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Tag: Politics & Elections

  • Last-Minute Lawsuits Are Flying as Ohioans Head to the Polls

    Last-Minute Lawsuits Are Flying as Ohioans Head to the Polls

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    Susan Tebben, OCJ.

    Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose talks to reporters.

    As of Friday morning, almost 1.4 million Ohioans had already cast their ballot in this November’s election. But with Election Day drawing close, Ohio’s Secretary of State and watch dog organizations have filed new lawsuits tied to voting.

    Secretary Frank LaRose’s case related to his ability to investigate supposed noncitizen registrations and has no real chance of affecting who can vote in the current election. But as election watchdogs have argued for months, it could serve as fodder for future claims of election fraud if the election doesn’t go a certain way.

    Meanwhile, the ACLU of Ohio is challenging LaRose’s office for reinstating a questionnaire used if naturalized citizens are challenged at the polls. In 2006, a federal court permanently blocked the underlying state statute requiring naturalized Ohioans provide proof of their citizenship to vote. The ACLU case asks the court to force LaRose to issue a directive to county boards ordering them not to use the form.

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    LaRose’s case

    Secretary Frank LaRose’s case demands the Department of Homeland Security turn over data the secretary believes would help him verify the citizenship status of people registered to vote in Ohio. The problem is DHS doesn’t maintain some consolidated list of citizens against which LaRose could check the voter rolls.

    In a statement, a Department of Homeland Security spokesperson explained “DHS does not comment on pending litigation,” but added, “more broadly, (U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services) has engaged with Ohio and will continue to correspond with them directly through official channels.”

    The agency operates a program known as SAVE, which Ohio uses, that allows agencies to check an individual’s immigration status by inputting their name date of birth and a DHS issued number.

    LaRose contends SAVE is “insufficient” because the state rarely has the required DHS identifier to check a particular filer’s status. He cited examples of people registered to vote who previously attested to the Bureau of Motor Vehicles that they weren’t a citizen.

    “Many of those individuals may have become citizens in the meantime, but Ohio is simply unable to confirm one way or the other,” LaRose argued.

    He contends with access to a pair of other DHS databases his office could cobble together what it needs, and that federal law requires the agency to comply with his request. In a letter earlier this month, the agency wrote back saying the state’s access to SAVE was sufficient.

    In a press release, LaRose argued the “The Biden-Harris Administration is engaging in obstruction and outright abuse of power to prevent us from removing noncitizens from our voter rolls. I take my duty seriously, so if they want a fight over the integrity of our elections, they’ve got it.”

    Last week Attorney General Dave Yost announced he’d found six instances illegal voting among the 600-plus cases LaRose’s office flagged out of the roughly 8 million Ohioans registered to vote. Shortly after Yost’s announcement, Cuyahoga County officials said one of those defendants had been dead for two years.

    Another problem is the timing of LaRose’s filing. The secretary has been publicly complaining about lack of access since at least May of this year, and his complaint describes requesting access several times starting in July.

    But he only filed his complaint on Thursday — less than two weeks before Election Day.

    For months, voting rights groups have warned federal legislation requiring proof of citizenship and mass voter registration challenges aren’t meant to actually fix a problem. Instead, it’s a way of seeding the idea that the coming election is suspect. Back in July, Sean Morales-Doyle from the Brennan Center argued “that way, if the elections don’t play out the way that these folks want them to, they can use that belief to overturn the result, they can turn immigrants into a scapegoat.”

    The case against LaRose

    The ACLU of Ohio filed a contempt motion against the secretary for reviving a ‘show me your papers’ provision in state law that a federal judge derided as “shameful.” That statute, which the judge permanently enjoined in 2006, laid out a series of questions that should be posed to naturalized citizens who are challenged at the polls. It concludes with a requirement that the challenged voter provide proof of their citizenship before being given a regular ballot.

    “Requiring naturalized citizens to bring additional documentation to verify their eligibility to vote is not only burdensome and discriminatory, it’s unlawful,” ACLU of Ohio legal director Freda Levenson argued in a press release. “After nearly 20 years of compliance with the federal injunction, Secretary LaRose suddenly decided to defy the injunction and impose an 11th-hour requirement forcing naturalized citizens to produce these papers.”

    The ACLU’s complaint explains that following the court’s decision, the form used for challenges simply required to answer under oath “Are you a citizen of the United States?” If they answered in the affirmative, they were given a regular ballot.

    But earlier this month LaRose revised that form and reincorporated the portions requiring challenged voters provide proof of citizenship.

    “Not only did the Secretary reinstate the enjoined language, he specifically invoked the statute that was the subject of this Court’s injunction as his support,” the ACLU filing states. “As a result, challenged persons are once again unable to vote a regular ballot and must instead vote a provisional ballot if they fail to provide the required documentation.”

    The Secretary has faced criticism earlier this year after a routine audit improperly swept in naturalized citizens and then the secretary ran an additional audit without firm legal grounding to do so.

    The ACLU noted prior to filing their case, they sent notice to LaRose’s office explaining the new form violated the court’s injunction. The secretary’s office acknowledged their communication but declined to change the form.

    “Once again,” their filing argued, “the Secretary has transformed naturalized citizens whose qualifications to vote are challenged into second-class citizen[s] or second-class American[s].”

    Originally published by the Ohio Capital Journal. Republished here with permission.

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    Nick Evans, Ohio Capital Journal

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  • An Ohio Supreme Court Candidate Forum Was Held on Tuesday but Republicans Didn’t Attend

    An Ohio Supreme Court Candidate Forum Was Held on Tuesday but Republicans Didn’t Attend

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    Photo by Graham Stokes for Ohio Capital Journal.

    The Gavel outside the Supreme Court of the State of Ohio.

    Even though all six Ohio Supreme Court candidates were invited to speak at a recent forum held in partnership by the City Club of Cleveland and the Ohio Debate Commission, only the Democratic candidates showed up. 

    The three Democratic candidates — incumbent Justice Michael Donnelly, incumbent Justice Melody Stewart, and Judge Lisa Forbes — spoke at the forum on Tuesday. Ohio Statehouse Bureau Chief Karen Kasler moderated the forum. 

    Republican Hamilton County Court of Common Pleas Judge Megan Shanahan, Republican Justice Joseph Deters and Republican Judge Dan Hawkins were not at the forum. 

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    The three Supreme Court races are Donnelly against Shanahan, Stewart vs. Deters, and Forbes against Hawkins. Deters is not running for his current seat and is instead going against Stewart for a full six-year term. Hawkins and Forbes are vying for Deters’ open seat, a term that will expire on Dec. 31, 2026. 

    The Ohio Supreme Court currently has a 4-3 Republican majority. This election could either flip the court Democratic or Republicans will add to their numbers.

    Donnelly and Stewart were elected to the Ohio Supreme Court in 2018. This is Forbes first running for Ohio Supreme Court. 

    “I’m running because I want to do my part to make sure that the Supreme Court is a firewall that protects our democracy, the rule of law and your rights,” Forbes said. “I stepped up to the plate because I’m concerned about some rulings. I’m concerned about the way in which the Court has the power to define words and to interpret laws that may be more result oriented than true to the law or to the intent behind the law.”

    Donnelly and Stewart did not miss an opportunity to point out their opponents’ absences. 

    “I implore (Deters) to just show up anywhere with me — a street corner, a candidates forum, an editorial board, anywhere, and just discuss the substance of our candidacies,” Stewart said. 

    Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine appointed Deters to the Ohio Supreme Court in January 2023, despite having no previous experience as a judge. 

    Donnelly also noted his opponent’s absence while discussing bond issues and the 2022 DuBose case, in which he wrote the concurring opinion. 

    “If someone’s a threat to public safety, you should have a hearing and hold them with no bond,” he said. “Don’t set it at some astronomical amount that you think they can’t make.”

    Donnelly noted his opponent Shanahan wasn’t there to discuss the subject. “I would like to talk to my opponent about that,” he said. “She doesn’t want to talk.”

    Stewart, who was also on the Ohio Supreme Court at that time, said that decision was “the absolute dog whistle for the 2022 election for the Supreme Court.”

    “That was a case that totally misconstrued the law,” she said. 

    DuBose and a co-defendant were charged with murder from an armed robbery. The state asked the judge to impose $1.5 million in bail at the bond hearing. Prosecutors highlighted the type of crime, fears of the victim’s family members and DuBose’s potential flight risk since he was arrested in Las Vegas and returned to Ohio to face trial. 

    However, DuBose argued that setting bail beyond what he could financially afford essentially denied him bail and violated the Eighth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. The appeals court reduced the bail to $500,000 and put non-financial requirements in place including turning over his passport, agreeing to 24-hour house arrest with electronic monitoring, and no contact whatsoever with the victim’s family. 

    The state appealed the bail reduction to the Ohio Supreme Court, who sided with the appeals court — pointing to judicial rules that draw a distinction between financial and non-financial conditions of release. 

    By making this ruling, the Ohio Supreme Court made a distinction between the dollar amount and other conditions of bail, like wearing an ankle monitor. Regardless of the financial conditions, judges could still consider risk to public safety and order a defendant held without bond.

    Nevertheless, Ohio Republican lawmakers drew up a constitutional amendment for the 2022 election that requires Ohio judges to consider factors such as public safety, the seriousness of the crime, the person’s criminal background, and a person’s likelihood of returning to court when setting bail.  

    Seventy-eight percent of Ohioans voted for it. 

    “(Bond and bail) is to allow release and ensure return for your hearings of the court,” Stewart said. “So if you set an amount that is unattainable, you’re not allowing release. And if someone is dangerous and poses a threat to public safety, how about we just keep them pretrial with no bond?”

    Forbes said the situation is ironic. 

    “The people who recognize that dangerous criminals should, under no circumstances, be given an opportunity to be released pretrial, which is what Justice Stewart and Justice Donnelly just said, are the ones being tagged as soft on crime,” she said. “Hard on crime and protective of the community is making the assessment that says under no circumstances may you be released pretrial.”

    The Ohio Supreme Court’s recent 4-3 ruling that boneless chicken wings can have bones in them also came up during Tuesday’s forum. 

    “The word boneless was defined as a matter of law to mean it’s a cooking style and was taken to mean that you should expect bones if something is labeled as boneless, and I think that’s concerning,” Forbes said. “If I am elected to the Supreme Court and I need to define a word, I promise you that I will use a dictionary.” 

    Partisan races

    A 2021 law added party labels to Ohio Supreme Court races, which had previously been nonpartisan. All three Democrats objected to this Tuesday.

    “If we’re going to have an elected judiciary, it should be nonpartisan,” Donnelly said. “I’d like to see us move towards some type of retention system where we don’t have to run each other against each other and raise money. … I don’t take an oath to any political party.” 

    Stewart agreed, saying the partisan labels are politicizing the Supreme Court even more. 

    Forbes said it gives the idea justices are political actors.

    “The biggest concern I have about it is that it creates the impression that perhaps affiliation with a party is going to impact an outcome of a case, and that degrades the public confidence in the courts as a whole, and that’s very disturbing,” she said.

    All three Democrats also disagreed with legislating from the bench. 

    “The law is the law,” Donnelly said.

    Forbes said her job is to apply the law, not create new ones.

    “Legislating from the bench is creating new laws to achieve a particular outcome,” she said. 

    Stewart said it’s up to her to say what the law is, not what it should be. 

    “There are times we have to make decisions and vote on a judgment based on what the law says and we hold our nose doing it,” she said. 

    Originally published by the Ohio Capital Journal. Republished here with permission.

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    Megan Henry, Ohio Capital Journal

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  • Democratic Black lawmakers Say Ohio Issue 1 Redistricting Reform Would Help Black Voters

    Democratic Black lawmakers Say Ohio Issue 1 Redistricting Reform Would Help Black Voters

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    (Photo: Ideastream/The Ohio Channel)

    State Rep. Dontavius Jarrells, D-Columbus, speaks at a press conference on Issue 1, the redistricting reform measure on the ballot in the November general election. Assistant House Minority Leader Hearcel Craig stands behind him.

    In a press conference Tuesday, members of the Ohio Legislative Black Caucus, along with a voter advocate from the Ohio Organizing Collaborative, spoke of Issue 1 redistricting reform as a way forward for communities of color and the state as a whole.

    “For the first time, we have a real, enforceable path to ensure that Black voters in Ohio have the power to elect leaders who will fight for them,” said state Rep. Dontavius Jarrells, D-Columbus.

    Issue 1 proposes doing away with the current Ohio Redistricting Commission made up of seven elected officials, instead creating a 15-member citizens commission.

    The ORC as it stands includes the Ohio governor, auditor, and secretary of state, along with four lawmakers — one from each party in each chamber of the legislature. The 15-member citizens commission would be made up of five Republicans, five Democrats, and five independents, selected by a bipartisan panel of former judges, according to the proposal up for a vote in the November general election.

    Voting yes on Issue 1 would create the Ohio Citizens Redistricting Commission. Voting no on Issue 1 would keep the current Ohio Redistricting Commission.

    The Democrats organized the Tuesday press conference in response to “misinformation” about Issue 1 spread by Republicans, specifically state Sen. Michele Reynolds, R-Canal Winchester, who held her own press conference with former legislator John Barnes and other Ohioans who stand against the measure.

    In her press conference, Reynolds said Issue 1 “could fragment cohesive minority voting blocks, diluting our political influence,” which Democrats said was less likely in the process proposed in Issue 1 than it is in the current system.

    In the current system, certain blocks of Black voters have been “ignored,” according to OLBC members, and therefore have become apathetic to voting.

    “These fair maps will possibly allow for those people to be able to vote, and vote with their conscience, and vote with the thought that my vote does count,” said OLBC vice president and state Sen. Catherine Ingram, D-Cincinnati.

    Some of the Democrats scoffed at comments made by Issue 1 opponents that the measure would keep policies that would benefit Black Ohioans from going forward in the Statehouse.

    “It’s funny that all of a sudden there’s an overwhelming concern for Black disenfranchisement when we are working with a supermajority who has increased voter suppression laws, made it more difficult to vote, and has also made stricter voting ID restrictions,” said state Rep. Terrence Upchurch, D-Cleveland, president of the OLBC.

    Early voting has begun in Ohio, and runs until Nov. 3

    Originally published by the Ohio Capital Journal. Republished here with permission.

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    Susan Tebben, The Ohio Capital Journal

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  • While Criticizing Housing Costs, Ohio GOP Senate Candidate Bernie Moreno Invests With Speculators

    While Criticizing Housing Costs, Ohio GOP Senate Candidate Bernie Moreno Invests With Speculators

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    Republican Bernie Moreno’s U.S. Senate campaign is premised on a straightforward argument. The increasing cost of gas, groceries and housing are putting the American Dream out of reach.

    But Moreno isn’t an obvious messenger. His personal fortune would make him one of the richest members of Congress if elected, and his family was wealthy and well-connected in their native Colombia before moving to the United States. Instead, on the campaign trail Moreno sometimes references his father-in-law who started working at U.S. Steel straight out of high school. 

    “(He) was able to retire recently debt free,” Moreno said in a March 14 stump speech. “Never worried about affording a car or house. He was able to do that on that good paying job at U.S. Steel.”

    These days, Moreno said, things are different. 

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    “You look at the young people today, they can’t afford a house. To afford a house in Ohio, you have to make about $114,000 a year.”

    He made a similar pitch during a recent podcast appearance.

    “When President Trump was in office, if you made $60,000 a year, you could afford a home in Ohio,” he said. “Today, it’s $114,000.”

    Moreno’s figures for Ohio are off. A Redfin analysis last October put the income requirements to afford a median priced home at $114,627 nationwide. The same report indicated homebuyers in Ohio cities listed among the country’s top 100 metro areas would need to make somewhere between $60,000 to $90,000. And according to a state-by-state analysis from Realtor.com this April, homebuyers in Ohio would need to earn about $60,000 to afford a median priced home.

    However, for Moreno’s frustration with the housing market, he’s not a passive bystander. According to his personal financial disclosure, Moreno is invested in firms and funds engaged in large-scale real estate speculation. 

    While researchers have differing views on whether institutional investors drive up prices or chase them, investors do benefit financially as housing grows more expensive. Meanwhile, at the local level, housing activists argue institutional investors distort real estate markets and have a reputation for raising rents, dragging their feet on repairs and filing eviction notices.

    Moreno’s opponent, Ohio Democratic U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown, agrees that the cost of housing is too often out of reach. But while Moreno offers a vision of government “in the background,” Brown wants guardrails.

    In a hearing last year, Brown highlighted the challenges posed by limited housing stock and exclusionary zoning policy, and then a few months later he filed legislation to place limits on institutional investors targeting housing as an investment strategy.

    In an emailed statement, Brown campaign spokeswoman Maggie Amjad said, “Sherrod is fighting to lower the cost of housing and create new pathways to home ownership for all Ohioans.”

    Moreno’s campaign did not respond to requests for comment from the Ohio Capital Journal for this story.

    Cardone Capital

    One of Moreno’s allies sits atop a billion-dollar real estate empire made up of personally branded properties, sells books that describe how you too can land the deals to become wealthy, and even runs what’s marketed as a “university” to teach paying clients his sales techniques.

    According to his financial disclosure, Moreno has between a quarter and half a million dollars invested in a Grant Cardone equity fund. Moreno reported earning dividends of between $15,000 and $50,000 in the latest filing.

    Cardone leveraged his large social media following to crowdfund the capital for several multifamily rental buildings. The pitch was relatively straightforward: back Cardone’s investment and he’ll give you a cut every month. Somewhere down the line he’ll sell the property, likely for a profit, and the investor gets their money back and then some.

    In an Instagram video with his daughter, he pencils out the purchase of a 500-unit building.

    “If we raise the rents, and I’m not helping you on this, if we raise our rents just $100 how much does the value (of) the property increase?” he asked her. The camera zoomed in on an iPhone calculator as he added, “Yeah, almost $11 million. So, every, every time I could raise the rents just 100 bucks?”

    “It’s worth 11 million more dollars,” she said.

    Cardone came under fire after he was accused of abusing a workforce housing program in Palm Beach County. The Palm Beach Post reported that in exchange for the right to build 200+ apartments on land zoned for 67 single family homes, the apartment complex was supposed to provide more than 150 affordable units. Instead, the Post reported, eligible residents were often overcharged by hundreds of dollars a month for years. The management even reportedly counted vacant units toward its workforce requirements.

    The Ohio Capital Journal reached out to Cardone Capital for comment, but the company did not respond.

    Cardone endorsed Moreno in the current U.S. Senate race as well as during his brief run in 2022. One of Cardone’s companies, Cardone Training Technologies, cut a $40,000 check to a Moreno-aligned Super PAC. Moreno has had Cardone speak to his employees and appeared on stage alongside him for a real estate seminar.

    Yellowstone

    One of Moreno’s brothers runs a major construction company in Colombia called Amarilo. The company set up a private equity firm called Yellowstone Capital Partners to help finance its efforts. More recently, Yellowstone set up a fund for real estate and property development in the U.S.

    According to his financial disclosure, Moreno has between $1 million and $5 million invested in the fund, called Yellowstone Housing Opportunity Fund III. The fund bills itself as an answer to the shortage of “attainable housing,” i.e. aimed at people earning 80% to 120% of an area’s median income. It backs “middle market” developers — those who have “outgrown ‘friends-and-family’ capital but remain below the radar of larger institutions.”

    The face of that fund in the U.S. is a lending platform called Techo Funding, LLC run by Moreno’s nephew Paul Stockamore. The company did not respond to Ohio Capital Journal’s request for comment.

    The company’s emphasis is funding build-to-rent projects. In a trade publication article, Stockamore and his co-founder, J.P. Ackerman, described the approach as a hybrid of multi-family and single-family rental properties.

    “The product is designed for the lifestyle of today’s renters while also delivering a more durable structure to withstand tenant use and turnover,” they wrote. 

    And in addition to lowering repair and maintenance costs for managers, they contend renters will pay a premium for a shiny new home — as much as 10% to 20% above market.

    The company describes itself as part of the Anchor Loans family of companies. Anchor was acquired by the real estate investment management firm Pretium in 2021. At the time, the firm had $30 billion in assets; this summer it had grown to more than $50 billion. The company’s CEO Don Mullen described a new $1.5 billion fund as a means of “growing the stock of quality single-family homes in key markets across the country, helping solve for the tremendous shortage of viable housing.”

    A congressional report from 2022 criticized Pretium’s eviction policies during the COVID-19 pandemic. The company led the pack among four corporate landlords in terms of eviction filings — many of those 6,264 filings coming during the CDC’s eviction moratorium. The report also noted Pretium established policies to refuse federal rental assistance if it was less than half what the tenant owed. 

    And while supporters of the build-to-rent approach argue producing new housing stock for rent lessens their impact on the home ownership market, a report from the Government Accountability Office noted the Federal Housing Finance Agency isn’t so sure. Even if the developments aren’t taking homes out of the market for purchase, if new homes are going to the rental market instead of the ownership market, it still limits the available stock for homebuyers.

    Blackstone & legislative pushback

    While Cardone and Yellowstone are positioned to take advantage of the rising housing costs Moreno criticizes, at the end of the day they’re relatively small players in the market. The poster child for institutional investors’ entry into the rental market is the investment management company Blackstone. Through at least 2023, Moreno maintained investments there, too.

    Following the 2008 financial crisis, Blackstone bought up tens of thousands of distressed single-family homes and converted them to rentals. Similar to the mortgage-backed securities that helped fuel the 2008 recession, these rentals were packaged into securities and traded on financial markets.

    The company’s tactics were so aggressive that in 2019, the United Nations Human Rights Council in a report criticized Blackstone and its subsidiary Invitation Homes (also referenced in the Congressional report criticizing Pretium) for aggressively raising rents, charging tenants for routine maintenance and relying too heavily on evictions.

    Moreno seemingly liquidated his reported holdings in a Blackstone fund this year.

    In 2023, Moreno reported a $250,000-$500,000 stake in Blackstone Private Credit Fund. This year, he reported $1,000 or less in that fund. However, according to the fund’s prospectus, real estate investments made up only a tiny portion of its overall portfolio. The biggest share is invested in the software industry.

    By contrast, U.S. Sen. Brown’s portfolio is straightforward. He and his wife reported two mortgages, and at most a little more than $1 million in pension and retirement funds. In a news release announcing legislation to limit the roles of institutional investors in the housing market,  Brown said the firms “buy up homes that could have gone to first-time homebuyers, then jack up rent, neglect repairs, and threaten families with eviction.”

    His Stop Predatory Investing Act would prevent large investors from deducting interest or depreciation going forward, and incentivize them to sell single family homes back to homeowners or local nonprofits. Housing advocates praised the bill, including Kristen Baker, who heads up the Local Initiatives Support Coalition of Greater Cincinnati.

    “Approximately 1 in 6 homes in Ohio are owned by institutional investors, including 4,000 homes in Cincinnati,” she said. “We know from our experience in Cincinnati that the transfer of ownership and control of local housing to large institutional investors has resulted in decreased maintenance of properties and aggressive eviction practices from long distance, corporate landlords; and that it also denies homeownership opportunities for families in those communities.”

    More recently Brown signed on to legislation that would give the Federal Trade Commission and Department of Justice a role in reviewing large housing transactions for anti-competitive impacts. Neither bill has attracted a Republican cosponsor.

    Institutional investors’ impact

    Although institutional investors have a reputation for raising prices, Laurie Goodman, a fellow at the Urban Institute’s housing finance policy center, warns correlation is not necessarily causation.

    “It’s clear that, yes, areas in which institutional investors are more active, tend to have more rapid home price appreciation,” she explained, “but it is not clear that they cause that more rapid home price appreciation.”

    Goodman argued institutional investors as a whole control only about 3% of the U.S. single-family rental market. And they’re zeroing in on communities where they expect population and employment gains that construction won’t be able to keep pace with, markets in which “rents would have gone up anyway,” she said.

    Goodman added that while there’s “no question” institutional investors have a track record for filing lots of evictions, that doesn’t necessarily mean tenants are losing their homes.

    “Most eviction notices do not result in evictions,” she said. “Eviction notices are a rent-collection technique for the larger landlords in a way that they’re not for smaller landlords.”

    However, eviction filings, even if it doesn’t result in an eviction, is a public record and could damage a renter’s chances when they go to rent a different place in the future.

    Some other researchers are more critical of the role institutional investors play in the housing market. They argue looking at the rental market as a whole is the wrong perspective. Instead, you need to drill down to the zip code, census tract or neighborhood level.

    “They want to dominate a corner of that space — I want to be the single family rental in this zip code,” said Austin Harrison, an assistant professor of urban studies at Rhodes College.

    In his home city of Memphis, Tennessee, Harrison said, institutional investors don’t control the entire city’s rental market, but they still exert significant influence in the neighborhoods where they’re clustered.

    “Where they’re doing it, they are controlling the market, and they are setting rents, and that is driving up the price,” he explained.

    Brian An, the co-director for Urban Research at Georgia Tech University, studied 2022 code complaints in neighborhoods around Atlanta. And while he stressed some large landlords may be very responsive, bigger wasn’t better for tenants.

    “Properties owned by large corporations, defined as those having more than 50 properties in Fulton County, more than 20% of their properties were reported as having code complaints,” he said. “Whereas that number goes down to 15% if we just look at the single-family rental properties owned by individuals.”

    “So, 15% versus 20% to 25% I think that’s a big gap,” he said.

    An added that even if institutional investors nudge prices higher, there’s another way to look at it, too.

    “Definitely it makes home ownership harder in those communities,” he said. “But on the other hand, they also provide access to the neighborhoods that were not probably accessible to these renters.”

    In addition to higher sticker prices or less responsive landlords, Harrison is worried about longer term effects. He sees investors buying up the cheap suburban properties — “you know, stick a coat of paint on it, put a couple of thousand dollars into it, it’s ready to rent” —  where first time homebuyers often start.

    That’s an important rung on the ladder, but he argued, “it’s hard to see a path for those properties to get back to the home ownership market.”

    “Once I’m, you know, American Home for Rent or Main Street Renewal, and I have 2,000 (or) 3,000 properties in a city, if I’m selling off that portfolio, I’m not going to hire 3,000 real estate agents to sell it to 3,000 first-time homebuyers,” Harrison explained. “I’m going to sell it to somebody else who can buy 3,000 properties.”

    Originally published by the Ohio Capital Journal. Republished here with permission.

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    Nick Evans, Ohio Capital Journal

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  • An Issue for Them? Ohio’s 50-Year-Old+ Women Emboldened by Moreno Comments on Abortion

    An Issue for Them? Ohio’s 50-Year-Old+ Women Emboldened by Moreno Comments on Abortion

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    (Photo by Graham Stokes)

    COLUMBUS, OH — JUNE 24: Christy Hahn of Columbus (left) gives a thumbs up to a passing car from a small group of protesters gathering after the Supreme Court announced the reversal of Roe v. Wade, June 24, 2022, at the Ohio Statehouse, Columbus, Ohio.

    Ohio women 50 and older are headed to the polls having lived through the days before Roe v. Wade legalized abortion nationwide in 1973, during the time when abortion was legal, and now, after the decision was overturned in 2022 and power given to each state to decide.

    That has played a factor in many women’s decisions at the ballot box, though it’s only one factor of many, voters told the Capital Journal in interviews last week.

    “I am not a single issue voter, by any means,” said Mansfield resident and registered Republican Linda Smith.

    But abortion rights has come to the forefront, and in fact has galvanized older women voters in the weeks leading up to the November general election.

    U.S. Senate candidate Bernie Moreno made comments about abortion rights and the interests of suburban women, which have since been used in campaign ads against him.

    Those comments have also renewed conversations about the topic with women who may not be experiencing pregnancy or the need for an abortion, but who remember times when reproductive health care was more risky, and are looking to the future for their daughters and granddaughters.

    “Women don’t make their health care choices and decisions lightly and they’re often complicated decisions.” Smith said. “They’re life-altering.”

    Moreno’s comments were made at a town hall in Warren County and first made public by WCMH via a viewer-submitted video.

    “You know, the left has a lot of single issue voters,” Moreno said. “Sadly, by the way, there’s a lot of suburban women, a lot of suburban women that are like, ‘Listen, abortion is it. If I can’t have an abortion in this country whenever I want, I will vote for anybody else.’ OK. It’s a little crazy by the way, but — especially for women that are like past 50 — I’m thinking to myself, ‘I don’t think that’s an issue for you.’”

    After a pause, he added, “Oh, thank God my wife didn’t hear that part.”

    Moreno’s campaign did not respond to a request by the OCJ for comment, but in a previous statement to The Statehouse News Bureau, spokesperson Reagan McCarthy said Moreno was “clearly making a tongue-in-cheek joke about how Sherrod Brown and members of the leftwing media like to pretend that the only issue that matters to women voters is abortion.”

    After Moreno’s comments, an open letter was released by Republican, independent and Democratic-voting women, saying Moreno “mocked many of us who are over the age of fifty” and criticizing him for trying to “play your comments off as a joke” after the fact.

    “As Ohio women across the political spectrum, we don’t agree on everything,” the letter stated. “But there are some things bigger than party politics. What unites us is the firm belief that Ohio women should have the ability to make their own health care choices, free from the involvement of people like you.”

    Smith was one of the Republican voters to sign on to the letter.

    “It’s distressing to me to see that this (issue) has become a political pawn,” Smith told the Capital Journal.

    The issue is coming up among other priorities for older Ohioans, such as inflation, the economy and Social Security.

    An August survey commissioned by the AARP showed 16% of Ohio’s 50+ voters polled placed it as their first or second choice among important issues driving their votes in the general election. Nine percent of 50+ survey takers put it as their most important issue in the election, putting it above other single issues like Social Security, taxes, gun control, crime, general health care, foreign policy, Medicare and climate change.

    The AARP poll also found that 94% of 50+ Ohio voters plan to vote in the upcoming election.

    Overall, incumbent Ohio Democratic U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown held a narrow lead over Moreno, 46%-42%, but among 50+ voters specifically, the race was reportedly much closer, with Moreno holding a five-point edge in the August AARP numbers.

    The candidates, the ballot measures, and the tools you need to cast your vote.

    Seville resident Mosie Welch is a registered Democrat in her 60s, and she readily admits reproductive rights tops the list of issues she is using to decide her votes. She connects reproductive health care to family issues, along with the economic health of the state and the concept of individual rights.

    “Yes, this is one of the big issues driving my vote, especially at the national level, because I fear what will happen if women no longer have the right to make decisions about their own bodies as they don’t in some states today,” Welch said.

    As a mother and grandmother, she wants to see future women have the “full range of health care necessary to ensure that they can live their life as fully as possible.”

    “I’m not expecting to personally need this health care, but I would imagine there’s many families worried about this issue,” Welch said.

    She also fears for the rights of physicians, who expressed concern about litigation and the potential loss of medical licenses, along with patient care delays, as the debate over abortion rights went on after the Dobbs decision overturned Roe v. Wade.

    “When that happens and a woman dies, or a woman loses their fertility, or is racking up huge medical bills, that doesn’t just affect one individual,” Welch said. “It affects everybody, it affects the community.”

    Combining her decades of life experience and the rhetoric of the 2024 election has only served to motivate Welch and her fellow voters, like Susan Polakoff Shaw.

    “I know a lot of women who are rage-filled, and it’s women around my age who know what it’s like, who have heard what it was like pre-Roe,” said Shaw, who did work for Ohio Physicians for Reproductive Rights during the 2023 election. “It’s about being able to control your life and have a say in your future and your destiny, and your health and your family.”

    More than just reproductive rights as an issue for older women, Smith said her decisions in the upcoming election are informed by elected officials who “frequently disregard the will of the people,” including legislative attempts and comments that seek to undermine the reproductive rights amendment passed by a majority of state voters last year.

    “You can disagree, but when 57% of the electorate votes for that, you need to respect that,” Smith said.

    But Smith said she is optimistic for the future of Ohio and even the Republican Party, partly because of the discussion brought on by Moreno’s comments.

    “People who rise above their differences to fight for common causes  – like you are seeing now for women’s reproductive freedoms,” Smith said, “it’s that collective voice and vote that will make a difference.”

    Originally published by the Ohio Capital Journal. Republished here with permission.

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    Susan Tebben, The Ohio Capital Journal

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  • Ohio Gerrymandering: A Brief and Awful History of the Very Recent Past

    Ohio Gerrymandering: A Brief and Awful History of the Very Recent Past

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    Photo by Graham Stokes for Ohio Capital Journal.

    Ohio Senate President Matt Huffman, R-Lima, oversees a Senate session.

    Ohio citizens right now are represented by unconstitutionally gerrymandered state lawmakers. The politicians in the General Assembly in Columbus are occupying unconstitutionally gerrymandered seats. This is not a matter of opinion. It was adjudicated in the state’s highest court five times in 2021 and 2022.

    After those decisions, an anti-abortion lobbyist sued to force Ohio to use the unconstitutional maps in 2022, but the federal court never declared the maps were constitutional. It never said the maps were not gerrymandered. It just said that Ohioans had to use them. So, in 2022, Ohio politicians refused to produce fair maps, and then a split federal court forced Ohio voters to use the gerrymandered ones.

    Several of the Ohio politicians tooling around the state to campaign against redistricting reform this fall are the very same politicians who produced unconstitutionally gerrymandered maps over and over again in 2021 and 2022.

    They insisted on them, and never allowed anything else, and ran out the clock to force Ohio voters to vote under them in November 2022, and to suffer them in 2023 and 2024 — to suffer them as we speak.

    Gerrymandering is cheating: Politicians pick their own voters and draw their own districts in a way that guarantees themselves victory.

    Often, the most extreme candidates win in primaries by appealing to the radical base. Gerrymandering guarantees those same extreme candidates victories in November so they can then waltz into office without ever experiencing a competitive general election.

    This means that only a handful of races are anywhere close to competitive each November, and the vast majority of races are determined in partisan primaries each spring.

    The candidates, the ballot measures, and the tools you need to cast your vote.

    For instance, Ohio will decide 116 elections in the Ohio House and Ohio Senate this Nov. 5.

    Six of them are actually competitive. Total.

    Two in the Senate, four in the House. The rest are predictable.

    Six competitive races out of 116.

    That’s gerrymandering.

    Meanwhile, a recent Baldwin Wallace University poll showed Ohioans have a net satisfaction with the state legislature of -34 points.

    This summer, more than 535,000 Ohio citizens submitted petition signatures to put anti-gerrymandering reform on the ballot this November.

    Issue 1 seeks to remove politicians from the map-making process in favor of a citizens commission.

    Under Issue 1, the current Ohio Redistricting Commission made up of politicians would be replaced by a citizens commission made up of five Republicans, five Democrats, and five independent commissioners.

    Ohioans previously passed constitutional amendments to ban gerrymandering in 2015 and 2018 but those reforms, which were put on the ballot in compromises with lawmakers, left politicians and lawmakers in control.

    In 2018, the politicians campaigned against gerrymandering, but after they won election they refused to honor the amendments. In 2021 and 2022, they forced gerrymandering on Ohio anyway.

    If you average Ohio’s statewide partisan elections over the last 10 cycles, including 2022, Ohio is a 56-43 Republican-to-Democratic state. But after 2022, the Ohio House has 67 Republicans and 32 Democrats. In the Ohio Senate, 26 seats are Republican while seven are Democratic. Of Ohio’s 15 U.S. Congressional seats, 10 are held by Republicans and five held by Democrats.

    This means that even though Republicans represent 56% of voters in Ohio on average, they control 66% of the state’s U.S. Congressional seats, 67% of the Ohio House, and 79% of the Ohio Senate.

    This is the gerrymandering that was forced by politicians on Ohio voters in 2022, despite a total of seven bipartisan Ohio Supreme Court rulings against the Statehouse and Congressional district maps as unconstitutionally gerrymandered.

    This November, Ohio voters will decide. They will decide what gerrymandering is and what it isn’t. Ohio voters will decide if politicians should be left in charge of redistricting, or if the politicians should be kicked out of the process in favor of a citizens commission.

    To make that decision, voters deserve facts and context, not lies and gaslighting.

    In service to that, the Ohio Capital Journal Voter Guide explains the Ohio Issue 1 proposal here.

    I have also assembled below for your edification and amusement, a timeline: A brief, awful history of the very recent past when it comes to Ohio gerrymandering.

    How we got here

    2011: Ohio Republicans create some of the most gerrymandered maps in the nation in a downtown Columbus secret hotel room “bunker,” ensuring them 10 years of supermajority control over the Ohio legislature that continues to this day. Also over the following 10 election cycles under the 2011 maps, not one U.S. Congressional district would change hands between parties.

    2015: Ohio voters pass anti-gerrymandering reform for Statehouse districts with more than 71% of the vote, but the reforms leave politicians in charge of drawing the districts.

    2018: Ohio voters pass anti-gerrymandering reform for U.S. Congressional districts with nearly 75% of the vote, but again, the reforms leave politicians in charge of drawing the districts.

    2018: Republicans win the governor’s office, the secretary of state’s office, and the auditor’s office, giving them 5-2 control over the Ohio Redistricting Commission that also includes a lawmaker from each party from each chamber in the legislature.

    2020: The U.S. Census Bureau conducts its 10-year census, spurring another round of redistricting in 2021.

    2021-2022: A bipartisan majority on the Ohio Supreme Court rejects Republican-drawn Statehouse district maps as unconstitutionally gerrymandered five times.

    As a member of the Ohio Redistricting Commission, Gov. Mike DeWine goes along with the Republican legislative leaders’ gerrymandering. Also as a member of the commission, Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose goes along with the gerrymandering as well, after campaigning in 2018 telling the nation he was against gerrymandering, and after, as a member of the redistricting commission, calling the maps “asinine” and texting his chief of staff, “I should vote no,” before ultimately voting yes, repeatedly.

    Also 2021-2022: A bipartisan majority on the Ohio Supreme Court rejects Republican-drawn U.S. Congressional district maps as unconstitutionally gerrymandered two times.

    2021: Ohio Republican lawmakers add party labels to Ohio Supreme Court races.

    2022: Republicans on the Ohio Redistricting Commission refuse to follow the bipartisan Ohio Supreme Court’s order to draw districts that aren’t gerrymandered, thereby running out the clock after an anti-abortion lobbyist files a lawsuit in federal court to force Ohio voters to use the gerrymandered maps. Two Trump-appointed judges agree to force Ohio voters to vote under unconstitutionally gerrymandered maps.

    Also 2022: Swing-vote Republican Chief Justice Maureen O’Connor is forced by law to retire due to age. As she ruled against Republican gerrymandering, there were discussions by Republicans about possibly impeaching O’Connor.

    Also 2022: Ohioans are forced to vote under unconstitutionally gerrymandered maps to elect our current 135th General Assembly (“serving” 2023 and 2024). Republicans increase their gerrymandered supermajorities in both chambers. They also win ideological control over the Ohio Supreme Court, so while their majority remains 4-3, there is no longer any bipartisan swing vote on the issue of gerrymandering.

    Also 2022: A coalition of advocates start planning further redistricting reform.

    Shortly thereafter, Secretary of State LaRose and Republican state Rep. Brian Stewart announce a proposal to raise the threshold in Ohio for passing constitutional amendments from 50% to 60%.

    LaRose denies that the proposal is connected to abortion or gerrymandering, but in a memo Stewart writes to his colleagues, he lists only two reasons for them to support his proposal: stopping the abortion rights amendment and stopping any further anti-gerrymandering reform in Ohio.

    January 2023: Ohio’s unconstitutionally gerrymandered legislature takes their seats.

    Also 2023: Ohio Republicans enact one of the most restrictive voter laws in the country. They also eliminate August elections. They make a play to put the 60% amendment threshold on the May ballot in Ohio, but fail. Later, they bring back a special August election to put the 60% proposal to voters. DeWine supports the proposal. Meanwhile, the Ohio reproductive rights proposal qualifies for the November ballot. DeWine is against it.

    Summer 2023: Secretary of State LaRose and the anti-abortion lobbyist who sued to force gerrymandered districts on Ohio voters campaign together to try to convince voters to accept the 60% threshold proposal.

    August 2023: 57% of Ohio voters reject the proposal.

    Later that same month, a group called Citizens Not Politicians is formed to put forward a new anti-gerrymandering amendment proposal that would remove politicians from the process of drawing districts and replace them with a citizen-led commission.

    Retired Republican Ohio Supreme Court Justice O’Connor and former Democratic Ohio Supreme Court Justice Yvette McGee Brown join together to spearhead the effort. They make plans to put the amendment ballot proposal before voters in November 2024.

    Also August 2023: As chair of the Ohio Ballot Board, Secretary of State LaRose, who opposes the Ohio reproductive rights amendment, uses his official position to write ballot summary language for the amendment that uses loaded language against the amendment.

    September 2023: The Ohio Redistricting Commission unanimously passes maps to be used in the 2024 Election, which Democrats say they agreed to because they say Republicans would have passed even more gerrymandered maps that would’ve likely been approved by the new Republican majority Ohio Supreme Court without O’Connor on it as a swing vote.

    October 2023: The Citizens Not Politicians amendment petition is cleared as “fair and truthful” to begin collecting signatures.

    November 2023: 57% of Ohio voters pass the state’s new reproductive rights amendment. Moreover, 57% pass a new law for adult-use recreational marijuana.

    July 2024: Citizens Not Politicians submits petition signatures, and 535,000 signatures are certified, putting Issue 1 redistricting reform on the November 2024 ballot.

    August 2024: As chair of the Ohio Ballot Board, Secretary of State LaRose, who opposes the Issue 1 anti-gerrymandering amendment, uses his official position to write ballot summary language for the amendment that uses loaded language against the amendment.

    Oct. 8, 2024: Early voting begins in Ohio.

    Originally published by the Ohio Capital Journal. Republished here with permission.

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    David Dewitt, Ohio Capital Journal

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  • How Partisan Supreme Court Elections Are Shaping Ohio

    How Partisan Supreme Court Elections Are Shaping Ohio

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    (Photo by Graham Stokes for Ohio Capital Journal. Republish photo only with original article.)

    The Gavel outside the Supreme Court of the State of Ohio.

    Ohio is one of seven states that elects state supreme court justices based on partisan elections — which can impact voters and campaign finance dollars. This is a new change, with Ohio Republican lawmakers adding party labels to the races starting in 2022.

    However, partisan elections are “a difficult fit for judges,” said Michael Milov-Cordoba, counsel for The Brennan Center for Justice at NYU Law. 

    “Legislators are changing the types of elections … to obtain a political advantage one way or another,” he said. “State courts are all deciding more significant national issues than they were in the past.” 

    Nonpartisan elections are used in 14 states for state supreme court races and another 14 use what’s called “merit selection,” a sort of job application process where candidates apply for a vacancy in the judicial system in a state, a nominating commission reviews the applications and makes a recommendation to the governor or other appointing entity, according to The Brennan Center.

    The rest of the states use either gubernatorial or legislative appointment, or a hybrid selection process. Ohio switched from nonpartisan to partisan supreme court elections in 2021. 

    Something else that has changed along with the new partisanship in the race is the money involved.

    “What we’re seeing in the past few cycles is an unprecedented amount of outside spending in judicial candidate races,” Milov-Cordoba said.

    About 9% of donations to the six Ohio Supreme Court candidates totaling more than $365,000 have come from outside of Ohio as of Sept. 19, according to 2023 and 2024 campaign donations posted on the Ohio Secretary of State’s website. 

    Incumbent Democratic Justice Michael P. Donnelly is being challenged by Republican Hamilton County Court of Common Pleas Judge Megan Shanahan.

    Incumbent Republican Justice Joseph Deters, who decided not to run for his current seat, is opting instead to go up against incumbent Democratic Justice Melody Stewart.

    Democratic candidate Lisa Forbes, of the Eighth District Court of Appeals, and Republican candidate Dan Hawkins, of the Franklin County Court of Common Pleas, are battling for Deters’ open seat. 

    The Ohio Supreme Court currently has a 4-3 Republican majority. This election could either flip the court Democratic or Republicans will add to their numbers. 

    The Democratic candidates have received nearly $272,000 in contributions from outside of Ohio and the Republican candidates have gotten more than $93,000 in out-of-state contributions, as of Sept. 19. 

    Deters has received the most campaign contributions with more than $909,000 and Stewart has received the least amount of contributions with more than $480,000, as of Sept. 19. About 4% of Deters campaign donations have been from out-of-state, with nearly half of those coming from Florida.

    Hawkins has received about $27,400 from out-of-state donations and Shanahan has received about $21,200 in contributions from outside of Ohio, as of Sept. 19. Both of them received the most out-of-state money from Washington, D.C.

    Donnelly has received about $98,400 in donations from outside of Ohio, about 16% of his total donations, as of Sept. 19. 16% of Forbes’ campaign contributions has also come from out of Ohio, totaling about $97,300. About 15% of Stewart’s donations (about $76,100 came from outside of Ohio. All three democrats received the most out-of-state donations from New York.

    The change in spending for judicial races has been significant over the past 15 to 20 years, said Phillip Marcin, professor of instruction at the Bliss Institute of Applied Politics at the University of Akron.

    “Outside groups weren’t spending a lot of money, to the point where they were just low-profile affairs,” Marcin said. 

    But now that there has been an “explosion of spending” and partisan labels added to the races, Marcin said judicial races are starting to resemble more “political” races, like legislative or congressional races.

    Campaigning rules for judicial candidates are different, for example, candidates are restricted from making knowingly false statements about fellow candidates in television ads, and typically ads paid for by judicial campaigns focus on their candidate’s qualities and qualifications. 

    But changing the elections to include partisan affiliations could have impacts on voters without any effort on the candidates’ part.

    Marcin said the ongoing debate on whether or not political parties should be attached to judicial candidates has brought two arguments: supporters of the partisan elections (and increased spending on those races) say if voters turn out specifically to vote for other candidates on the ballot, they are more likely to also vote in judicial elections. This decreases the “roll-off” percentage, or the number of people who vote at the top of the ticket, but ignore down-ballot races and issues.

    “(Supporters of partisan elections say) the more campaign spending that happens in judicial races, the more the roll-off decreases,” Marcin said.

    During the 2020 election, more than a million Ohioans who voted didn’t vote for a state supreme court justice.

    Opponents of partisan affiliations, which has included former U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, say having to answer to a political party can alter judicial behavior. 

    “The traditional notion of a judge is that they should be neutral and impartial,” Marcin said.

    But if pushed to run in partisan campaigns with donations coming their way, Marcin said research has shown judges can feel “expected to rule in line with the groups that you’ve received money from,” such as increasing sentences to appear “tougher on crime.”

    “There’s evidence that judges alter their behavior in order to increase their chances of election,” Marcin said. “…That should be incredibly frightening to everyone.”

    This could be a problem because of the impact judicial races have on the long term future of not just the state, but also the country as a whole.

    The candidates, the ballot measures, and the tools you need to cast your vote.

    “There used to be a lot of issues that were more federal in nature, but on some of these issues the United States Supreme Court has said we’re not really going to deal with these things anymore, we’re going to leave these to the state,” Marcin said.

    Some of these issues include redistricting and abortion – which was sent back to the states in the Dobbs decision – both of which are hot issues in Ohio with 2023’s Issue 1 that enshrined reproductive rights in the Ohio Constitution, and this year’s Issue 1, which seeks to constitutionalize redistricting reform.

    The Ohio Supreme Court has also already been asked to rule on various issues having to do with the reproductive rights amendment and state laws regulating abortion, along with redistricting maps by the Ohio Redistricting Commission, and summary language for the redistricting reform proposal.

    “Now, the states are much more influential on these issues that are going to impact thousands, hundreds of thousands of people,” Marcin said. 

    Originally published by the Ohio Capital Journal. Republished here with permission.

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    Megan Henry and Susan Tebben, The Ohio Capital Journal

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  • Ohio County Elections Officials Are Wrestling With Mass Voter Registration Challenges

    Ohio County Elections Officials Are Wrestling With Mass Voter Registration Challenges

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    The Cuyahoga County Board of Elections

    County election officials around Ohio are seeing scores if not hundreds of voter registration challenges on the eve of the 2024 election. Cleveland.com recently detailed the extent of the effort, led in large part by an organization that grew out of efforts to overturn the 2020 election.

    Meanwhile, The Akron Beacon Journal reported on a parallel effort to challenge Ohio’s voter rolls in federal court — this time led by a different organization committed to finding widespread alleged voter fraud. Ohio’s Republican Attorney General and Secretary of State have dismissed those claims as “palpably baseless” and urged the court to dismiss the case. Similar lawsuits have been filed in at least six other states.

    With this flood of registration challenges, voting rights groups have sprung into action. In a Thursday letter to Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose, the ACLU, Brennan Center, Common Cause and the League of Women Voters argued voters are being improperly removed after the federally mandated 90-day cut off and notice-and-waiting period provisions.

    Also this week, the watchdog group Campaign Legal Center sent letters to election officials in 11 states to offer guidance on what is and is not legal when it comes to these mass registration challenges.

    Butler County

    One of the biggest targets for registration challenges has been Butler County. Board of elections director Nicole Unzicker and deputy director Eric Corbin explain they’ve received close to 1,900 challenges in the current cycle.

    “The records that we hold right now show that the last challenge that was submitted was in 2015,” Unzicker said.

    For comparison, Ohio’s largest county, Franklin, has seen 1,193 since this year’s primary election. Spokesman Aaron Sellers notes challenges, especially in a presidential year, are normal, but the current figure is higher than they’ve seen in past cycles.

    Some of the challenges in Butler County are trivial. On Sept. 4, for instance, the board had to deal with 15 voters who had two spaces in their name instead of one. The board voted to delete the extra space. But another chunk of challenges argued voters in Butler County should be removed because they’re allegedly registered elsewhere. Corbin explained the board took no action, because legally, they can’t.

    “The board of elections, because of federal law, does not have the authority to cancel a voter’s registration in that situation, or force them to vote a provisional ballot just because they’ve received one of these (National change of address) changes.”

    Unzicker noted some residents are snowbirds and shift their mail elsewhere part of the year. They’ve also seen examples of an entire household getting flagged because one of the kids changed their address when they left for college.

    Although that meeting’s challenges went nowhere, Unzicker explained there’s still a cost. Under state law, they have to investigate when a challenge is filed, and they’ve seen a lot of challenges.

    “There’s always room for improvement,” she said, “but to have these challenges has definitely been a — I think we’ve had an additional 10 meetings for our board to process these voter challenges.”

    The broader trend

    In their letter, the voting rights groups zero in on actions by the Delaware, Muskingum and Logan County boards of elections. Unlike what happened in Butler County, in each case of those cases board members sustained allegations of voters who had moved away and registered elsewhere. In removing those voters, the groups argued, the boards violated Section 8(d) of the National Voter Registration Act.

    That provision prohibits the removal of a voter from the rolls based on change of residence unless the voter explicitly asks to be removed, or they fail to respond to a notice and then fail to vote in the next two federal general elections. If that sounds familiar, it’s because it’s the same provision that drives Ohio’s “supplemental process” that opponents often refer to as a voter purge.

    Because the counties removed voters without waiting the required four years, they contend, the counties violated federal law.

    “As made clear in recent guidance from the United States Department of Justice, absent written confirmation from the voter themselves, removal based on change of residence must follow the (notice-and-waiting) provisions of Section 8(d),” they wrote.

    They add that by taking on the challenges the counties are likely violating Section 8(c) as well, which establishes a 90-day cut off for any program to “systematically” remove voters from the rolls.

    “The challenges that are being processed in Delaware County — and potentially other Ohio counties — have all the hallmarks of systematic challenges,” they argued.

    They note, rather than offering “individualized or personalized knowledge,” the challengers shared data they gathered from third parties based on “mostly non-governmental sources” and in some cases the challengers themselves didn’t even show up for the hearing.

    In Delaware County the board deadlocked on challenges based on third party databases, but that doesn’t mean the voters are in the clear. Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose casts the tie breaking vote, and the groups note they’re unsure if he’s taken steps to resolve the issue. ACLU of Ohio legal director Freda Levenson warned him not to disenfranchise those voters and to ensure any improper removals are restored.

    “As Ohio’s chief election officer, Secretary LaRose must ensure compliance with the National Voter Registration Act,” she said. “It is his duty and responsibility to be fully acquainted with federal election law, and we urge him to refrain from unlawful removals, and correct all violations in an expedient manner.”

    The source

    The candidates, the ballot measures, and the tools you need to cast your vote.

    Aaron Ockerman, who serves as executive director of the Ohio Association of Election Officials, explained the current surge in challenges comes in large part from the Ohio Election Integrity Network.

    Ohio Capital Journal reached out to OEIN for this story without response. The organization is the state chapter of a group founded by Cleta Mitchell. Following the 2020 election, Mitchell was deeply involved in efforts to overturn the results in Georgia, and more recently she’s been amplifying fears of noncitizen voting in the 2024 election.

    Ockerman said election officials understand the need for accurate voter rolls and respect the process for challenging discrepancies. “No one wants to hear a bureaucrat bellyache about how they have to do their jobs,” he joked, “and this is part of our jobs, right?”

    Still, he said activists are testing the limits of an ad hoc, small-scale system.

    “Our understanding of the statute really is that it was meant to be utilized more like by individuals who have personal knowledge,” Ockerman described. “Maybe of, their neighbor moved or something and they’re still on the voter rolls, or their neighbor died and they’re still on the voter rolls, or something like that.”

    Kelly Dufour from Common Cause Ohio has been tracking registration challenges around Ohio and her tally is up to 17 counties.

    “The challengers who are bringing the challenges are doing so in a very concerted way with an agenda,” she argued. “They are not individuals who just became interested in data one day and decided they would sit down and be helpful to the board of elections,”

    Dufour argued the problem is magnified by LaRose’s silence on the issue. Without guidance from the state level, counties with varying resources are left to navigate a process some haven’t dealt with in years. And while any notice filed with the board triggers a complicated process, that doesn’t mean the underlying allegation has any merit.

    “In some cases, challengers actually submitted forms for challenged voters that weren’t even on record in the county,” she said.

    Still Dufour worries even baseless claims could undermine the process and confidence in the results.

    “At a time when all political parties should be focused on registering voters to participate,” she said, “some are instead deliberately trying to just sow distrust and don’t seem to care if they disenfranchise voters while they’re doing it.”

    Originally published by the Ohio Capital Journal. Republished here with permission.

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    Nick Evans, Ohio Capital Journal

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  • Project 2025 Architect Visiting Ohio for Center for Christian Virtue Summit

    Project 2025 Architect Visiting Ohio for Center for Christian Virtue Summit

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    (Photo by Ashley Murray/States Newsroom.)

    Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts speaks to reporters at the organization’s all-day Policy Fest at the Bradley Symphony Center in downtown Milwaukee, just blocks from the Republican National Convention, on Monday, July 15, 2024.

    Today and tomorrow, the Center for Christian Virtue will host a who’s who of right-wing Republican figures in Columbus. The group’s two-day Essential Summit serves as a prelude for the Ohio March for Life — an annual anti-abortion demonstration happening at the Ohio Statehouse Friday.

    The summit is slated to feature state leaders like Ohio Senate President Matt Huffman and Attorney General Dave Yost, as well as Kevin Roberts, the leader of Project 2025, a controversial right-wing transition plan and policy manifesto for a hypothetical future Trump administration.

    The religious lobbying organization is among the most well-connected in Ohio’s Republican dominated state legislature. On issues like reproductive rights, school vouchers and transgender issues, CCV has reliably staked out far-right positions.

    CCV was engaged from the very earliest stages with the 2023 ballot proposal from Republican lawmakers that would’ve imposed a 60% supermajority passage requirement for all future Ohio constitutional amendments. They’re also opposing the anti-gerrymandering amendment known as Issue 1 on this November’s ballot.

    CCV bills The Essential Summit as a way to bridge a purported divide between religion and politics.

    “Today,” the website reads, “many Christians believe the Bible doesn’t have anything to say about cultural and political issues. They’ve accepted the myth of the sacred-secular divide. Others feel isolated in their convictions and pressured into silence.”

    Project 2025 architect and Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts will be delivering the event’s keynote speech. The Heritage Foundation transition plan has prompted so much pushback that former President Trump has publicly disavowed it, despite the fact a variety of officials from his administration helped draft the plan.

    Dr. Ben Carson who served as Housing and Urban Development secretary during the Trump administration is scheduled to speak as well as the president of Hillsdale College, a conservative Christian university in Michigan, and the CEO of the Babylon Bee, a conservative satire news site.

    Among the Ohio elected officials and lawmakers slated to speak are Attorney General Yost, discussing how Christians can influence the marketplace, and Senate President Huffman, who will be speaking alongside Hillsdale president Larry Arnn. Additionally, state Sen. Rob McColley, R-Napoleon, and state Rep. Josh Williams, R-Sylvania are scheduled for speeches over the two-day conference.

    Originally published by the Ohio Capital Journal. Republished here with permission.

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    Nick Evans, Ohio Capital Journal

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  • Independents, Republicans Chide Moreno Over Comments About Older Women and Abortion

    Independents, Republicans Chide Moreno Over Comments About Older Women and Abortion

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    (Photo by Nick Evans, Ohio Capital Journal.)

    Arthur “Ed” Dunn speaking outside the Columbus Club in downtown Columbus.

    Republican and independent voters are criticizing Republican U.S. Senate candidate Bernie Moreno after he referred to women as “a little crazy” for making abortion policy the deciding factor for their vote. In a video obtained by WCMH, Moreno told a crowd in Warren County “(there’s) a lot of suburban women that are like, ‘Listen, abortion is it. If I can’t have an abortion in this country whenever I want, I will vote for anybody else.”

    “It’s a little crazy by the way,” he went on, “but — especially for women that are like past 50 — I’m thinking to myself, ‘I don’t think that’s an issue for you.’”

    “I’m 63,” Tammy Krings said, “When I turned 50, I didn’t stop caring about my daughter’s body and her choices and her rights.”

    Krings described herself as an independent voter, and she spoke alongside two Republicans Thursday on the sidewalk outside the Columbus Club where Moreno was hosting a fundraiser. The event was organized by Moreno’s opponent, Democratic U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown.

    “I didn’t stop caring about my future grandchildren and their rights,” Krings added. “Just because you’re not of childbearing age, and just because you’re not a woman doesn’t mean this isn’t important to you.”

    Moreno’s comments in context

    In an emailed statement, Moreno campaign spokeswoman Reagan McCarthy said, “Bernie was clearly making a tongue-in-cheek joke about how Sherrod Brown and members of the left-wing media like to pretend that the only issue that matters to women voters is abortion.”

    “Bernie’s view,” she continued, “is that women voters care just as much about the economy, rising prices, crime, and our open southern border as male voters do, and it’s disgusting that Democrats and their friends in the left-wing media constantly treat all women as if they’re automatically single-issue voters on abortion.”

    Still, Brown’s campaign has latched on to Moreno’s comments. Just days after Ohio voters approved the reproductive rights amendment known as Issue 1 last November, state Democratic officials made it clear they would make politicians’ stance on the issue a central theme of this year’s campaign.

    Moreno’s team says he favors exceptions for rape, incest and the life of the mother, but when he ran in 2022, before the U.S. Supreme Court struck down Roe, he described himself as “100% pro-life no exceptions.” He’s also embraced the idea of a national “15-week floor” for abortion, but has been less willing to assert that outside of being an aspiration after former President Donald Trump abandoned the idea in April. Now Moreno argues the matter should be settled “primarily” at the state level. Following a surprise Alabama Supreme Court ruling that threatened access to IVF treatment, Moreno dismissed concerns as “a left-wing, media-created issue.” And Wednesday, The Columbus Dispatch reported that Moreno claimed the Founding Fathers would “murder you” for supporting abortion rights.

    Moreno isn’t the only Republican candidate struggling to thread the needle on an issue where the majority of voters don’t appear to align with their position. But even within his party, Moreno’s comments sparked pushback. Former GOP presidential candidate Nikki Haley asked, “are you trying to lose the election?” on social media Tuesday.

    Republicans and Independents weigh in

    “Fifty-seven percent of Ohioans voted,” Krings argued, in reference to Issue 1 last November, “and Bernie Moreno wants to just toss that out the window.”

    She insisted politicians need to “understand the assignment.” It’s their job, she said, to uphold the will of the voters not second guess it.

    “He thinks he knows better,” she said. “We the people — his job is to execute on what the people vote for. It’s really kind of simple.”

    Krings is backing Brown because of his record of bringing people together, listening, and striving to represent all of the people in the state, she said. In addition to Krings, Ed Dunn and Lea Maceyko had harsh words for Moreno. They’re both supporting Brown as well.

    Dunn is from Beavercreek and described himself as a lifelong Republican. Like Krings he argued that even a policy doesn’t affect him personally, that doesn’t preclude him from caring about it.

    “We just want women, including my family, friends and others, now and in the future, to have the right to make their own health care decisions,” he said. “The government or politicians shouldn’t be involved in those extremely personal matters.”

    “That’s not crazy,” Dunn added, “that’s just common sense.”

    Lea Maceyko is a Republican, too and comes from “a little one-stoplight town called Cardington.” She described herself as an Ohio woman over 50. “I won’t tell you exactly how far over 50 I am,” she added, “but I’m over 50.” Maceyko was a bit shocked that Moreno would not just disregard the results of Issue 1, but that he’d make light of it.

    “(He’s) making fun of people for caring about our rights and the rights of others,” she said. “And frankly, I just don’t think that’s very funny.”

    “I have grandchildren, nieces, friends and other women in my life that I love and care about, and I don’t think it’s very crazy that I care about their rights.” Maceyko added. “Bernie said I was crazy, but really, I think he’s a little crazy to be mocking people that he wants to represent.”

    Originally published by the Ohio Capital Journal. Republished here with permission.

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    Nick Evans, Ohio Capital Journal

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  • Ohio Republican Politicians Desperately Trying to Dupe Voters Over Anti-Gerrymandering Amendment

    Ohio Republican Politicians Desperately Trying to Dupe Voters Over Anti-Gerrymandering Amendment

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    Susan Tebben, OCJ.

    Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose talks to reporters.

    When he loses in court as a criminal defendant or in a presidential election as a defeated incumbent, Donald Trump and his trained lackeys have a ready response: the system was rigged. The jury that found him liable for sexual assault and defaming his victim was rigged. The jury that found him guilty on 34 felony counts was rigged. Presiding judges, prosecuting attorneys, corroborating witnesses, damning evidence, unanimous verdicts. All rigged.

    It’s ridiculous, but it’s Trump’s go-to propaganda whenever he strikes out legally, bombs a debate, or comes up short in in a presidential election. He’s already laid the groundwork of a rigged election (that isn’t) in case he loses in 2024 and must recycle old conspiracies about objectively free, fair, historically secure, and remarkably accurate elections administered nationwide with infinitesimal fraud or irregularities. 

    But if you want to find real rigging of election administration, where craven partisans in high places play dirty to skew voting results on statewide ballot initiatives, by all means, come to Ohio. To borrow from the state’s integrity-is-overrated elections chief Frank LaRose, Ohio is the gold standard in orchestrated party subterfuge to dupe voters and throw elections. 

    The latest collaborative scheme by the Republican secretary of state, the Republican majority on the Ohio Ballot Board and the Republican majority on the Ohio Supreme Court to turn a November ballot referendum on its head tops the GOP’s trickery last year to (unsuccessfully) tank an abortion rights initiative. This year Republican leaders dropped all pretense of good faith in fashioning and approving the ballot language for the proposed anti-gerrymandering amendment they adamantly oppose. 

    Issue 1 would kick politicians out of the redistricting process altogether and put a citizen-led panel in charge of the decennial obligation. The Citizens Not Politicians referendum gained traction after the Republican-controlled redistricting commission defied voter-approved amendments to end gerrymandering and ignored court orders to follow the state constitution and make legislative and congressional district maps fairer, more competitive, and more aligned overall with statewide voting.  

    The redistricting majority drew maps that unconstitutionally favored Republicans over Democrats and produced even bigger gerrymandered supermajorities in the Statehouse with locked in congressional dominance. LaRose, a reliable party line commission vote on the gerrymandered maps, drafted the wording on the anti-gerrymandering proposal, approved by the Republican ballot board majority, and largely upheld by the GOP majority on the state supreme court. 

    Its rank dishonesty and prejudicial slant surpassed even the distorted ballot language LaRose drafted in 2023 (with anti-abortion lobbyists) to rig the election on the abortion rights amendment. He turned the redistricting proposal, once entitled, “An amendment to replace the current politician-run redistricting process with a citizen-led commission required to create fair state legislative and congressional districts through a more open and independent system” into a cautionary heading that reads “To create an appointed redistricting commission not elected by or subject to removal by the voters of the state.”

    The ballot summary is worse. Dissenting Democratic Justice Jennifer Brunner called it “perhaps the most stunningly stilted ballot language that Ohio voters will have ever seen.” It manufactures alternative facts about citizen-powered redistricting to falsely suggest the anti-gerrymandering proposal is what it is not — “a new taxpayer-funded commission of appointees required to gerrymander the boundaries of state legislative and congressional districts.” 

    That perversion of reality was a bridge too far for Justice Michael Donnelly. The Democrat, who is seeking reelection, blasted the court for giving it a pass and referenced another outrageous majority opinion (authored by Republican Justice Joe Deters, running against Democratic colleague Justice Melody Stewart for a six-year term) that bestowed new meaning to boneless chicken wings. “Given that four members of this court in the majority today apparently think that the word ‘boneless’ means ‘you should expect bones,’ I’m sure it comes as no great surprise that they think that a constitutional amendment to ‘ban partisan gerrymandering’ means to ‘require gerrymander(ing).’”  

    The complicity of the court in allowing LaRose’s misleading ballot language on redistricting reform to be presented to voters as “an honest explanation of what Issue 1 will do” is beyond the pale of acceptable. But so is LaRose’s rage tweet on the same day he signed off on the deceptive ballot wording voters will read.

    “It’s not an anti-gerrymandering measure if it literally REQUIRES gerrymandering, but this is what we’re up against, folks. No matter how much you try to give voters the truth, the left will always have its media machine helping to distort it.” LaRose tried gaslighting with another tweet that “Issue 1 is nothing more than a Democrat power grab that will require gerrymandering so liberal billionaires can take over Congress and Ohio’s legislature.” 

    He thanked Trump for “speaking out against this dangerous amendment” and attached the disgraced ex-president’s signature (and customized!) propaganda that “Ohio Democrats and left-wing special interest groups” are trying to “rig Elections through the Issue 1 redistricting scam.”

    It would be funny if not for the travesty it is; egregious abuse of power by the Republican cabal running state government manifested in weighted, deceitful wording on the ballot summary of another statewide citizens initiative to fool voters and keep the party’s grip on its gerrymandered leverage.

    Ohio, The Heart of It All — partisan-choreographed election rigging. For real. 

    Originally published by the Ohio Capital Journal. Republished here with permission.

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    Marilou Johanek, Ohio Capital Journal

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  • Result of Ohio Supreme Court Races Will Affect State’s Abortion Laws

    Result of Ohio Supreme Court Races Will Affect State’s Abortion Laws

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    Photo by Graham Stokes for Ohio Capital Journal

    The Gavel outside the Supreme Court of the State of Ohio.

    The Ohio Supreme Court will inevitably rule on abortion access decisions following the passage of last year’s reproductive rights amendment — meaning whichever justices are elected this year will help determine what abortion care looks like in Ohio. 

    Despite 57% of Ohio voters approving the 2023 amendment to enshrine reproductive rights in the state’s constitution, this did not undo the many anti-abortion laws that are on the books in Ohio. 

    “If you came out and voted for the reproductive freedom amendment last year, you need to come back out and vote for Supreme Court justices who will enforce the amendment, not ignore it,” said Abortion Forward Deputy Director Jaime Miracle. “To make the reproductive freedom amendment a reality in our state, we need to have judges who will enforce it.”

    Republicans currently hold a 4-3 majority on the Ohio Supreme Court. 

    Incumbent Democratic Justice Michael P. Donnelly is being challenged by Republican Hamilton County Court of Common Pleas Judge Megan Shanahan. 

    Incumbent Democratic Justice Melody Stewart is being challenged by incumbent Republican Justice Joseph Deters, who decided not to run for his current seat and instead chose to go up against Stewart. 

    Democratic candidate Lisa Forbes, of the Eighth District Court of Appeals, and Republican candidate Dan Hawkins, of the Franklin County Court of Common Pleas, are fighting for Deters’ open seat.

    Ohio Right to Life endorsed the Republican candidates — Shanahan, Deters, and Hawkins. 

    “Ohioans desire a strong and decisive judicial branch and with three of the seven seats on the ballot, it is crucial for pro-life voters to support these conservative candidates,” President of Ohio Right to Life Mike Gonidakis said in a statement. “We must get these three justices elected to protect life in our state. … Elections have consequences, and we are incredibly aware of the importance of these elections for the continued progress of the pro-life movement in Ohio.”

    Abortion Forward endorsed the Democrat candidates — Stewart, Donnelly, and Forbes.  

    “Reproductive freedom and abortion rights are on the ballot in Ohio in 2024, but this time it’s in the form of judicial candidates,” Abortion Forward Executive Director Kellie Copeland said in a statement. “The Ohio Reproductive Freedom Amendment established a clear framework protecting everyone’s right to access abortion, but it is up to our court system to make sure that this amendment doesn’t just become a meaningless piece of paper. We need justices that will enforce and not ignore it.”

    The seven justices on the Ohio Supreme Court will have the final say. 

    “They will be the ones who determine whether or not the Ohio reproductive freedom amendment will get enforced or if they’ll just ignore it,” Miracle said. 

    Ohio has passed more than 30 different abortion restrictions on abortion and reproductive health care since former Ohio Gov. John Kasich took office in 2011, she said. 

    There are two ways to undo those laws — the legislature repealing them or the court ruling they are unconstitutional under the amendment. 

    “Under our current legislature, it’s never going to happen,” Miracle said. “So the courts really are the only vehicle right now to get these harmful and dangerous abortion restrictions off the books.”

    A recent preliminary injunction was granted that temporarily paused Ohio’s 24 hour waiting period — meaning a woman seeking an abortion in Ohio no longer needs to go to an abortion clinic twice before the procedure. 

    “It really was the first concrete example of what abortion access can look like under the reproductive freedom amendment and why it’s so important to have judges who enforce the amendment not ignore it,” Miracle said. “It’s the difference between having a right and having that right in force. And that’s what the court gets to decide.” 

    This ruling also affects people in neighboring states with near total bans like Indiana, Kentucky and West Virginia. 

    Within hours of the Dobbs decision and the overturning of Roe v. Wade in 2022, Ohio’s six-week abortion took effect. 

    “The Ohio Supreme Court could have taken action when they were asked to take action, and they did not,”  Miracle said. “And the Republican incumbents who were running for office are still there, and so that’s what a court can look like when it’s hostile to abortion rights.” 

    Ohio’s six-week abortion ban law is in front of Hamilton County Court. Gov. Mike DeWine signed the abortion law with no exceptions for rape or incest in 2019. 

    Originally published by the Ohio Capital Journal. Republished here with permission.

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    Megan Henry, Ohio Capital Journal

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  • Economic Issues, Climate Change, Gun Violence and Abortion Are Top of Mind for Young Voters

    Economic Issues, Climate Change, Gun Violence and Abortion Are Top of Mind for Young Voters

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    Forty-one million members of Gen Z can vote in this year’s election and money is on their minds. 

    Economic issues — including inflation, cost of living and jobs that pay a living wage — are top of mind for young people when it comes to the 2024 Presidential Election, according to the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement (CIRCLE) at Tufts University. 

    “Young people have the potential to have a huge impact,” said CIRCLE Spokesperson Alberto Medina.

    Ohioans will be casting their ballots for a new president, a hotly contested U.S. Senate race, an anti-gerrymandering amendment, three Ohio Supreme Court races and the Ohio House of Representatives elections. 

    Ohio’s Senate race between Republican Bernie Moreno and incumbent Democrat Sherrod Brown ranks as the number two Senate race in the country where young people can have a major influence on election results, according to CIRCLE’s Youth Electoral Significance Index. 

    “There are things that affect youth in different ways,” Medina said. “We really lose out on their experiences, their perspectives and their political action if we don’t do everything that we can to encourage and support their engagement. … We should strive to have a fully representative and equitable democracy in which all communities and all people have the chance to be heard and to have an impact equally.”

    The percentage of youth, ages 18-34 year olds, who selected each issue as one of their top three priorities, according to CIRCLE’s poll —

    • Cost of living/inflation — 53%
    • Jobs that pay a living wage — 28%
    • Gun violence prevention — 26%
    • Addressing climate change — 26%
    • Expanding access to abortion — 19%
    • Fighting racism — 13%
    • Securing the border — 13%
    • Public education — 13%
    • Student loan debt — 12%
    • Reducing the national debt — 11%

    Ella Douglas, an 18-year-old freshman at Ohio State University, said the economy is her top issue.

    “I care about where our money is going,” she said.

    Delaney McCullough, a 20-year-old sophomore at Ohio State, said her top priority is reproductive rights. 

    “I’m very pro-choice,” McCullough said. 

    The overturning of Roe v. Wade in 2022 and the Parkland, Florida school shooting in 2018 are two events that mobilized members of Gen Z into civic participation, Medina said. 

    CIRCLE estimates 39% of 18-29 year olds voted in 2016 and 50% of voters in that age range voted in 2020. 

    “Gen Z has, at least so far, been a generation that is really tuned into politics and to elections, and really interested in participating and really making their voice heard at the ballot box,” Medina said. “We’ve seen indications in other polling that excitement to vote may have increased in recent months with some of the changes in terms of who’s on the ballot.” 

    Vice President Kamala Harris recently became the Democratic nominee after President Joe Biden dropped out and she has garnered a lot of support among young people. 

    If the election was held today, Harris would likely get about 56% of the youth vote, people ages 18-29, according to the results of the New York Times/Siena College polls of Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin published on Aug. 10. Their poll was conducted among 1,973 likely voters from Aug. 5-9.

    Republican nominee former President Donald Trump and Harris’ social media accounts have garnered a lot of attention leading up to the election. 

    “Those can be helpful tools in meeting young people where they are, but they shouldn’t be the be-all, end-all of outreach to young people,” Medina said. “… It’s definitely important for any candidate or organization to not think that just because they put a TikTok out there, that’s going to be the sort of magic wand for engaging all young people.” 

    Young people are less likely to be affiliated with a political party — meaning a political party trying to mobilize voters could be missing young people, Medina said.

    “There’s often a vicious circle that develops because young people have historically voted at a lower rate, campaigns don’t see them as reliable voters that they should invest in reaching out to and then, of course, they don’t reach out to them,” he said. “So young people don’t show up. And the vicious circle continues.”

    Ohio voting

    Only 32% of Ohio’s 18-year-olds are registered to vote as of May, according to the Civics Center, a nonpartisan organization trying to increase voter registration. 

    By comparison, 78% of Ohioans ages 45 and older are registered, according to the Civics Center.

    Warren County has the highest percentage of 18-year-olds registered to vote with 35.5%, according to the Civics Center. 

    “Democracy works best when it has all voices represented,” said Civics Center Director Laura Brill. “There are a lot of issues that affect young people in very particular ways.”

    Some of those issues include mental health, climate change, gun violence, the cost of college and housing affordability, she said. 

    “If young people’s voices are not part of the political process, we will not be able to elect representatives and come up with solutions that represent all of us,” Brill said. 

    More than 75% of registered young voters, ages 18-24, have voted in every presidential election since 2004, according to the Civics Center. 

    A 2023 law makes it harder for out-of-state college students to vote in Ohio by requiring Ohioans to show an unexpired Ohio’s driver’s license or a state ID card to vote. A college or university ID does not count as a photo ID. 

    Ohio’s deadline to register to vote in the Nov. 5 election is Oct. 7.

    Originally published by the Ohio Capital Journal. Republished here with permission.

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    Megan Henry, Ohio Capital Journal

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  • Anti-Gerrymandering Amendment Supporters Sue Ohio Ballot Board Over Ballot Language

    Anti-Gerrymandering Amendment Supporters Sue Ohio Ballot Board Over Ballot Language

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    (Photo by Susan Tebben, OCJ.)

    Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose talks to reporters.

    As promised, supporters of an anti-gerrymandering amendment have asked the Ohio Supreme Court to intervene regarding language the Ohio Ballot Board approved for the November ballot, saying the language violates the Ohio Constitution.

    A brief filed Monday with the state’s highest court cites constitutional provisions that dictate the way in which titles and language can appear on Ohio ballots, according to the court document written by attorneys for Citizens Not Politicians, the authoring group for the redistricting reform.

    “This November, Ohio voters will be asked to consider a proposed constitutional amendment that will remove redistricting power from politicians and entrust it to a citizens’ redistricting commission,” attorney Don McTigue wrote. “The politicians are fighting back with an absolute fusillade of falsehoods.”

    McTigue called the language approved by the board “what may be the most biased, inaccurate, deceptive and unconstitutional ballot language ever adopted by the Ohio Ballot Board.”

    The board approved the language that will be the summary for the newly minted Issue 1 in a 3-2 vote at its Aug. 16 meeting, with Republican Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose, Republican state Sen. Theresa Gavarone, and citizen member William N. Morgan voting in favor of the language.

    The proposed amendment would replace the current Ohio Redistricting Commission made up of politicians including the governor, secretary of state, auditor and two lawmakers from each party, with a 15-member citizens commission made up of equal numbers of Republican, Democratic, and independent citizens with no elected positions or political ties.

    According to the ballot language approved by the split board – which LaRose, the ballot board chairman, said at the meeting he wrote with the help of his staff – the redistricting initiative would “repeal constitutional protections against gerrymandering” and “eliminate the longstanding ability of Ohio citizens to hold their representatives accountable for establishing fair state legislative and congressional districts.”

    In a last minute change to the LaRose language made during the board meeting, Gavarone replaced the word “manipulate” in a paragraph about changing the districts lines, so that it instead states the new commission is required to gerrymander the boundaries of state legislative and congressional districts, a change supported in the meeting by LaRose and fellow board member William Morgan.

    “This gets it entirely backward,” McTigue countered in the Citizens Not Politicians court brief. “In fact, the amendment would ‘ban partisan gerrymandering and prohibit the use of redistricting plans that favor one political party and disfavor others.’”

    McTigue said the language of the summary includes “numerous fatal flaws” and includes “campaign rhetoric designed to persuade – not impartial, factual information meant to inform voters.”

    Citizens Not Politicians wasted no time after the Ohio Ballot Board approved the LaRose-written language to pledge a challenge to the language in court, with former Ohio Supreme Court Chief Justice Maureen O’Connor calling the approval and the lead-up to it “one grotesque abuse of power after another from politicians desperate to protect the current system that only benefits themselves and their lobbyist friends.”

    “Secretary of State Frank LaRose voted seven times for maps that courts ruled were unconstitutional, and this week he violates the constitution with objectively false ballot language,” O’Connor said in a statement.

    LaRose was a member of the Ohio Redistricting Commission when it passed six Statehouse district maps and two congressional maps over the two years the group worked. Among those maps, five Statehouse maps and both congressional maps were ruled unconstitutionally partisan gerrymanders by the Ohio Supreme Court.

    Ohio law requires ballot titles to be a “true and impartial statement of the measures in such language that the ballot title shall not be likely to create prejudice for or against the measure.”

    The language that goes before voters is also regulated by Ohio law, with the constitution stating the full text of the amendment is not required, but the language used can not “mislead, deceive or defraud the voters.”

    “Whether the amendment is good policy is for Ohioans to decide – not the Ballot Board – and is not before the court,” McTigue wrote in Monday’s briefing. “The Ballot Board’s duty is clear, the legal standards well-defined and the ballot title and language before the court flagrantly violate those standards.”

    The state supreme court faced a similar case in August of last year, when supporters of the reproductive rights amendment on the ballot last November sued to challenge another summary written by LaRose and staffers that they said was deceptive.

    Ohioans United for Reproductive Rights asked the Ohio Supreme Court to order the ballot board to use the full text of the amendment, or to “correct blatant inaccuracies” and use “language that fully, accurately and impartially describes the amendment’s scope and effects.”

    The Ohio Supreme Court ordered the ballot board to tweak only one of many issues the advocates pointed to, a paragraph in which the ballot board said “the citizens of the state of Ohio” rather than “the state of Ohio.”

    Nevertheless, the abortion amendment passed with 57% of the vote.

    No matter what redistricting ballot language appears on this year’s election ballot, the full text of the amendment itself remains the same language authored by Citizens Not Politicians and supported by more than 535,000 Ohio voters who participated in a signature campaign that allowed the measure to appear on the November general election ballot. The ballot board’s summary does not change the actual anti-gerrymandering amendment being proposed.

    Originally published by the Ohio Capital Journal. Republished here with permission.

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    Susan Tebben, The Ohio Capital Journal

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  • Ohio Anti-Gerrymandering Leaders Say LaRose’s Draft Ballot Text Is Deceptive and Unconstitutional

    Ohio Anti-Gerrymandering Leaders Say LaRose’s Draft Ballot Text Is Deceptive and Unconstitutional

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    Photo by Graham Stokes for Ohio Capital Journal

    Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose.

    The office of Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose has drafted ballot language for the Ohio Ballot Board to consider Friday that supporters of an anti-gerrymandering amendment say is deceptive and unconstitutional. The Ballot Board decides the text of proposed amendments that voters actually see on their ballots when they vote.

    The anti-gerrymandering amendment before Ohio voters in November, according to the language drafted by LaRose’s office, would “eliminate the longstanding ability of Ohio citizens to hold their representatives accountable for establishing fair state legislative and congressional districts.”

    The Citizens Not Politicians group that authored the ballot initiative and collected more than 535,000 necessary signatures from Ohio voters to get the measure on the ballot, has proposed their own language for the ballot as well, saying it would remove politicians from the redistricting process in favor of a citizen board.

    The group is proposing a redistricting amendment that would replace Ohio’s politician-led redistricting commission with a citizen-led commission made up of Republicans, Democrats and independents. Currently, the Ohio Secretary of State is one of the politicians sitting on Ohio’s redistricting commission, along with the governor, the Ohio Auditor, two lawmakers from the majority party and two lawmakers from the minority party.

    The language drafted by the Secretary of State’s Office claims in its proposed title that the amendment’s purpose is, “To create an appointed redistricting commission not elected by or subject to removal by the voters of the state.”

    Moreover, the draft language says its purpose is to “repeal constitutional protections against gerrymandering approved by nearly three-quarters of Ohio electors participating in the statewide elections of 2015 and 2018.”

    Backers say the amendment is actually intended to protect voters against gerrymandering by removing politicians who stand to benefit from the process, and to not allow them to continue drawing gerrymandered district maps.

    After the 2015 and 2018 reforms were.passed by voters, Republican politicians on the Ohio Redistricting Commission including Ohio Secretary of State LaRose repeatedly voted for Statehouse and U.S. Congressional district maps that were declared unconstitutional gerrymanders by a bipartisan majority on the Ohio Supreme Court. Nevertheless, Ohio voters were forced to use the maps as the politicians refused to produce a maps that reflected voting preferences of Ohioans.

    The Ohio Secretary of State’s Office further claims in its proposed language that the new amendment would also “limit the right of Ohio citizens to freely express their opinions to members of the commission or to commission staff regarding the redistricting process or proposed redistricting plans.”

    It claims the amendment would “prohibit any citizen from filing a lawsuit challenging a redistricting plan in any court, except if the lawsuit challenges the proportionality standard applied by the commission, and then only before the Ohio Supreme Court,” and that new “taxpayer-funded costs” would be imposed by the amendment, with “an unlimited amount for legal expenses incurred by the commission in any related litigation.”

    Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine recently publicly opposed the ballot measure because of its emphasis on proportionality, alleging there was no way the measure could work as written. In opposing the measure, he said whether or not it passes in November, he’s considering going to the legislature to adapt Iowa’s redistricting process for Ohio. Iowa’s process leaves lawmakers with final say over maps.

    The proposed constitutional amendment penned by Citizens Not Politicians calls for a 15-person redistricting commission made up of citizens, rather than the Ohio Redistricting Commission that is currently made up entirely of elected officials.

    The language proposed by Citizens Not Politicians to the ballot board states the proposed amendment would “require that the commission consist of 15 members who have demonstrated the absence of any disqualifying conflicts of interest and who have shown an ability to conduct the redistricting process with impartiality, integrity and fairness.”

    The amendment would “provide that each redistricting plan shall contain single-member districts that are geographically contiguous, comply with federal law, closely correspond to statewide partisan preferences of Ohio voters and preserve communities,” according to the Citizens Not Politicians proposed language.

    The current Ohio Redistricting Commission made up of politicians produced six different Statehouse maps and two congressional maps over the two years it did its work. Five of the Statehouse maps were ruled unconstitutional by the Ohio Supreme Court and neither of the congressional maps passed constitutional muster, according to the state’s highest court. The second of the congressional maps remains the state’s congressional district map, despite being found to be unduly partisan by the state supreme court.

    The redistricting commission was criticized for disregarding hours of testimony from hundreds of Ohio citizens, and numerous citizen and group-proposed maps in favor of maps written by legislative staffers, and disregarding the authority of the Ohio Supreme Court when they were ordered to redraw maps within deadlines and utilize paid independent mapmakers coordinated by the court.

    Former Ohio Supreme Court Chief Justice Maureen O’Connor, a leader for Citizens Not Politicians, who has called for reforms to redistricting since she left the bench, said the Secretary of State’s proposed language violates the Ohio Constitution.

    “The self-dealing politicians who have rigged the legislative maps now want to rig the Nov. 5 election by illegally manipulating the ballot language,” O’Connor said in a statement. “We will make our case for fair and accurate language before the Ballot Board and if necessary take it to court.”

    O’Connor’s statement claims the language proposed by the Secretary of State’s Office violates an article of the Ohio Constitution that prohibits ballot language that “is such as to mislead, deceive, or defraud voters,” according to the law.

    Ohio law also states ballot titles “shall give a true and impartial statement of the measures in such language that the ballot title shall not be likely to create prejudice for or against the measure.”

    It’s not the first time even in the last year that ballot language has been criticized as a misleading representation of the proposed initiative. Last year’s reproductive rights ballot measure went through the same process, with language written by Ohio Secretary of State staff approved as the language to appear on the ballots.

    The creators of the ballot measure sued, with the Ohio Supreme Court approving the ballot language, but sending it back to the board for small changes.

    Despite the language, which critics said intentionally misrepresented the reproductive rights amendment, the measure passed with 57% of the vote last November.

    State Secretary of State LaRose is the head of the Ohio Ballot Board that will consider the language on Friday. The board is also made up of Republican state Sen. Theresa Gavarone, Democratic state Sen. Paula Hicks-Hudson, Democratic state Rep. Terrence Upchurch and citizen-member William Morgan.

    A spokesperson for the Secretary of State’s Office did not respond to request for comment on the language Thursday afternoon.

    Originally published by the Ohio Capital Journal. Republished here with permission.

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    Susan Tebben, The Ohio Capital Journal

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  • Ohio Sec. of State LaRose’s Noncitizen Voter Registration Audit Sweeps in Naturalized Citizens

    Ohio Sec. of State LaRose’s Noncitizen Voter Registration Audit Sweeps in Naturalized Citizens

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    (Photo by Nick Evans, Ohio Capital Journal.)

    Nicholas Ross at the piano.

    In May, Nicholas Ross walked into the federal courthouse in downtown Columbus, and alongside about 30 other people, raised his right hand and swore to “bear true faith and allegiance” to the U.S. Constitution. A few weeks later he got a letter in the mail. Secretary of State Frank LaRose’s office was questioning his voter registration.

    Ross was born in England to Irish parents, but he has been living in the United States for almost 30 years. He’s married, has kids and a home in Westerville; he’s a professor and chairs the Department of Music at Otterbein University. A shiny black piano dominates his living room, and there’s a surf green Fender Stratocaster on a stand with amps tucked into the corners of the room. His son is the guitar player, Ross said, and when it comes to piano, he plays one-handed now because of a nerve injury.

    “And so I play left hand music only,” he explained. “But I’ve got favorites, I like to play Godowsky — Leopold Godowsky.”

    Naturalization ceremonies like the one Ross participated in happen regularly all over the country. In Ohio, federal courts generally hold at least one ceremony a month. In Cleveland the court regularly holds two. In addition, the courts routinely hold larger off-site citizenship ceremonies.

    According to the most recent published data from the Department of Homeland Security, in Ohio alone, nearly 16,000 people were naturalized during the 2022 fiscal year.

    A standard feature of these events is getting newly naturalized citizens registered to vote. As soon as they complete the oath, they’re eligible, and usually there are volunteers on hand with registration forms ready.

    LaRose would know — he attended a ceremony in Cleveland back in 2020.

    “To see them fill out one of these forms that we were passing out — the voter registration form — something really powerful,” he described. “To become a registered voter is something truly life changing for these individuals and for their families.”

    But for every one of those newly eligible voters there’s a potential complication waiting to trip them up — just like it tripped up Ross.

    Different databases

    The state agency where most residents share information about their citizenship status is the BMV. When you go to get a license, for instance, you must demonstrate your legal presence in the state. If you’re already a citizen, that’s probably your birth certificate. But if you’re not, that might be a green card.

    The problem is when a resident gets naturalized, they’re dealing with federal agencies — not state ones. So, if that new citizen previously got a driver’s license, to the BMV they look like a noncitizen until they show up in person with their naturalization certificate.

    “I was sent a letter that said, you have been flagged as suspicious,” Ross said about the letter he got from LaRose. It went on to threaten jail time if Ross had registered illegally and asked him to provide information about his citizenship if their audit was incorrect. He quickly filled out the form and sent it back, but the letter struck a sour tone.

    “I think the letter should say we just wanted to verify,” Ross described. “Could you, would you, please provide this information for extra verification purposes? None of the ‘you will go to prison,’ ‘This is illegal.’”

    “It’s an assumption that people are trying to cheat the system in the letter,” he said. “It should be a different letter.”

    The secretary’s follow up only reiterated that impression, Ross said. In addition to acknowledging his response, it states “please know that the information you provided may be used to access federal immigration records for verification purposes.” He and his wife were both kind of shocked, and took it as another veiled threat.

    “We will check — well yeah, that’s why I gave you the number,” Ross said. “I mean, again, you don’t need to say it. This letter would be absolutely fine if it didn’t have that, don’t you agree? I mean, it just seems unnecessary.”

    Ross was also struck by the rapidity of the registration challenge. After becoming naturalized, he applied for and received a U.S. passport. That’s all he would need to vote and his driver’s license was valid for another few years. Considering he hadn’t moved, and wasn’t explicitly required to update his license, getting to the BMV wasn’t at the top of his list.

    “Don’t get me wrong, I just did it, right?” he said, “and it’s only two months since I became a naturalized citizen.”

    To Ross, the whole experience seemed overwrought, because so far as he can tell, he did nothing to deserve additional scrutiny.

    “That’s all,” he said, “I’m just saying it could be done differently. Because the way it was written makes you feel like, Oh, I’m being accused of doing something wrong.”

    Expanding scope

    Monday morning, Cassandra Wade was at a Chillicothe campaign event for Republican U.S. Senate nominee Bernie Moreno looking for help. She was clutching an envelope from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services with her Naturalization certificate as well as the letter she got from Secretary LaRose challenging her registration.

    Wade described getting the letter Saturday, and later visiting the board of elections to figure out what happened.

    “I go over there, and they said I’m not on the voter’s registration because I’ve been purged,” Wade said.

    “I’m a naturalized citizen. I did everything right,” she continued. “I waited my 10 years, I paid my way, did the medical, I worked, I paid my taxes.”

    “And this is how now constitutional rights have been —” she added, miming an explosion with her hands.

    Moreno campaign staffers were quick to take down her information and call the secretary’s office. When Wade got a call a later that day, she said LaRose’s staffers were even more perplexed than she was.

    In the end, however, it appears LaRose’s audit prompted confusion rather than an actual removal. Cleveland.com’s Andrew Tobias reported LaRose’s team initially identified Wade through BMV records, but later verified her citizenship. A review of the Ross County Board of Elections website shows Wade is still registered to vote.

    Unlike Ross, Wade’s naturalization went through years ago. She first applied in 2020, but because of COVID didn’t get to take the oath until October of 2022. She missed the registration deadline for that November’s election by just two days, but she’s made a point of voting in each election since. Puzzlingly, Wade claims she has visited the BMV since then, too.

    Although Wade is relieved to learn her registration is still valid, she expressed concerns about how many others might wind up in similar circumstances. With three kids, Wade said, she really doesn’t have time to prove her citizenship again when she’s done nothing wrong.

    “He’s picking on the wrong people,” she said of LaRose’s audit.

    Naturalization

    Last Thursday, LaRose announced he’d sent notice to county boards of election directing them to remove 499 allegedly noncitizen registrations from their voter rolls. He said he’s “duty-bound” to ensure people who have yet to become citizens are not voting.

    “If or when they do become citizens,” LaRose said, “I’ll be the first one to congratulate them and welcome them to the franchise. But until then the law requires us to remove ineligible registrations to prevent illegal voting.”

    The Secretary’s press release describes checking cases against a federal database known as SAVE that should have record of naturalized citizens. It’s unclear, however, if LaRose’s office checked all the individuals against federal records. The release separately describes a group of 136 registrations they identified using BMV records.

    LaRose did not respond to a request for comment for this story. Ohio Capital Journal requested the list of individuals removed as part of the audit, but LaRose’s office has yet to release any information.

    Also on Thursday, 50 people filed into federal Judge Mina Nami Khorrami’s courtroom in Columbus. One by one they stood and introduced themselves to the judge and told her where they came from. The hopefuls hailed from countries all over the globe — Colombia, Jamaica, Ghana, India, Cambodia, and many others — but each one of them clutched the same small American flag.

    From its founding, Nami Khorrami told them, U.S. citizenship hasn’t been limited to those who were fortunate enough to be born here. She urged them to take their right to vote seriously and do everything they can to inform themselves before casting a ballot. An immigrant herself, Nami Khorrami described how she came to the U.S. from Iran in 1977, and became a citizen in 1984. But she insisted her story is not unique — the United States is unique.

    After taking the oath, the new citizens lined up for photos with the judge.

    Speaking after the ceremony, Nami Khorrami expressed concern about naturalized citizens having their voter registration challenged. As soon as they take the oath, she said, they’re eligible to register. If there’s a problem harmonizing state data with federal data, she said, the state should do something about it. Perhaps the BMV could have someone come to the ceremony she suggested. Maybe the court itself would have to start warning new citizens to update their BMV records quickly to avoid the problem.

    In a follow up email, she explained the court is looking into what it can do, but they haven’t taken any definitive steps yet.

    What’s the best path forward?

    In his press release, LaRose portrayed the effort as a balancing act. While he wanted to give flagged individuals “the benefit of the doubt,” he said he is compelled to protect state voter rolls.

    “We want to make sure a mistaken registration doesn’t become an illegal vote,” LaRose explained. “We also want to make sure that lawfully registered citizens can participate seamlessly in the process, especially if their citizenship status changed recently.”

    For Ross of course, the process wasn’t seamless — it felt presumptive and unnecessarily accusatory. And voting rights advocates worry other Ohioans who registered legally could get caught up in the process.

    “It is important to have accurate voter rolls,” Jen Miller from the League of Women Voters of Ohio said. “My concern is that this process might actually be removing eligible voters from the rolls simply because those voters were intimidated or confused by the letter they got from the secretary of state, while also the secretary (is) using outdated information.”

    Ohio regularly removes large groups of registrations from its rolls due to lack of voter activity. This supplementary process is often derided by critics as a “voter purge.” But unlike that process, LaRose has not publicly shared the names of the almost 500 voters he has ordered county boards to remove. That gives the public little opportunity to check the secretary’s work, unless individual voters come forward.

    LaRose’s use of the SAVE database is an arguably an improvement on past practice. In an earlier story, Ohio Capital Journal referenced the system as potential tool to improve the office’s track record with claims of noncitizen voter fraud.

    But Miller worries even that database has its shortcomings.

    For one, it has no record whatsoever of people who are born in the United States. That means if a native-born citizen was included on accident, they might look like a noncitizen.

    The database also requires users to have an immigration identifier to check. That is to say, you can’t just type in a name and date of birth to see if that person recently naturalized; you’ll need their naturalization number as well for the system to run its checks. If the secretary’s letter asking for immigration information doesn’t get an answer — whether because they really were registered incorrectly or didn’t realize a response was necessary or it simply went to an old address — they could see their registration removed.

    LaRose noted at least 80 people didn’t respond to his correspondence.

    It’s also unclear how quickly changes in an individual’s immigration status are reflected in the database. Ohio Capital Journal’s request for comment with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, which oversees the SAVE database, went unanswered.

    From the outside looking in, Miller explained, it’s difficult to see how agencies share information.

    “But it is clear that there is an agency, conducting naturalizations nearly every day in Ohio, that has the best data for the secretary to use when verifying citizenship for voter registration purposes,” she said.

    Miller allowed that BMV or Secretary of State officials could show up at naturalization ceremonies, but she argued even that is overcomplicating matters.

    “Why couldn’t it just be that every time there is one in Ohio that information gets directly sent to the BMV and to the secretary of state?” she asked.

    “You know what I mean?” Miller added, “To me, in my mind it should not even be as labor intensive as having to send a staff person to one of these.”

    Notably, the secretary has called for access to court records as part of his advocacy for a measure called the SAVE Act. The U.S. House bill requires federal entities to hand over effectively anything states request to verify citizenship. But the measure’s far more consequential change would require every voter to demonstrate proof of citizenship to register to vote. Similar legislation in Kansas was overturned by courts after it disenfranchised thousands of eligible voters.

    However he does it, Ross wants the secretary to double check before sending letters, not send letters to double check.

    “Knowing that this can happen for recently naturalized citizens like myself, that that can be double checked even before sending that letter,” he said. “I just don’t feel like the letter should assume that I’m incorrectly registered — that I sent in the form incorrectly. I’d rather it be the other way around, you know?

    Originally published by the Ohio Capital Journal. Republished here with permission.

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    Nick Evans, Ohio Capital Journal

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  • Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine Lost All Credibility When He Repeatedly Voted for Illegally Gerrymandered Maps

    Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine Lost All Credibility When He Repeatedly Voted for Illegally Gerrymandered Maps

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    Photo by Graham Stokes for the Ohio Capital Journal

    Ohio Governor Mike DeWine talks with the press.

    Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine clutching his pearls Wednesday morning about predetermined partisan outcomes after he forced unconstitutional district maps on voters that gave his party 67 out of 99 Ohio House seats and 26 out of 33 Ohio Senate seats in a 56-44 state was hilarious, absurd and pathetic.

    Even more striking was how condescending and insulting it was for DeWine to lecture Ohio voters about gerrymandering after he went along with the unconstitutional gerrymandering of districts seven times in defiance of Ohio voters and a bipartisan Ohio Supreme Court in 2021 and 2022.

    Probably the worst part of that was DeWine acknowledging that gerrymandering leads to extremist legislatures who get elected mostly in primaries because the outcomes of general elections are predetermined: So he knows what’s wrong, but when he had his chance to do something about it, he supported gerrymandering anyway.

    Now the governor is using his bully pulpit to try to disparage an anti-gerrymandering proposal heading to Ohio voters this November. That proposed amendment would kick politicians like DeWine out of the mapmaking process in favor of a 15-member citizen redistricting commission. The effort is led by two bipartisan former Ohio Supreme Court justices — spearheaded by retired Republican Chief Justice Maureen O’Connor. Blissfully lacking all self-awareness as well as basic comprehension of the plan he claimed to have studied carefully, DeWine called it “horrible.”

    DeWine attempted to gaslight Ohioans into thinking that the citizen commission plan would lead to the worst gerrymandering Ohio has ever seen, after DeWine joined Statehouse Republicans in forcing voters to cast ballots in 2022 under the worst gerrymandered maps Ohio has ever seen.

    For the last two years, Ohio has had Statehouse lawmakers seated in unconstitutionally gerrymandered districts. Nevertheless, with a straight face, DeWine proposed an “Iowa plan” that he said he would work with gerrymandered Ohio lawmakers to introduce. If that Iowa model is followed, it would leave gerrymandered Ohio lawmakers with final authority over maps.

    The “Iowa plan” DeWine went on and on about requires a plan to be first developed by their non-partisan Legislative Services Agency, which is then sent to the legislature for approval. If that plan fails to get lawmakers’ support, the Legislative Services Agency has to develop a second plan adjusting for lawmakers’ problems with the first plan. If that second plan is rejected by lawmakers or the governor, a third plan is submitted by the LSA, but under the third plan, lawmakers can make any changes they want. So, if lawmakers don’t like the maps, all they have to do is keep rejecting them and run out the clock and then they can draw whatever maps they want.

    Running out the clock to impose unconstitutionally gerrymandered maps is exactly what Ohio Republican politicians did in 2021 and 2022.

    DeWine evaded questions about the fact that his proposal would leave politicians in charge by trying to be cute that it’s only the criteria for mapmaking that he likes about the Iowa plan. But DeWine is proposing to work with lawmakers to draft the plan — gerrymandered lawmakers. If gerrymandered lawmakers start with a model plan that leaves final authority over maps in their hands, what are the chances they will strip that out and give up their authority? Does DeWine think Ohioans are idiots?

    By trying to focus his comments on the criteria, DeWine spent the bulk of his time criticizing requirements for proportionality proposed by Citizens Not Politicians — meaning requirements that the districts reflect the actual political preferences of voters. The maps DeWine helped force on Ohio voters left us with a 67-seat Republican supermajority House in a 56% Republican simple majority state. So I’m not surprised that DeWine doesn’t give a damn about proportionality.

    The “Iowa plan” doesn’t mention proportionality in criteria at all. Instead it emphasizes that districts be compact and contiguous and preserve political subdivisions. It prohibits intentionally favoring a party, incumbent, person or group by disallowing political data from being used in map-drawing, but it should be noted that it’s fairly simple to draw a heavily politicized map by just using geography and not data.

    The Citizens Not Politicians plan that DeWine disparaged as “horrible” requires districts be contiguous, preserve communities of interest, and that they be relatively proportional: within three percentage points of overall voter preferences.

    As I have written before, fair maps ought to minimize the number of seats that have to be drawn safe and make the number of those districts proportional, and evenly maximize the number of competitive districts.

    DeWine was confronted Wednesday with the fact that the primary frustration of Ohio voters with our currently gerrymandered districts is that they do not reflect Ohioans’ actual political preferences, and he was asked if the Iowa plan would produce proportional maps.

    “I think they would,” is all DeWine could weakly offer. Sure. If we only trust Ohio’s gerrymandered lawmakers. Hey Charlie Brown, come try to kick this football again.

    The truth is, DeWine lost all credibility on the subject of gerrymandering when he repeatedly voted for illegally gerrymandered maps. Now he’s pitching a proposal that would have lawmakers draft redistricting reform based on an “Iowa plan” that leaves lawmakers with final authority.

    If you didn’t enjoy the last turd sandwich we forced you to eat, Ohio voters, perhaps you’ll let us serve you another one: refried and microwaved.

    Does DeWine really think he’s this slick? Does he really think Ohio voters are this dumb?

    Originally published by the Ohio Capital Journal. Republished here with permission.

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    David Dewitt, Ohio Capital Journal

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  • Signatures Certified: Ohio Anti-Gerrymandering amendment on its Way to November Ballot

    Signatures Certified: Ohio Anti-Gerrymandering amendment on its Way to November Ballot

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    (Photo by Graham Stokes for Ohio Capital Journal. Republish only with original story.)

    Retired Ohio Supreme Court Chief Justice Maureen O’Connor speaks to supporters at the Citizens Not Politicians rally, July 1, 2024, at the Statehouse in Columbus, Ohio.

    A proposed anti-gerrymandering amendment in Ohio that would remove politicians from the redistricting process in favor of a citizens commission has gathered enough signatures to proceed to voters on the November ballot.

    The Ohio Secretary of State’s Office certified 535,005 signatures for the Citizens Not Politicians ballot initiative that would create an independent redistricting commission and replace the Ohio Redistricting Commission made up entirely of elected officials.

    The coalition of voting rights groups and anti-gerrymandering advocates who made up Citizens Not Politicians submitted more than 731,000 signatures on July 1, well above the required 413,487. The Secretary of State’s Office reviewed the signatures for duplicate or invalid signatures, finalizing the total on Tuesday.

    The office also said the initiative received signatures from 58 of the 88 counties, and at least 5% of the total vote cast for governor in the last gubernatorial election. Ohio law requires measures to have signatures in at least 44 counties.

    “This certification is a historic step towards restoring fairness in Ohio’s electoral process,” retired Ohio Supreme Court Chief Justice Maureen O’Connor said in a CNP statement after the signatures were certified.

    The former chief justice came on to the effort early in the process after leaving the Ohio Supreme Court due to age limits. As a member the state’s highest court, she was part of a majority that rejected six maps, both Ohio Statehouse and congressional, adopted by the Ohio Redistricting Commission, which includes the governor, auditor of state, and secretary of state, along with legislative leaders, all of whom are elected officials, as dictated by the current redistricting laws.

    O’Connor told supporters at a rally when the signatures were submitted to the Secretary of State’s Office that the measure was “one of the most widely supported citizen-initiated constitutional amendments in Ohio’s history.”

    The initiative now heads to the Ohio Ballot Board, led by Secretary of State Frank LaRose, where the language of the initiative will be reviewed, and can be changed as it was with last November’s Issue 1 abortion amendment.

    According to CNP, the ballot board, which has not yet scheduled the meeting for the measure’s consideration, has until Aug. 22 to “write and adopt the language that will appear on the Nov. 5 ballot” based on constitutional requirements to “properly identify the substance of the proposal to be voted on.”

    “We are confident that Ohio voters will see simple, accurate language when they go to the polls on Nov. 5 to vote for this amendment,” O’Connor said in the CNP statement.

    In addition to creating a 15-member independent redistricting commission, the constitutional amendment would ban current or former politicians and party officials, along with lobbyists from having a seat on the commission, and “require the creation of fair and impartial districts, prohibiting any drawing of voting districts that discriminate against or favor any political party or individual politician,” according to the coalition.

    Supporters also say the amendment would create a more transparent process than has been seen in past redistricting efforts.

    Opponents of the measure include Ohio Senate President Matt Huffman, who took during a post-primary event by the Ohio Chamber of Commerce to make the case against the effort.

    He argued the new process would provoke an “extraordinary” amount of legal challenges, and he also defended the current process.

    “When allowed to work in the summer of 2023, (the redistricting process) did work,” Huffman said in March.

    After ballot board approval, the initiative will then be included in the November ballot issues statewide.

    Originally published by the Ohio Capital Journal. Republished here with permission.

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    Susan Tebben, The Ohio Capital Journal

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  • What We Know About J.D. Vance’s Legislative Action on Criminal Justice

    What We Know About J.D. Vance’s Legislative Action on Criminal Justice

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    Photo Credit: Joshua A. Bickel/Ohio Debate Commission.

    Ohio U.S. Senate Republican candidate J.D. Vance during Ohio’s U.S. Senate Republican Primary Debate at Central State University.

    This article was first published by The Marshall Project, a nonprofit news organization covering the U.S. criminal justice system. Sign up for their newsletters, and follow them on Instagram, TikTok, Reddit and Facebook.

    In January, days after a Supreme Court decision authorized the U.S. Border Patrol to remove razor wire installed by the Texas National Guard along the U.S.-Mexico border, Sen. J.D. Vance, a Republican from Ohio, introduced legislation to block federal agents from even tampering with the fencing.

    Since joining the Senate last year, none of Vance’s three dozen bills and resolutions, including his State Border Security Act, has received a full vote, let alone become law. But his legislative efforts to curtail immigration and police reform and criminalize gender-affirming health care and campus protests suggest his policy priorities as a 2024 vice presidential candidate running with former President Donald Trump.

    In a third of the bills he’s introduced and about a dozen more he’s co-sponsored, Vance seeks tough criminal penalties for individuals and financial sanctions for communities that disagree with his positions on the border, policing, reproductive health care, or whether and where protesters can legally exercise their free speech.

    A self-described “Never Trumper” when his hard-knock memoir, “Hillbilly Elegy,” was published in 2016, Vance made an about-face in the run-up to his 2022 campaign for an open Senate seat in Ohio. Since winning Trump’s endorsement and that race, Vance has become a leading critic of federal and state officials who prosecute Trump for alleged criminal acts in office. On the floor of the Senate, Vance articulates Trump’s tough-on-crime-and-immigration position.

    He’s a “loyal footsoldier” with a penchant for channeling national controversies into legislation at the heart of the Trump campaign platform, said César Cuauhtémoc García Hernández, an Ohio State University law professor who specializes in criminal law, civil liberties, policing and immigration.

    “Whether it’s the murder of Laken Riley,” an Augusta University student whose accused killer crossed the border illegally, “or if it’s the standoff between the Border Patrol and the Texas National Guard, he’s very good at taking some event and trying to excite the Republican Party’s base with it,” García Hernández said. And he’s proven that he’ll “embrace the Republican Party and the past Trump administration’s heavy-handed approach to immigration and to criminal justice more generally.”

    Vance, a military veteran who turns 40 in August, has authored or supported legislation that would crack down on campus and climate change protests while relaxing restrictions on protesting abortion clinics.

    His Encampments or Endowments Act would block federal funds for universities that fail to dismantle protest encampments. He signed on to Arkansas Republican Sen. Tom Cotton’s No Bailouts for Campus Criminals Act, which would bar college students from loan forgiveness if they are convicted of crimes while protesting on campus.

    He’s co-sponsored Utah Republican Sen. Mike Lee’s Restoring the First Amendment and Right to Peaceful Civil Disobedience Act of 2023, which would repeal a 1994 law that buffers patients from harassment by protesters outside clinics. He also co-sponsored South Dakota Republican Sen. John Thune’s Senate Bill 204, which would imprison doctors for up to five years if medical treatment is not provided to children born following an attempted abortion. Vance’s Consequences for Climate Vandals Act would double the maximum penalty for property damage from protests at the National Gallery of Art from five to 10 years in prison.

    In 2023, Vance and Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia introduced companion bills that punish anyone involved in the gender-affirming care of a minor.

    Greene’s bill would permit people who receive gender-affirming care as minors to bring a lawsuit against anyone who performed hormone treatments or surgeries on them. Vance’s bill would go further, making the gender-affirming care of a minor a federal crime punishable by up to 12 years in prison.

    In addition to the State Border Security Act, Vance’s No Community Development Block Grants for Sanctuary Cities Act would cut federal funds for local communities that do not cooperate with federal immigration enforcement officials. Senate Bill 3516, which Vance introduced in late 2023, would impose a 10% tax on money transfers to people outside the United States, with the proceeds deposited by the U.S. Treasury into a Border Enforcement Trust Fund.

    He’s also signed onto Tennessee Republican U.S. Sen. Marsha Blackburn’s PRINTS Act, calling for the fingerprinting and federal reporting of minors who cross the border in suspected acts of human trafficking. The law would criminalize, with a penalty of up to 10 years in prison, adults “who use unrelated minors to gain entry into the United States.”

    Vance has co-sponsored Texas Republican Sen. John Cornyn’s Back the Blue Act of 2023, which would increase minimum and maximum sentences, up to life imprisonment or death, for assaulting or killing law enforcement officers. Vance has also introduced resolutions expressing support for law enforcement and condemning the District of Columbia’s Comprehensive Policing and Justice Reform Amendment Act of 2022.

    While Vance’s Senate resolution condemning the D.C. Council’s legislation did not move out of committee, a companion piece in the House did pass both chambers. President Joe Biden vetoed the bill, and Congress did not override that veto.

    “While I do not support every provision of the Comprehensive Policing and Justice Reform Amendment Act of 2022,” President Biden wrote in his veto message, “this resolution from congressional Republicans would overturn common sense police reforms such as: banning chokeholds; setting important restrictions on use of force and deadly force; improving access to body-worn camera recordings; and requiring officer training on de-escalation and use of force.”

    In his remarks on the House resolution, which passed with six Senate Democrats, Vance blasted the D.C. policing reform for making officers less safe by restricting the use of riot gear and the ability to chase violent offenders, and for “these ridiculous exhaustion requirements before they can use lethal force to protect themselves and people around them.”

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    Doug Livingston, The Marshall Project – Cleveland

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  • Secretary of State Frank LaRose Could Purge More than 150,000 Ohio Inactive Voters Before Election

    Secretary of State Frank LaRose Could Purge More than 150,000 Ohio Inactive Voters Before Election

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    (Photo by Susan Tebben, OCJ.)

    Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose talks to reporters.

    More than 150,000 Ohio voters could potentially not be eligible to vote in the upcoming Presidential election. 

    Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose recently published a list of 158,857 inactive voter registrations who are eligible to be removed from the Statewide Voter Registration Database — meaning they would be purged from voter rolls. 

    “These registrations are eligible for removal under the law because records show they’re no longer residing or active at the registered address for at least the last four consecutive years,” LaRose said in a statement. 

    Why are voters inactive?

    A registered voter could be on the list if they filled out a change-of-address form with the U.S. Postal Service signaling they have moved or they have not voted at their registered address in the past four years after being marked for removal by a county’s voter registration system. 

    All 88 county boards of elections were required to collect and submit this data to LaRose’s office earlier this year. The voter purge is part of Ohio’s process of updating its rolls and removing voters who have moved out-of-state or died. 

    County boards of elections must complete their voter purge by July 22, so people on the inactive voter list have until then to take action. 

    What can inactive voters do to get off the list?

    In order to not be removed from the rolls and still be able to vote in the November election, an inactive voter can —

    • Confirm or update their voter registration at VoteOhio.gov, by mail or in-person at their local county board of elections.
    • Update or confirm their address with their county board of elections.
    • Submit an absentee ballot application.
    • Sign a candidate or issue petition that is verified by a board of elections.

    The deadline to register to vote in the Nov. 5 election is Oct. 7. 

    A voter whose registration has been purged can regain their ability to vote by reregistering on the Secretary’s registration website or by visiting their county board of elections.

    Originally published by the Ohio Capital Journal. Republished here with permission.

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    Megan Henry, Ohio Capital Journal

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