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.
These are the headlines you Need 2 Know for Tuesday, Dec. 4, 2018.
The man who spent years behind the lens during President George H.W. Bush's time as president remembers him as a man of honor. David Valdez, chief official White House photographer from 1989 to 1993, reminisced about his years observing the former president on Cheddar Monday, just days after Bush passed away at age 94.
President Trump is opening himself up to allegations of obstruction by publicly dangling a pardon in front of his former campaign chairman Paul Manafort, "Proof of Collusion" author Seth Abramson told Cheddar on Monday.
President Trump lauded his meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping at the G20 summit in Buenos Aires as "extraordinary" after the two sides agreed to a pause in tariff increases for 90 days. But Hagar Chemali, CEO of Greenwich Media Strategies, said investors shouldn't start the ticker tape parade just yet.
These are the headlines you Need 2 Know for Monday, Dec. 3, 2018.
Stock markets and the federal government will close on Wednesday as the U.S. marks a national day of mourning for George H.W. Bush, the 41st president. Bush died at his home in Houston Friday night. He was 94.
Michael Cohen's latest revelations about President Trump's ties to Russia have left the U.S. leader isolated at the G20 summit and "looking like a petulant child" on the world stage, Rick Wilson, author of "Everything Trump Touches Dies," told Cheddar Friday.
Call it the "sandwich generation" ー people, often women, in their 30s and early 40s juggling demanding careers and increasing demands of caring for aging parents. Those are some of the stories Emmy Award-winning journalist Laura Ling is hoping to highlight in her podcast "Everyday Bravery."
These are the headlines you Need 2 Know for Friday, Nov. 30, 2018.
Ignorance is a major impediment in the effort to reverse climate change, said the former chief sustainability officer for the Obama administration. “I think lot of it is lack of awareness, these are topics that a lot of energy nerds like myself have been thinking of for a long time," Christine Harada, the president of i(x) Investments told Cheddar on Wednesday.
