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Dayton
Daily News...
Election
reform statute blocked
Voters can begin casting ballots
Tuesday for the November’s election.
by Laura Bischof
October
2, 2011
COLUMBUS
— Early voting for the Nov. 8
election will begin Tuesday after voting rights activists turned in
more than
300,000 signatures with the secretary of state to block a new
GOP-backed
election reform law.
The
petition seeks a statewide
referendum next November on House Bill 194. Thursday’s filing blocks
the bill
from taking effect this November and might keep the changes in abeyance
next
November when President Barack Obama is up for re-election.
A
coalition of unions and Democrats
called Fair Elections Ohio turned in petitions with 318,460 signatures
— 87,313
more than the required 231,147 — to put the issue on the ballot.
The
group plans to continue collecting
signatures while county boards of elections check submitted signatures
against
voter records.
Matt
McClellan, spokesman for Ohio
Secretary of State Jon Husted, said even if the coalition falls short
of the
231,147 signatures needed, the group will have another 10 days to meet
the
requirement.
If
enacted, House Bill 194 would
shorten the window for early voting in person and absentee from 35 days
to 17
days, eliminate early voting on Saturday afternoons and Sundays, make
it harder
for counties to encourage early voting, and remove a requirement that
poll
workers redirect voters to the correct precinct. Currently, voters who
forget
to bring identification to the polls must cast a provisional ballot and
then
have 10 days to show their ID. House Bill 194 would require them to
return the
same day with ID.
“I
am alarmed that our legislature
would be working on a bill that would make it harder to vote and would
limit
access to the polls,” said Pat Stidham, a Democrat from Springboro who
helped
circulate petitions.
Proponents
of the bill, including
Husted, have said the changes would bring about uniformity for voters.
Currently, large urban counties tend to have more in-person early
voting hours
and also automatically send out applications for absentee ballots and
often pay
return postage for absentee ballots.
Roughly
a third of Ohio voters cast
early ballots. There are 8 million registered voters in the state.
“By
keeping laws currently on the
books intact, you’re going to keep lines short on Election Day and
you’re going
to give people across this state the opportunity to participate in this
democracy,” said Greg Schultz of Organizing for America, which led the
signature gathering effort.
The
referendum on House Bill 194 will
be the second time in two years that liberal groups have attempted a
voter’s
veto of GOP-backed reforms. Ohioans will vote Nov. 8 on state Issue 2,
a
referendum on the collective bargaining changes contained in Senate
Bill 5.
Read
it at the Dayton Daily News
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