Woman drives back to Clark County from Pennsylvania to vote no on Issue 1

WHIO Staff
·2 min read

Meghan Tubbs put her belief in the importance of voting to the test last weekend when she made the choice to drive back to Clark County from her grandfather’s home in Warren, Pennsylvania, to vote against Issue 1.

>>RELATED: Issue 1 could be headed for recount in Clark County, where voters rejected it by 1 vote

The Springfield woman traveled to the city along the Allegheny River on Sunday to be with Ronald Tubbs, 83, who died peacefully Monday morning, she told News Center 7′s Brandon Lewis on Wednesday night.

“It was very difficult to leave my family that soon, but I knew I had to get back to Clark County so that I could vote on Tuesday for the special election,” she said.

Tubbs made it back to Springfield in time to go to the polls with her husband, Clint. Both voted no on the ballot question, which was unofficially defeated in the county by one vote. Voters statewide rejected the ballot question, with all precincts reporting and 58,000 absentee and provisional ballots outstanding, by a margin of 57.01% to 42.99%.

“It’s pretty incredible to think that if I hadn’t made that drive back, the outcome might have been different,” she said. “It’s also incredible to think that if anyone of the 16,000 people [in Clark County] who voted no had missed it for some reason, the outcome might have been different.”

Her belief and drive, as it were, to vote was instilled in her by family and her grandparents.

“It was an incredibly important election,” Tubbs said. “I knew that it was going to have long lasting consequences. I think it’s really important that Ohioans are able to have their voices heard.”

She knew her grandparents would want her to be in the voting booth in that moment because they never missed an election.

“Democracy really won yesterday and that would have made my grandparents really proud,” Tubbs said.

Her experience, she said, “is a good reminder that every vote is important. It’s also a good reminder to make voting as accessible as possible for everyone. A lot of people feel like their vote doesn’t count. It takes a story like this one to remind them that it really does. And that reasonates with a lot of poeple right now.”