Ohio: Are Ohio voters about to fix politics? | Cincinnati Enquirer

Hate when politicians from the far left and far right fight over extreme proposals with little incentive to compromise? Then, Issue 1 is for you, a long list of proponents say. If voters approve the ballot initiative this November, Ohio could become a nationwide leader on how to draw lines for state lawmakers’ districts, said Michael Li, an elections expert at New York University School of Law’s Brennan Center for Justice. The much-maligned process of allowing lawmakers draw Rorschach test-like districts to ensure a win for their party could end — or at least become less egregious — with this first-of-its-kind proposal, he said. “People are really watching Ohio very closely,” Li said.

Ohio: Expert Says Ohio’s Redistricting Proposal Could Serve As Model For Other States | Ohio Public Radio

A national political expert visited Columbus to talk about the push to change the way state lawmakers’ districts are drawn, and it’s an opportunity to achieve something rare in this country. “That is not a natural community in any sense of the word,” says Michael Li, the redistricting expert at the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University. He’s pointing to a district map drawn in California. One particular district is just a sliver of land that snakes up the west side of the state. “It stretches almost 200 miles up the coast of California, here it’s barely there—in fact—there’s a point in which it disappears at high tide,” said Li. Li’s notes drew laughter but also point out the odd realities of gerrymandering. This is when one party can draw legislative districts to benefit one party over another.

Ohio: Pettis clerk to assist with Ohio election | Sedalia Democrat

After implementing new technology during the August special election in Pettis County, Clerk Nick La Strada has been asked to help implement the tech in another state. The new poll pads launched in Pettis County in August, the first county in Missouri to do so. La Strada said an election authority from St. Louis watched the Pettis election to see how the tech works before implementing it in their county. La Strada was then asked a few weeks ago by vendor KnowInk to help with the November election in Allen County, Ohio, since he is an election authority already familiar with the process. The county has a population of about 105,000, more than double the population of Pettis County. “I’m excited to go out and do that,” La Strada said. “It’s an honor to even go see a process in such a high profile state for electoral college for the upcoming election.”

Ohio: Why Boehner’s resignation may cost Butler County taxpayers $1 Million | Journal-News

Speaker of the House John Boehner’s sudden resignation could cost Butler County up to $1 million, and the state even more, depending on when the governor schedules the special congressional elections. Jocelyn Bucaro, deputy director of the Butler County Board of Elections, told the county commissioners this week it will cost about $1 million to hold special congressional elections for Boehner’s seat in the U.S. House of Representatives. The cost would be half that if Ohio Gov. John Kasich schedules one of the elections to coincide with the March 15 presidential primary. Elections would need to be held in each county of Ohio’s 8th Congressional District, which includes Butler, Clark, Darke, Miami and Preble counties, and part of Mercer County.

Ohio: Issue 1 would change how legislative lines are drawn | Dayton Daily News

Voters will have a chance to change the way politicians draw state legislative district lines when they consider State Issue 1 on November 3. “The drawing of the lines is the single most significant factor in determining who wins,” said former State Rep. Vernon Sykes, an Akron Democrat who with former state Rep. Matt Huffman, R-Lima, is co-chairing the Fair Districts for Ohio campaign promoting State Issue 1. Supporters say the proposed constitutional amendment would upend what has been a largely partisan exercise that allows the party in power to create districts packed with its supporters while marginalizing supporters of the minority party. Lines are redrawn for the Ohio Legislature every 10 years to reflect population shifts.

Ohio: Court: Wording of pot legalization ballot is misleading | The Washington Post

Ohio’s Supreme Court ruled Wednesday that part of the ballot wording describing a proposal to legalize marijuana in the state is misleading and ordered a state board to rewrite it. Supporters of the measure, known in the fall election as Issue 3, challenged the phrasing of the ballot language and title, arguing certain descriptions were inaccurate and intentionally misleading to voters. Attorneys for the state’s elections chief, a vocal opponent of the proposal, had said the nearly 500-word ballot language was fair. In a split decision, the high court sided with the pot supporters in singling out four paragraphs of the ballot language it said “inaccurately states pertinent information and omits essential information.”

Ohio: Voting Machines Reaching the End of the Line | Public News Service

The end of the line is nearing for Ohio’s electronic voting machines, which a new report indicates could cause trouble during the 2016 election. According to the Brennan Center for Justice at the NYU School of Law, 90 percent of Ohio counties are using machines that are 10 years old. Report co-author Christopher Famighetti says that’s much longer than the machines are designed to last. “Most of us don’t keep our laptops, desktops, over a decade, and that’s the type of technology that most of the machines in use today are using,” he explains.

Ohio: Democrats back push to overhaul redistricting process | Toledo Blade

The Ohio Democratic Party today officially joined the chorus in favor of a ballot issue to overhaul Ohio’s inherently partisan process under which state legislative districts are redrawn every 10 years. The party stood on the sidelines for months while a majority of organizations usually allied with it stood with Republicans to promote Issue 1 on the Nov. 3 ballot. The party’s executive committee waited to run computer models to see how it might fare under the new system before jumping on board. “We weren’t looking for, and we didn’t find, any models that showed we could guarantee ourselves a majority,” party Chairman David Pepper said. “Frankly, that would be gerrymandering just like in the past. What it found, though, was that if Democrats were to win the apportionment board, we could draw many seats that would be likely Democrat seats. But the most important change is there would be many more competitive races.”

Ohio: Electronic poll books will be at voting locations across the state by November 2016 | Cleveland Plain Dealer

Electronic poll books will soon replace the paper books precinct workers use to check in registered voters during elections. Pat McDonald, director of the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections, said he and other directors are elated to jettison the paper books, which is possible because the state will pay 85 percent of the cost. Elections boards are meeting with vendors and expect to have the technology in place by the presidential election in 2016, officials said. The new state budget included a $12.7 million appropriation for e-books, which will be distributed to the 88 counties based on percentage of registered voters.

Ohio: Is Ohio the Next Home Of Hanging Chads? | Politico

In America’s quintessential swing state, aging voting machines and partisan battles are casting doubt over the fairness of the 2016 election. Immediately after the 2004 election, when tens of thousands of Ohioans waited hours to vote, the state enacted a series of reforms that began to address the worst of that year’s nightmares. But now much of that progress is in danger of being undone. The Buckeye State is far from alone. Politicians and advocates are waging similar battles across the country, but the stakes may be highest here, in perhaps the most important of swing states on the national electoral map. With voting laws in flux and funding a for better voting technology a constant struggle nationwide, two central questions remain just 14 months before Election Day: who will be able to vote, and will all their votes be counted accurately? In 2005, Ohio passed a sweeping bill that expanded early and absentee voting, and a series of legal settlements in the following years helped put in place some of the nation’s best electoral practices. But over the past few years, Republicans have been chipping away at many of those changes. GOP leaders say they’re simply trying to guarantee uniformity and prevent voter fraud, but voting rights advocacy groups say the recent changes threaten to bring back problems from the past, and may be driven by an effort to suppress voter turnout.

Ohio: Supporters of Issue 1 say redistricting change to promote ‘fair elections’ | The Columbus Dispatch

In the past two elections, 100 percent of Ohio congressional races and 98 percent of legislative contests were won by the political party favored when the district lines were drawn in 2011. In 2014, Ohio Republican congressional candidates got 57 percent of all votes cast but won 75 percent of the seats. Republican candidates for the Ohio House got 57 percent of the vote and won nearly two-thirds of the seats. “Ohio elections will continue to be entirely predictable until we change how these maps are drawn,” said Carrie Davis, executive director of the League of Women Voters of Ohio, which put together the data. “We can fix this. We can fix it this year.”

Ohio: Secretary of State advises counties on electronic pollbooks | The Jackson County Times-Journal

Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted recently advised county boards of elections on the amount of funding available to each board for the implementation of new electronic pollbooks. “E-Pollbooks are a great advancement in voter technology that will make elections simpler for both Ohio voters and the staff and volunteers who assist them on Election Day,” explained Husted. The state legislature appropriated $12.7 million to aid county governments in covering the cost of upgrading to e-pollbooks during the biennial budget (Am. Sub. H.B. 64) enacted on June 30.

Ohio: Democrats seek to join lawsuit over voting changes | Associated Press

The Ohio Democratic Party and two of its county organizations are seeking to join a federal lawsuit filed in May that alleges that election laws and rules in the political battleground state disproportionately burden Democratic-leaning voters. The Ohio Organizing Collaborative brought the case. But in court filings last week, the organization’s attorneys asked Magistrate Judge Norah McCann King to let it withdraw and substitute in its place the state’s Democratic Party and Cuyahoga and Montgomery county parties. “OOC is a non-profit organization with limited resources, and it does not have the institutional capability to remain as a plaintiff,” attorneys wrote in court documents.

Ohio: Democratic Party slow to support redistricting proposal | The Columbus Dispatch

Consternation inside the Ohio Democratic Party over whether to endorse a November ballot issue on legislative redistricting should be nearing a conclusion. The legislature passed Issue 1 in December, and there was only one Democratic “no” vote. The proposal has been endorsed by the Ohio Republican Party, the League of Women Voters and a variety of groups that generally align with Democrats, including ProgressOhio, Common Cause Ohio and the Coalition of Democratic & Progressive Organizations of Central Ohio.

Ohio: Ohio voting laws discriminate, lawsuit says | Associated Press

Recently passed Ohio voting laws create hurdles for minority voters casting absentee and provisional ballots, advocates argued in an updated federal lawsuit filed on Monday. The laws and similar orders by the secretary of state unconstitutionally permit absentee votes to be thrown out for ID errors, according to the lawsuit. Those mistakes could include putting down the wrong birth month on the absentee envelope even when a voter supplied the correct information when requesting the ballot, the lawsuit said. The laws also removed protection for voters casting provisional ballots by failing to provide the chance for voters to be notified of errors that could cause the ballot to be rejected, according to the lawsuit.

Ohio: Election rights advocates allege new voter ID violations | Associated Press

Recently passed Ohio voting laws create new hurdles for minority voters casting absentee and provisional ballots, election rights advocates argued in an updated federal lawsuit filed Monday. The laws and similar orders by the state’s elections chief unconstitutionally permit absentee votes to be thrown out for ID errors, according to the lawsuit. Those mistakes could include putting down the wrong birth month on the absentee envelope even when a voter supplied the correct information when requesting the ballot, the lawsuit said. The laws also removed protection for voters casting provisional ballots by failing to provide the chance for voters to be notified of errors that could cause the ballot to be rejected, according to the lawsuit.

Ohio: A Trump independent run got harder Thursday night | USA Today

Donald Trump’s appearance in Thursday night’s GOP debate in Cleveland just made it harder for him to run as an independent candidate for president. Ohio is one of several states that have “sore loser” rules prohibiting a candidate from appearing on the ballot as an independent or third-party candidate after they have previously declared themselves a candidate in another party. Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted, a Republican, has concluded that since Trump has filed with the Federal Election Commission to pursue the Republican nomination and “voluntarily participated” in the Republican presidential debate in the state of Ohio, he has “chosen a party for this election cycle” and declared himself “as a Republican in the state of Ohio,” said Husted spokesman Joshua Eck

Ohio: State redistricting lands back on the ballot | The Akron Legal News

The Ohio electorate will have the opportunity to pass a proposed amendment to the Ohio Constitution that would create a new format for redistricting state elections following the 2020 census. The effect of the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent redistricting decision on Ohio law, however, is not yet clear, according to experts in the field. Ohio’s proposed amendment, which will appear on the November ballot as Issue 1, was passed by a bipartisan Ohio legislature in December 2014 as HJR 12, led by two outgoing legislators– Democrat Vernon Sykes and Republican Matthew Huffman.

Ohio: Senators push for congressional redistricting | The Columbus Dispatch

Lawmakers who think it’s time to end Ohio’s hyper-partisan process for drawing congressional districts aren’t giving up the fight. As Ohio voters prepare to vote this fall on changing how Ohio draws its legislative districts, a bipartisan pair of senators is again pushing to also change congressional redistricting. Sens. Frank LaRose, R-Copley, and Tom Sawyer, D-Akron, introduced a resolution on Wednesday that would give a bipartisan commission the authority to draw congressional lines, instead of the current process in which the House and Senate draw the districts to benefit the majority political party.

Ohio: Republicans Spent More Than Half a Million Keeping Libertarian Candidate Off Ballot | Reason

Ohio Republicans spent more than half a million dollars on a successful bid to keep Libertarian Party gubernatorial* candidate Charlie Earl off the state ballot last year. The GOP initially balked at the accusation that they had engaged in any dirty dealings to thwart Earl’s candidacy. Then, in a federal lawsuit filed by the Libertarian Party of Ohio (LPO), District Judge Michael H. Watson found that it was “obvious” that “operatives or supporters of the Ohio Republican Party” had indeed hired a “dupe” to bring about Earl’s electoral demise. Unfortunately, the dupe—Gregory Felsoci, an LPO member who filed a formal complaint with the secretary of state’s office challenging signatures the party collected—did have a point, the judge decided: Earl’s petition circulators had not disclosed that they were being paid by the LPO.

Ohio: GOP payouts in ballot fight nearly $600,000 | The Columbus Dispatch

A recent court filing showed the Ohio Republican Party’s legal bills in the challenge to 2014 Libertarian gubernatorial candidate Charlie Earl are almost $600,000 — nearly double the amount previously disclosed. The additional spending was documented as part of the Libertarian party’s lawsuit against Secretary of State Jon Husted. It challenges Husted’s decision to disqualify Earl.

Ohio: Redistricting reform campaign begins, preaching fairness for partisan process | Cleveland Plain Dealer

The campaign to change the way Ohio draws its Statehouse districts will spend the next four months persuading voters to say “yes” to Issue 1 on the November ballot. Fair Districts for Ohio, which kicked off its campaign Wednesday, will be chaired by the former state representatives who led the charge last year to revise the legislative redistricting process. Their plan, which passed the General Assembly with bipartisan support, requires voter approval and will appear on the November ballot as Issue 1. The plan does not change how congressional districts are drawn.

Ohio: U.S. Supreme Court ruling clears the way for Ohio congressional redistricting reform | Cleveland Plain Dealer

Monday’s U.S. Supreme Court ruling in favor of Arizona’s redistricting commission means Ohio could act quickly to reform its process for drawing congressional district maps. Late last year, Ohio lawmakers passed revisions to the state legislative redistricting process with large bipartisan support in both chambers. Ohio Republicans then cited the Arizona case as the main reason for not also reforming the congressional redistricting process. Despite Monday’s decision, Ohio voters likely won’t vote on a congressional plan in November, when they will be asked to approve the revised state legislative redistricting process. Lawmakers plan to recess for the summer this week and don’t plan to return before the August deadline to put an issue on the November ballot.

Ohio: Senate panel weighs online voter registration bill | Associated Press

Backers of a bill that would let Ohioans register to vote online are telling a legislative panel that it would allow for more accurate voter rolls in the swing state. The bill would direct Ohio’s elections chief to create a secure, online registration process for voters. Applicants would need to provide an Ohio driver’s license or state ID card number. Currently, Ohio voters can update their addresses online.

Ohio: Senate moving to approve online voter registration | The Columbus Dispatch

Senate Republican leaders plan to pass online voter registration by the end of June, but its fate remains unclear in the Ohio House. Ohio currently allows voters to update their registrations online, but full online registration is not available. The Senate Government Oversight and Reform Committee is expected to vote on the bill next week, after hearing from a variety of supporters on Wednesday. Several witnesses, including Secretary of State Jon Husted, a leading proponent of online voter registration, stressed similar themes: It reduces errors when compared with data keyed in by hand; saves money; makes the system more secure, and does little or nothing to change the political makeup of the voting electorate. Husted said data show savings of 50 cents to more than $2 per registration when done online.

Ohio: Electronic pollbooks a possible solution to long lines on Election Day | The Columbus Dispatch

In a move that could ease lines on Election Day and one day allow Ohioans to vote at any polling location in their county, the Ohio Senate wants to provide $13 million to help all counties purchase electronic pollbooks. The proposal drew praise from county elections officials and Secretary of State Jon Husted, who said that for voters in the 19 counties that currently use electronic pollbooks, the check-in process is streamlined and wait times are reduced. “Electronic poll books are revolutionizing elections here in Ohio, making it easier for voters to cast ballots and saving valuable taxpayer resources,” said Shawn Stevens, president of the Ohio Association of Election Officials and a member of the Delaware County Board of Elections.

Ohio: Move to delay Ohio’s 2016 primary could aid Kasich | The Columbus Dispatch

Ohio lawmakers set the table for Gov. John Kasich to potentially take all of the Buckeye State’s GOP presidential delegates in one swoop next year. By moving the state’s 2016 primary election back a week — from March 8 to March 15 — Ohio’s Republican vote will be a winner-take-all contest. The Senate gave the legislature’s final approval on Wednesday, 23-10. The measure becomes law with Kasich’s signature.

Ohio: Libertarian’s elections complaint against Ohio Gov. Kasich dismissed | Associated Press

The state’s Elections Commission dismissed a complaint May 21 alleging that Republican Gov. John Kasich’s re-election campaign played a role in getting a Libertarian candidate bumped from last year’s gubernatorial ballot. Attorneys for Libertarian Charlie Earl argued that Kasich’s campaign and GOP consultant Terry Casey conspired in a successful protest that disqualified Earl from the 2014 governor’s race and that Casey’s resulting legal bills constitute an unreported in-kind contribution to the campaign. They sought a $720,000 fine against Kasich’s team. The elections panel ruled otherwise. Members voted 5-2 to dismiss the complaint, finding that Earl lacked the evidence to show a coordinated effort.

Ohio: Republican Party paid $300,000 in legal bills to keep Libertarian candidate off ballot | Cleveland Plain Dealer

The Ohio Republican Party paid $300,000 to the law firm involved with successfully keeping would-be Libertarian gubernatorial candidate Charlie Earl off last year’s ballot, according to Ohio Elections Commission filings. The payments, detailed by attorneys representing Gov. John Kasich’s re-election campaign and GOP activist Terry Casey, came after Republican Party Chair Matt Borges denied in federal court last year that his party was behind the challenge to Earl’s candidacy. Casey and Kasich’s campaign brought up the payments as evidence that Kasich’s re-election campaign did not collude to disqualify Earl, as the Libertarian alleges in an elections commission complaint.