Ohio Secretary of State and U.S. Senate candidate, Frank LaRose (R. OH)
In case you missed this:
Just six days after Ohio voters began receiving ballots for the upcoming November election, Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose (R) canceled 26,666 voter registrations in the state.
On Sept. 22, ballots were sent to overseas citizens and military members to begin voting in the Nov. 7 general election and on Sept. 28, LaRose ordered the cancellations, despite instructing county boards to pause registration cancellations ahead of the previous election in August.
The cancellations were a result of voter inactivity — each cancellation involved a voter who did not vote or respond to notices from elections officials over a six-year timeframe.
The move has sparked pushback and concerns from Democrats who question the timing of the decision. LaRose, who was a vocal leader of a failed August ballot measure that would have required future conditional amendments to receive 60% support, ordered county boards to not remove voters from the rolls in June ahead of the election.
But in the same directive, he also directed the late September purges, which took place just over a month before the November general election where voters will consider Issue 1, a constitutional amendment that would enshrine reproductive freedom in the state’s constitution. Unlike the August measure to raise the threshold to 60%, LaRose has been an outspoken critic of the reproductive rights amendment, and has admitted that the intent of the now-failed amendment was to stop the upcoming measure from passing.
And yes, the timing of this purge is highly suspicious considering Ohio voters have some big choices to make November:
Change in Ballot language may have big effect on support for Issue 1
Advocates for Issue 1 were angered that the summary language facing voters at the ballot box was altered to include the phrase “unborn child” rather than the original language of “fetal viability.” To examine what effect this may have on support for Issue 1, we asked half of our respondents about their support with the original ballot language and half with the language now appearing on the ballot. We find majority support for both versions of Issue 1, albeit with 52% agreeing with the current ballot language and 68% agreeing with the original ballot language.
Much of the difference in support can be found among Republicans and Independents who are more supportive of the original language and less supportive of the current ballot language. Democrats show almost universal support for both versions (87% for each). Likewise, men are much more likely to support the original version of Issue 1, whereas women demonstrate little change in support for either version of Issue 1 (68% and 63%, respectively). The margins of error are appreciably higher for these specific questions because we split our sample to test the effects of the change in ballot language, so results should be taken with caution. Nonetheless, the change in ballot language will likely have an effect on the level of support for Issue 1.
“The framing of Issue 1 will be critical to its outcome. While we find relatively strong support for abortion rights, the actual ballot language of Issue 1 receives the lowest amount of support among the various ways we asked respondents about the ballot measure. Democrats show almost unanimous support for Issue 1 while Republicans are more divided. --Robert Alexander, Ohio Northern University
Click here to double check to see if you were or were not affected by LaRose’s voter purge.
Here’s some more info on the state of the race in Ohio this year:
The inflammatory language targeting a reproductive rights measure on Ohio’s fall ballot is the type of messaging that is common in the closing weeks of a highly contested initiative campaign — warning of “abortion on demand” or “dismemberment of fully conscious children” if voters approve it.
Only the messaging isn’t just coming from the anti-abortion groups that oppose the constitutional amendment. It’s being promoted on the official government website of the Republican-controlled Ohio Senate.
And because the source is a government website, the messaging is being prioritized in online searches for information about Issue 1, the question going before Ohio voters Nov. 7 to enshrine abortion access in the state Constitution.
The “On The Record” blog on the state Senate website is billed as an “online newsroom” presenting “the views the news excludes.” It features attacks against Ohio news outlets, op-ed style columns by Republican state senators and content generated by members of the Senate majority’s communications staff and other noted conservatives.
“Be confident that here you will find a place for facts, values, and reason,” read the announcement when Republican lawmakers launched the feature in September, shortly after Ohio voters rejected a Republican attempt to make it far more difficult to pass constitutional amendments.
Groups backing the proposed amendment say it’s an improper use of a taxpayer-supported website, while experts who study online misinformation said the effort by Republican lawmakers appeared unprecedented.
Students hoping to get others to vote “no” on an upcoming Ohio amendment to ensure abortion rights took the soft approach at a recent event at the University of Cincinnati.
The signs in their booth were alarmist — “Late-Term Abortion is on the Ballot” — but the young “Students for Life” advocates opted for a moderate appeal as they stopped students hurrying back and forth to class.
“We’re not voting necessarily today on whether you’re pro-life or pro-choice,” Kristin Drummond, 19, a medical science major from Kentucky, told one freshman who said she favored abortion rights. “This is about whether or not this amendment is something we should have, because it’s very extreme.”
Three months after a failed attempt by abortion opponents to make it harder to amend the state constitution, Ohioans will head to the polls again Nov. 7 to decide whether to enshrine reproductive rights in the state constitution. Early voting is already underway, television ads are proliferating and millions in political money is flowing into Ohio. The amendment’s backers have outraised the antiabortion side, but together they have spent more than $40 million on television advertising and other expenses so far, campaign records show.
Meanwhile. U.S. Senator Sherrod Brown (D. OH) is urging people to find their polling place:
And continuing to look out for workers:
Fifty-eight percent of Americans support United Auto Workers union members in their strike against the Big Three automakers, according to the latest Reuters/Ipsos poll, while a fresh Associated Press/NORC survey finds that only 9 percent side with the corporations over the workers.
So it shouldn’t be hard for politicians who invariably claim that they sympathize with working Americans to stand in solidarity with the UAW and its demands for fair wages, improved working conditions, and a say regarding the future of an iconic American industry. But, so far, the Democratic-controlled US Senate has failed to follow the lead of President Biden, who joined a UAW picket line in Michigan on September 26, when it comes to showing solidarity with the strikers.
US Senators Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) want to change that. Sanders, the chair of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, and Brown, the chair of the Senate Banking Committee, have introduced a resolution declaring that the Senate “stands with the United Auto Workers in their fight against corporate greed; supports every worker’s fundamental right to organize and collectively bargain for better wages, benefits, and working conditions; and calls on the Big Three automakers—General Motors, Stellantis, and Ford—to negotiate in good faith and offer their workers a fair contract.”
There’s no doubt about which side Brown and Sanders are on in the fight between a union that represents nearly 150,000 workers at plants across the country, including tens of thousands of autoworkers in Brown’s state of Ohio, and the three highly profitable corporations that the UAW has been striking since September 15. Both are pro-labor stalwarts who have walked more than their share of picket lines over the years. But could Sanders and Brown actually get the Senate—a chamber awash in political-action-committee cash that has a long history of bending to Wall Street’s demands for free-trade deals, tax giveaways, and corporate welfare—to join them in a show of solidarity?
32 Democratic U.S. Senators have signed onto this resolution. Here’s the current state on the strike:
The United Auto Workers union and Stellantis have agreed to a tentative deal following roughly six weeks of targeted U.S. labor strikes, the union announced on Saturday.
The agreement, which must still be approved by local union leaders and ratified by members, is patterned off a 4½-year agreement reached between the union and Ford Motor on Wednesday.
Meanwhile, while there had been hopes the UAW would soon reach a similar deal with General Motors, on Saturday the union expanded its strike to an additional GM assembly plant in Spring Hill, Tennessee. “We are disappointed by GM’s unnecessary and irresponsible refusal to come to a fair agreement,” UAW President Shawn Fain said in a statement.
Health and Democracy are on the ballot this year and next year and here are a few things you can do:
1. Click here to make sure you weren’t purged from the voting rolls.
2. Find your polling place in Ohio.
3. If you don’t see your Democratic Senator’s name on Brown and Sanders, resolution, click here to find and contact your Democratic Senator.
4. Click below to donate and get involved with U.S. Senator Sherrod Brown’s (D. OH) re-election campaign and his fellow Ohio Democrats campaigns:
Sherrod Brown
Emilia Sykes
Greg Landsman
Marcy Kaptur
Shontel Brown
