. 

But forget about reality. Wiggam and at least a handful of other Republicans are angling to disenfranchise as many Democrats, people of color, blue-collar voters, and others as possible. 

House Bill 387, according to Statehouse News Bureau, would eliminate secure drop boxes, slash early voting from 28 days to 13 days and eventually down to just 6 days, require a reason for requesting an absentee ballot, and prevent election officials from mailing out absentee ballot applications in even-year general elections.  

But GOP Secretary of State Frank LaRose thinks HB 387 is a solution looking for a problem that doesn’t exist.  

“We don’t need to make massive changes to the way Ohio runs elections because we have what is in many ways the gold standard that every other state should aspire to,” LaRose told Statehouse News. 

LaRose pointed out the security of the way Ohio’s elections are run, including that the state’s voting machines aren’t connected to the internet, and there’s a paper trail for every ballot cast. Additionally, the audit conducted several weeks after the 2020 election didn’t call any of the results into question. 

“As far as the representative questioning the integrity of our elections, I would encourage him to educate himself on this,” said LaRose, “because if he did that, what he would find is that Ohio runs honest elections that are trustworthy, administered in a bipartisan way.”

Nonetheless, LaRose is still backing a bill that seeks to constrict voting rights, just not as forcefully as HB387. Instead, LaRose favors HB 294, which would require two forms of ID to be submitted with requests for absentee ballots, shorten the window for requesting early ballots, shorten the window for when ballot drop boxes can be used to only the 10 days before the election, and prohibit in-person voting the day before the election. However, it would not significantly reduce the early voting timeframe.

Wiggam dismissed LaRose’s objections to HB387 by accusing him of being self-motivated. Hailing 2020 as “the best dang election in the whole entire United States,” Wiggam said, is probably the best way for LaRose to win reelection. 

Jen Miller, the executive director of the League of Women Voters of Ohio, doesn’t think either bill is necessary, but she’s particularly concerned about how HB 387 would affect people of color, people with disabilities, and military personnel.

“I think we would see long lines on Election Day, and during early vote, we would have overburdened election officials who are implementing policies that are unnecessary but time-consuming,” Miller said, adding that some of the proposed voter registration rules might not even pass legal muster. 

But what really sets Ohio apart from some of the other states where GOP lawmakers have backed high-profile election overhauls that aim to disenfranchise Democratic voters is the fact that Donald Trump handily won the Buckeye State by 8 points. So messing with a formula for success isn’t only excessive—it also has the potential to hurt the GOP.