OVRC Press Coverage
Voting Issues in the News
Catch up on the latest stories featuring OVRC members and campaigns.
OCTOBER 20, 2020 | CLEVELAND.COM
SEPTEMBER 14, 2020 | STATEHOUSE NEWS BUREAU
SEPTEMBER 14, 2020 | CLEVELAND.COM
SEPTEMBER 3, 2020 | STATEHOUSE NEWS BUREAU
AUGUST 31, 2020 | WVXU CINCINNATI
AUGUST 25, 2020 | CITY BEAT
AUGUST 24, 2020 | CLEVELAND.COM
AUGUST 21, 2020 | JOURNAL-NEWS
AUGUST 19, 2020 | CLEVELAND.COM
JULY 31, 2020 | COLUMBUS DISPATCH
JULY 23, 2020 | ASHLAND SOURCE
The Ohio Supreme Court issued an order allowing Ohio attorneys to receive required continuing legal education credit for serving as precinct election officials on Election Day on Nov. 3
JULY 9, 2020 | CLEVELAND.COM
JUNE 23, 2020 | NBC 4 COLUMBUS
JUNE 17, 2020 | CLEVELAND.COM
JUNE 16, 2020 | COLUMBUS DISPATCH
JUNE 15, 2020 | OHIO CAPITAL JOURNAL
JUNE 14, 2020 | CINCINNATI ENQUIRER
JUNE 10, 2020 | COLUMBUS DISPATCH
Last-minute changes to a fast-moving elections bill prevented Ohio House Republicans from dragging the state way backward in voting rights last week. We’re thankful for that, but the bill as it stands after passage in the House Thursday still is far from what Ohio voters deserve.
JUNE 9, 2020 | SPECTRUM NEWS 1
Secretary of State Frank LaRose is on a crusade to make sure this pandemic doesn’t dissuade people from participating in the November election.
JUNE 8, 2020 | THE VINDICATOR
County election boards throughout Ohio did a superb job in handling the April primary election. So did hundreds of thousands of voters.
Perhaps political science professors already have started writing books about the election process this year. If not, they will. COVID-19 has made the political situation one for the history books.
JUNE 4, 2020 | PR WATCH
A freshman Ohio legislator and American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) member introduced a bill in the state House on May 27 that would make voting even harder than it already is in the COVID-19 era. On Tuesday and Wednesday, the House State and Local Government Committee held hearings on the bill. The full House passed an amended and less damaging bill on Thursday mostly along party lines in a 61-34 vote.
JUNE 4, 2020 | DAYTON DAILY NEWS
The Ohio House voted 61-34 along party lines on Thursday in favor of an elections bill that voting rights groups say will make casting ballots during a pandemic more difficult.
House Bill 680 would block the Ohio Secretary of State from prepaying return postage on applications for absentee ballots or on the ballots themselves. It calls for shortening the time allowed for requesting an absentee ballot to seven days before Election Day.
JUNE 3, 2020 | CLEVELAND.COM
Ohio lawmakers dramatically overhauled an elections bill on Wednesday, stripping controversial language that would have rolled back early voting for the November election.
JUNE 2, 2020 | DAYTON DAILY NEWS
A bipartisan statewide commission has been formed by the Ohio Secretary of State to help prepare for the November presidential election.
Warren County Board of Election director Brian Sleeth was named Tuesday by Secretary of State Frank LaRose to the Ready for November Task Force.
JUNE 2, 2020 | CLEVELAND.COM
An Ohio House elections bill, lined up for a swift series of committee hearings since it was introduced last week, would make this year’s presidential election the first one since 2008 in which the state wouldn’t mail an unsolicited absentee ballot application to all registered voters.
MAY 31, 2020 | COLUMBUS DISPATCH
In Ohio, elections officials from Trump’s own party and other experts said that election fraud is exceedingly rare and reassured voters that the state has multiple layers of checks to prevent it from happening.
MAY 27, 2020 | WOSU
Ohio’s spring election saw the shuttering of polling places and the extension of absentee voting as COVID-19 spread throughout the state. To avoid confusion before the November election, voting rights groups are asking lawmakers to change voting laws now, but the two groups aren’t necessarily on the same page when it comes to making reforms.
MAY 19, 2020 | YAHOO NEWS
The 2020 election is setting up a legal battle of historic proportions over voting rights, said the top Democratic attorney in the thick of the fight.
“There’s been more voting rights litigation this election cycle already than there was in all of 2016, by a lot,” said Marc Elias, a D.C.-based lawyer with a long history in the political trenches.
MAY 18, 2020 | CINCINNATI ENQUIRER
Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose is hoping his proposed changes for November’s election will help make the voting process more efficient for voters.
MAY 14, 2020 | AKRON BEACON JOURNAL
The state’s top election chief says the legislature needs to act, and act now, to give local officials enough time to run a November election fit for a coronavirus resurgence.
“If we’re still having this conversation in mid-summer, then we screwed up,” Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose told the editorial board of the Akron Beacon Journal on Thursday. “I can only hope that they share my sense of urgency.”
MAY 14, 2020 | OHIO CAPITAL JOURNAL
There is plenty that Ohio leaders and voting advocates agree on when it comes to forming a plan for the November general election.
MAY 6, 2020 | OHIO CAPITAL JOURNAL
Ohio’s lengthy, unpredictable primary election finally concluded last week.
Now the fight is on to determine how the November general election will proceed.
MAY 5, 2020 | COLUMBUS DISPATCH
Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose is all-in for in-person voting in November’s presidential election, but he is offering some “tweaks” that he believes will make the general election run smoother than the coronavirus-extended primary.
MAY 4, 2020 | COLUMBUS DISPATCH
Provisional ballots from voters who did not request an absentee ballot before the deadline in Ohio’s pandemic-extended primary election will not be counted.
APRIL 30, 2020 | WOSU
The League of Women Voters said Ohio’s low voter turnout is proof that the state was unprepared for a mostly vote-by-mail primary election.
APRIL 30, 2020 | NATIONAL MEMO
Ohio’s Democratic presidential primary winner was never in doubt, but its voting process was.
The April 28 primary, the second statewide vote-by-mail contest since the pandemic interrupted the 2020 election, highlighted new complexities facing voters if the nation shifts to mostly absentee voting this fall.
APRIL 30, 2020 | COLUMBUS DISPATCH
After an extended Ohio primary election culminated Tuesday in confusion and delayed counts, House Speaker Larry Householder is joining Democrats and voting rights advocates in saying the state needs to prepare now in case the coronavirus again derails a traditional in-person general election this fall.
APRIL 29, 2020 | ASSOCIATED PRESS
Joe Biden won Ohio’s presidential primary, clinching a contest that was less about the Democratic nomination and more about how states can conduct elections in the era of the coronavirus.
APRIL 29, 2020 | CBS NEWS
Ohio’s mail-in primary ends Tuesday evening, over a month after Ohio Governor Mike DeWine postponed the state’s primary, originally scheduled to take place on March 17. In late March, CBS News campaign reporter Jack Turman says the Ohio legislature passed a sweeping bill to address the coronavirus pandemic, which also included extending the vote-by-mail primary to April 28.
APRIL 29, 2020 | DAYTON DAILY NEWS
Just 22.65 percent of Ohio registered voters cast ballots in the 2020 presidential primary — an election that was interrupted by a global public health pandemic and abruptly switched to a vote-by-mail election.
APRIL 29, 2020 | STATEHOUSE NEWS BUREAU
Ohio’s first all-mail-in primary is done, after absentee voting was extended following the closure of polling places just before in person voting was supposed to happen on March 17.
APRIL 29, 2020 | TOLEDO BLADE
Ohio finally ended an unprecedented vote-by-mail election conducted over 10 weeks and marked by a global pandemic, a dramatic eleventh-hour poll closure, and thousands of ballots still potentially outstanding.
APRIL 29, 2020 | CINCINNATI ENQUIRER
Going into election night, Hamilton County Board of Election officials said they hoped to have the majority of results released as soon as 8:30 p.m…
So what happened? And, could it happen in November, when there’s a presidential race at stake?
APRIL 29, 2020 | CLEVELAND.COM
In talking with people closely involved with Ohio’s finally concluded presidential primary election, here’s the best thing people most had to say about it.
It wasn’t good. But it could have been much worse.
APRIL 29, 2020 | IDEASTREAM
Ohioans mailed in ballots, drove them to boards of elections and even cast votes in person while wearing facemasks as the state’s rescheduled primary election concluded Tuesday.
APRIL 28, 2020 | PUBLIC INTEGRITY
Risha Mason, who wants to vote in Ohio’s primary on Tuesday, called the local elections office three times in recent weeks to request applications for absentee ballots for herself and her mother. But the applications never arrived.
APRIL 28, 2020 | COLUMBUS DISPATCH
On Monday, the Ohio Secretary of State’s office reported that 1.97 million Ohioans requested vote-by-mail ballots for the primary, with about 1.46 million of them already casting ballots, leaving more than 500,000 outstanding ballots.
APRIL 28, 2020 | COLUMBUS DISPATCH
Ohio’s first big test of almost-all-mail voting hasn’t gone so well, and another one — some would say The Big One — may be coming in the fall. We need to get a lot better at this.
APRIL 28, 2020 | COLUMBUS DISPATCH
Six weeks ago the story was about how Ohio was set to join three other states in helping to end Bernie Sanders’ presidential dream.
APRIL 27, 2020 | CQ-ROLL CALL
Voters in Maryland and Ohio are testing pandemic-era democracy this week, holding the first elections almost entirely by mail since the nation locked itself down and more than a dozen states halted or postponed in-person voting to thwart the spread of COVID-19.
APRIL 27, 2020 | CINCINNATI ENQUIRER
Tuesday’s election is all by mail, so what should you do if your primary ballot doesn’t arrive in time?
APRIL 27, 2020 | COLUMBUS DISPATCH
Ohio voter advocates say electors who did not receive their absentee ballots in time for the delayed primary election will have to make the same choice that state officials tried to let them avoid by closing the polls in March.
APRIL 27, 2020 | REUTERS
Ohio will hold its primary election on Tuesday, a virtually all-mail contest that could serve as a test case for voting in the coronavirus era.
APRIL 25, 2020 | DAYTON DAILY NEWS
The coronavirus pandemic already led Ohio officials to abruptly shut down in-person voting just hours before hundreds of thousands of voters were to cast primary ballots on March 17.
APRIL 25, 2020 | TOLEDO BLADE
Practically overnight, the onset of coronavirus in Ohio forced the DeWine administration, elections officials, and state lawmakers to recast the March 17 primary as the state’s first vote-by-mail election, which culminates Tuesday after more than two months of voting.
APRIL 25, 2020 | CINCINNATI ENQUIRER
The nation will look to Ohio on Tuesday on how to vote during this pandemic.
Or how not to.
Ohio will hold an election like no other in the state’s 217-year history, an almost all-mail primary.
APRIL 24, 2020 | ABC 7
Ohio, the first state to cancel its in-person voting in favor of an entirely mail-in election, has hit some hiccups as the state tries to transition voting procedures amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
APRIL 24, 2020 | ABC 6
Voting during a pandemic has proven to be a difficult task. Voters have only a few days left to still cast their ballot, but they will have another option to have their voice heard.
APRIL 20, 2020 | WKBN
If you intend to cast a ballot in this year’s rescheduled Ohio primary, you’re quickly running out of time, especially if you have not yet made arrangements to get a ballot sent to you.
APRIL 20, 2020 | COLUMBUS DISPATCH
A voting rights group held a virtual roundtable discussion Monday to underscore next week’s deadline for Ohioans to cast a ballot.
APRIL 20, 2020 | ABC 6
Time is running out for voters to request an absentee ballot for the Ohio primary. The election moved to all mail after state officials canceled in-person voting the day before the primary. The new deadline is April 28.
APRIL 20, 2020 | GONGWER
Voting advocates are working overtime to spread the word and tamp down on misinformation with eight days
left before Ohio’s April 28 voting deadline.
APRIL 17, 2020 | STATEHOUSE NEWS BUREAU
A voting rights organization says there are potentially a lot fewer voters who will cast ballots this year compared to the presidential primary four years ago. The group looked at totals so far for the March 17 primary that has been extended to April 28.
APRIL 6, 2020 | COLUMBUS DISPATCH
As Ohio works to complete an unprecedented 2020 primary election mostly by mail, a grassroots effort has emerged to get absentee ballot requests into the hands of potential voters.