Ohio lOhio bill could chill ballot access, spark voter challenges
Lawmakers are considering a sweeping elections bill which would touch everything from how citizen-led ballot initiatives are approved to voter identification procedures.
Critics of Senate Bill 153 said it would make it harder for voters to participate in democracy at every level.
Mia Lewis, associate director of the advocacy group Common Cause Ohio, said the proposal could reshape how Ohioans vote and how issues get onto the ballot.
"It makes the entire process of a citizen-initiated ballot measure so much harder, unnecessarily," Lewis contended. "It allows more signatures to be thrown out for clerical errors. You kind of agree to be investigated. You give up your Fifth Amendment rights."
Supporters of the measure and its House companion bill said it enhances election security. But Lewis said there is no fraud problem to fix and Ohio already has one of the nation’s most rigorous ballot initiative processes. The ultraconservative Heritage Foundation lists 63 cases of people voting illegally in Ohio in more than 30 years.
Kelly Dufour, voting and elections manager for Common Cause Ohio, said the bill would add new procedures for challenging a voter’s citizenship status based on their ID, raising the possibility of confusion and disenfranchisement at the polls.
"In Senate Bill 153, there are actually provisions in there to codify how that challenge would take place at the polls," Dufour explained. "It’s 'death by a thousand cuts' types of voter suppression on all sorts of different levels. At the end of the day, you just have to ask 'Why?' What’s the problem they’re trying to solve?"
Dufour noted Ohio is among a small group of states enacting laws to flag noncitizen status in voter identification. Similar legislation has passed recently in North Dakota, South Dakota and Wyoming, placing Ohio among a growing number of states attempting to tighten access at the polls.