Voting rights groups in Ohio are being lauded for their oversight efforts which uncovered massive errors in the state's recent bid to remove hundreds of thousands of voters from its rolls. The inspection, which was carried out primarily by nonprofit volunteers, found that more than 40,000 voters were mistakenly included on the state's to-be-deleted list.
"It definitely showed that Ohio's registration system needs a major upgrade," Jen Miller, the director of the League of Women Voters of Ohio, told Cheddar on Monday. "We can't be using a policy as severe as a purge when we can't even be sure that our purge lists are correct."
In an unusual move, this past August Ohio's Secretary of State Frank LaRose publically released a list of 235,000 voters that were set to be deleted from the state's registry. By reviewing the long spreadsheet, the League of Women Voters and several other groups uncovered gross inaccuracies, including the inclusion of Miller's name.
Yet Secretary LaRose, a Republican, has praised the process, saying his office undertook the most transparent review of Ohio's voting rolls to date. "Because of our collaboration with outside organizations, the proper safeguards are in place to ensure any eligible voter will have the opportunity to have their voice heard," LaRose said in a statement after revising the list.
The list maintenance process, as it's officially called, is legally mandated in Ohio and seeks to clear the state's system of deceased residents, inactive voters, or people who have moved out of state. Voter purging, however, has become a major issue nationwide as Republican-led initiatives in several states have sought to remove voters through controversial registration requirements, which critics say primarily target minority or Democratic voters.
Other oversight groups that participated in the review include the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, All Voting is Local, and the Fair Elections Center.
A new warning about Russian interference in the 2020 election is raising questions about whether the U.S. is doing enough to prevent the kind of meddling the country saw in the 2016 election.
Roger Stone, a staunch ally of President Donald Trump, has been sentenced to 40 months in prison on his convictions for witness tampering and lying to Congress. The action in federal court comes amid Trump's unrelenting defense of his longtime confidant that has led to a mini-revolt inside the Justice Department and allegations the president has interfered in the case.
These are the headlines you Need 2 Know for Thursday, February 20, 2020.
From the opening bell, Democratic presidential foes have unleashed an aggressive verbal assault on New York billionaire Mike Bloomberg and raised new questions about Bernie Sanders' take-no-prisoners politics in a contentious debate Wednesday night on the Las Vegas Strip.
Federal Reserve officials were mostly optimistic about the U.S. and global economies last month, though they noted the risk posed by China’s viral outbreak and said they were ready to keep their benchmark interest rate at its current low level in the coming months.
At a closed-door gathering in the nation’s capital last month, representatives from close to two-dozen renewable energy, electric vehicle, and environmental advocacy organizations began the early stages of handicapping which Republican senators might be willing to join Democrats in supporting lucrative tax credits for the various green sectors – most of which were axed at the last minute late last year.
These are the headlines you Need 2 Know for Wednesday, February 19, 2020.
A bill to give Kentucky residents access to medical marijuana could go up for a full state House vote as soon as this week.
The Trump administration said Tuesday that it will waive federal contracting laws to speed construction of a wall at the U.S.-Mexico border.
These are the headlines you Need 2 Know for Tuesday, February 18, 2020.
