Fox News is now mischaracterizing a court ruling requiring the state of Ohio to allow in-person early voting during the last three days before the election as unfair to members of the military.  

On Friday a federal court adopted an injunction preventing Ohio election officials from implementing new restrictions on in-person early voting. The ruling came in response to an Obama campaign lawsuit that sought to overturn a 2011 statute that halted early voting access in the three days leading up to the election except for members of the military and their families. The Obama campaign sought to restore access to the polls for all Ohio residents during that period.

The court agreed, finding that allowing both military and non-military citizens to equally participate in early voting “places all Ohio voters on equal standing.” Indeed, the ruling has no impact on military voters and their families, but simply provides all other Ohioans with the same access to the polls they were scheduled to enjoy.

But during the September 3 edition of America Live, Fox News host Megyn Kelly and Wall Street Journal columnist John Fund portrayed the ruling as an insult to the military and an “obstacle” to their access to the polls.

FUND: So what Ohio said is for the last three days before the election we will let military voters vote, but everyone else will have to vote before the three day period. The district judge said, “That's unfair,” and said, “You'll have to extend early voting right up until Election Day.” It now goes to a federal appeals court. And I think it's pretty clear that the military vote can have a separate designation and can be treated separately because they are different from every average voter.

KELLY: Yeah, they are special. And this was an interesting case we talked about it prior to the ruling because it pitted the Obama administration against military families and voters.

FUND: The National Guard [Association], the Marine Corps Association, all of them said, “This is outrageous what you are trying to do.”

KELLY: They said, “There is a justification for treating us differently. And it's not -- you don't get to say that everybody is the same as the military.”

FUND: We have enough obstacles in the way of our military now we don't need to create others.

Fund  -- who also lambasted early voting in general as “out of control” --  is the latest right-wing figure to invoke the canard that allowing civilians equal access to the polls somehow constitutes an “obstacle”  for members of the military who wish to vote.

Among right-wing news outlets, Fox News has taken the lead in characterizing calls for the restoration of early voting days for civilian voters, which were cut by the Ohio Republican-controlled state legislature in 2011, as anti-military.

During the August 3 edition of Special Report, guest host Shannon Bream falsely stated that “President Obama is challenging a law that gives members of the military special voting privileges,” ignoring the fact that restoration of early voting days for civilians does not modify how members of the military may vote. Sean Hannity similarly lied during the August 6 edition of Hannity when he claimed that the lawsuit to restore early voting sought to “limit the number of days armed service members can vote.”

These characterizations of what the lawsuit sought to achieve are demonstrably false. And to the contrary the district court held that the current voting system -- which restricted civilian voting days -- violated “a constitutionally protected right to participate in elections on an equal basis with other citizens in the jurisdiction.”