In Ohio, new efforts to tighten voter ID laws, cut early voting days underway

Anna Staver, The Columbus Dispatch
·4 min read
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EDITOR'S NOTE: This page is part of a comprehensive guide to voting rights across the U.S. and in Puerto Rico.

For decades all roads to the White House went through Ohio.

The Buckeye State was a Midwest, middle-of-the-road bellwether for the country's politics, and its voters correctly picked the winner of every presidential election from 1964 until 2020. In 2004, Ohio was the closest state in the nation in the race between George W. Bush and John Kerry. Had Kerry won Ohio and its 20 electoral votes, he would have won the presidency.

But Buckeye voters have moved to the right in recent elections.

The state hasn't elected a Democratic governor since 2006, and Ohio went for President Donald Trump by more than 8 percentage points in 2016 and 2020. That made Joe Biden the first president to win a national election without Ohio since John F. Kennedy in 1960. No Republican has ever been elected president without winning Ohio.

Ohio's population growth is also slowing. The state has lost Congressional seats in each census since 1990, dropping the number of electoral votes from 20 to 15. Young people and minorities have moved away and left the state with an older, more conservative population.

But even though Ohio gets a little redder each election, who turns out to vote and therefore who gets to vote has been an important and sometimes contentious topic.

Ohio may cut early voting and tighten ID requirements

In recent years, Ohio expanded early voting to a month before Election Day and permitted residents to vote by mail (absentee) for any reason.

According to Secretary of State Frank LaRose's office, Ohio is one of 18 states that allows voting on Saturdays and one of just six states that allows early voting on Sundays. The state's early voting period is also 21% longer than the national average.

But a GOP-backed plan pending in the legislature would limit the number of ballot drop boxes, reduce the time to request absentee ballots, and eliminate voting on the Monday before Election Day.

Senate Bill 320, sponsored by state Sen. Theresa Gavarone, R-Huron, would require people voting in person to show a photo ID. Those voting by mail would need to provide the last four digits of their Social Security number and either the number or a photocopy of their Ohio driver's license or state ID.

Voters are currently allowed to use utility bills, paychecks or other forms of ID under state law.

"That simply isn’t good enough," Gavarone said during her bill's one and only hearing in May. "Senate Bill 320 provides an easy way to better ensure confidence in our elections. By doing so, we will enhance our election security, increase voter confidence, and maintain accessibility to the ballot box."

Over in the Ohio House, another piece of legislation called the Enact Ohio Election Security and Modernization Act would create even bigger changes to state law.

House Bill 294 would:

  • Require ballot drop boxes be only on the premises of local boards of election and monitored 24/7.

  • Make collecting absentee ballots (harvesting) election fraud.

  • Says absentee ballots sent in without their identification envelope cannot be counted.

  • Eliminates early voting on the Monday before election day (at the request of local BOE officials).

  • Moves the cutoff for requesting an absentee ballot from three days before an election to 10.

  • Creates a digital system for the Bureau of Motor Vehicles to update voter registrations.

"This is a very balanced bill," Rep. Bill Seitz, R-Green Township, said when he introduced the legislation to a committee in May 2021.

Opponents, however, have called the bill a trojan horse for "a host of anti-voter provisions."

Ohio was among the first to let people of color vote

Ohio's original constitution limited voting rights to white residents, but that restriction didn't last very long. Starting in 1823, the state Supreme Court began ruling that certain biracial residents enjoyed the same privileges as white Americans.

"We believe a man, of a race nearer white than a mulatto...should partake in the privileges of whites," the court wrote in an 1831 decision called Gray v. Ohio. "We are of opinion that a party of such a blood entitled to the privileges of whites, partly because we are unwilling to extend the disabilities of the statute further than its letter requires."

It was an important distinction that paved the way for biracial voters to help elect Ohio's first Republican governor, a known abolitionist named Salmon Chase in 1855. A fact that Democrats blamed on cities across the state failing to verify whether someone met the race qualifications set forth by the court.

Democrats in the Ohio legislature tried to stop men with “any visible admixture” of Black blood from voting in 1859, but the state Supreme Court blocked them once again. And in the presidential election of 1860, thousands of Black Ohioans helped send President Abraham Lincoln to the White House.

Ohio women, however, had to wait until 1920 when the U.S. ratified the 19th Amendment.

Anna Staver is a reporter for the USA TODAY Network Ohio Bureau, which serves the Columbus Dispatch, Cincinnati Enquirer, Akron Beacon Journal and 18 other affiliated news organizations across Ohio.

This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: Ohio lawmakers may tighten voter ID laws, cut early voting days