Edited by Jim Harbison '73, Ryan O'Connell '73, and Jacki Swearingen '73

Much attention has recently been focused on a Special Election in Ohio on August 8 to amend the Ohio State Constitution. On the ballot is the question of whether to raise the voter threshold for approving amendments to the Constitution, a change sought by the Republican-led legislature. Critics of the proposal say that it is actually designed to curb current efforts by Ohioans to protect abortion rights in their Constitution, as well as to strengthen the power of the Ohio GOP lawmakers, who currently hold  super-majorities in both the House and Senate.

We encourage you to participate in the upcoming election in the following ways.  If you live in Ohio, we suggest you familiarize yourselves with the issues raised and make every possible effort to vote in this off-cycle election. This will help to ensure that the outcome reflects the will of the majority of Ohio voters, not a small minority with targeted interests. If you are already registered to vote in Ohio, you may vote by mail, but must request an absentee ballot by August 1 from the Ohio Secretary of State. See instructions here. 

We also encourage you to support or volunteer at organizations that will assist voters in Ohio, including the following:

• Common Cause 
• League of Women Voters of Greater Cleveland 
• Northeast Ohio Voter Advocates 
• Ohio Voter Rights Coalition 

You can also provide support virtually: :

• VoteRiders August 3, 7:00 - 8:00pm - Virtual text bank to provide information about new Ohio voter ID laws

Although Ohio is currently viewed as a "red" state, the political landscape in Ohio is complex. In recent Presidential elections, Barack Obama won Ohio in close contests in 2008 and 2012. Donald Trump then won the vote of Ohioans by around 8% points in 2016 and 2020, a far higher margin than in any prior presidential election in Ohio. Notably, since 1896, Ohio has voted for the winning presidential candidate, except in 1944 (Franklin D. Roosevelt), 1960 (John F. Kennedy), and, most recently, Joe Biden in 2020.[1] The state has often been viewed as a key barometer of public opinion on presidential candidates.

Data from the Ohio Secretary of State for 2021 indicates that of the almost 8 million registered voters in Ohio, about 6.2 million voters were listed as unaffiliated. Registered Democrats who generally reside in the urban, northeastern areas of the state outnumber registered Republicans, who primarily reside in the rural areas of Ohio, by about 100,000. The U.S. Senators elected from this state come from both parties: Sherrod Brown, a Democrat, and J.D. Vance, a Republican. So do the U.S. House Representatives: 10 Republicans and 5 Democrats. Sen. Brown, who is up for re-election next year, is likely to face a serious challenge in a race that may possibly affect political control of the U.S. Senate.

At the state level, the Republicans control both the House of Representatives and Senate with super-majorities. According to several political commentators, they have achieved this dominant position through extreme gerrymandering, despite a prohibition against extreme partisanship in redistricting contained in an amendment to the Ohio Constitution. Voters overwhelmingly passed the amendment in 2018.

Notwithstanding this constitutional directive, both state and congressional maps that Republican mapmakers drew have been challenged and found to be in violation of the State Constitution a number of times. In 2022, Republican lawmakers chose twice to ignore orders by the Ohio Supreme Court to revise the overly partisan maps. By letting the clock run out, the legislators used a congressional map previously found inadequate.

Voters have again brought challenges to districts drawn by the Ohio legislature for the current election cycle. The Ohio Supreme Court upheld those challenges and the legislators appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court. On June 30, 2023, the Supreme Court remanded the case to the Ohio Supreme Court to reconsider the case in light of Harper v. Moore, a case in which the Court invalidated partisan maps drawn by North Carolina legislators. Rejecting the view forwarded by Ohio Republican legislators that they can ignore an Ohio Supreme Court order to redraw the state’s congressional district map for the 2024 election, the U.S. Supreme Court emphasized that state lawmakers cannot make congressional redistricting decisions unchecked by state law and courts. Republican leaders have said that maps will be redrawn this summer.

The state legislature has engaged in other efforts to limit the rights of voters. In January 2023, Governor Mike DeWine, a Republican, signed a sweeping package of election law changes that, among other things, imposes the state's first (and very stringent) photo ID requirements, shortens the time to request and return an absentee ballot, and narrows the windows after Election Day for returning and curing ballots.

On the ballot for the special election is a proposal to increase the requirements for amending the state Constitution. Ohio is one of 24 states that gives its citizens the power of initiative, which, in Ohio, includes the right to initiate new laws or to place proposed constitutional amendments on the ballot. In 1912, voters approved an amendment to the Ohio Constitution to give citizens initiative and referendum powers, a measure championed by the late President Theodore Roosevelt as a way to force an unresponsive government to address the public’s concerns.

In a vote divided along partisan lines, the Republican-led legislature has scheduled a special election in August to vote on raising the current simple majority threshold (50% of the votes +1) for passing constitutional amendments to 60%. (However, the Legislature did not suggest changing voting requirements for passage of its bills or for voter referendum - i.e., the right of voters to reject legislation passed). The ballot will also include a vote on a proposal to double the number of counties from which signatures are required in order to place a proposed constitutional amendment on the ballot, from 44 counties (50%) to all 88 counties (100%). In addition, the proposed change would eliminate an existing 10-day cure period to fix any errors in signatures collected. If the proposed constitutional amendment is approved, Ohio would become the only state to require citizen campaigns to collect signatures from all of its 88 counties.

Critics of the proposed amendment include bipartisan groups of former governors and attorneys general and more than 240 other groups. They note that the increased requirements may make voter-initiated amendments practically impossible and would greatly enhance the gerrymandered legislature’s power over the Ohio Constitution to the detriment of Ohio voters. The amendment would effectively give 40% of the population a veto power over any contemplated change to its Constitution.

A reason the Legislature seeks to increase requirements for constitutional amendments is, among other things, to thwart contemplated efforts to amend the Ohio Constitution to protect abortion rights. In 2019, the Ohio Legislature passed a law banning abortions after any embryonic cardiac activity is detected. This short time period was highlighted in news reports when a ten-year old girl, who was pregnant after being raped, had to travel to Indiana to get an abortion after the Ohio law went into effect when the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade.

A lower state court subsequently stayed implementation of the Ohio law. Nonetheless, abortion rights activists in Ohio have collected over 700,000 signatures to place on the November election ballot a constitutional amendment to protecting a woman's right to an abortion.[2] Polls show that a large majority of Ohio voters support the right to an abortion, particularly for victims of rape and incest.

Despite having acknowledged that the turnout for elections held in the summer is usually low, the Legislature has scheduled the special election for August 8, 2023. The Ohio Supreme Court ruled on June 16, 2023, in a 4-3 decision along party lines, that the proposed constitutional amendment may be placed on the August 8 ballot even though the legislature had, earlier in January, outlawed scheduling summer elections.

[1] However, the number of Ohio's presidential electoral votes has declined from a high of 26 in 1964 and 1968 to 16 votes following the 2020 census.

[2] In Ohio, before citizen-initiated measures for constitutional amendments may be placed on the ballot, proponents must meet a signature requirement of 10 percent of the vote for governor, or 413,487 for 2023. See here. The language of the proposed amendment is available here.

North Carolina is a battleground state, with the political affiliations of voters split roughly equally among Democrats, Republicans, and non-affiliated voters.  Democrats held a slight lead in voter affiliation as recently as 2020.   Despite this political alignment, Republican lawmakers were able to draw gerrymandered voting maps after the 2010 census, and they obtained a disproportionate number of seats in and control of the state legislature and its Congressional delegation. They did so again after the 2020 census.

Advocacy groups challenged those 2021 redistricting plans as partisan gerrymandering that violated North Carolina’s Constitution. In February 2022, the North Carolina State Supreme Court, then with a 4-3 Democratic majority, rejected the maps and mandated a fairer, court-drawn interim map for the November 2022 elections.  However, after Republican judges were elected to the Supreme Court from newly drawn districts to constitute a 5-2 Republican majority following the 2022 partisan judicial elections, the Court agreed to rehear the case.

On April 28, 2023, the new majority reversed the Court’s earlier decision, ruling that courts have no jurisdiction over such redistricting disputes.  The new majority remanded the case to give the General Assembly the opportunity to enact new redistricting plans, “guided by federal law and the objective constraints in the state constitution.”  The decision opens the door for passage of gerrymandered maps in North Carolina, which would remain in effect until the next census in 2030 (See here).

In another blow to voting rights, on April 28, 2023, the State Supreme Court overruled a lower court decision that had invalidated a law disenfranchising individuals who were on felony probation, parole, or post-release supervision. The lower court had ruled that the law violated the North Carolina Constitution because it discriminated against Black voters and denied people the right to vote. As a result, disenfranchisement of felons who have been released from prison remains in place in North Carolina.

Both the NC House and Senate had Democratic majorities from 1999 to 2010, but that switched  in 2011, after the Republicans successfully gerrymandered districts in the state (See here) as part of the Republican Party’s country-wide REDMAP project.  The state House and Senate have remained under Republican control ever since.  What has helped keep balance in the government from a political point of view is that Roy Cooper, a Democrat, has served as Governor since 2017.

That balance is now threatened because a Democratic state representative, Tricia Cotham, switched to the Republican party in April. Republicans now have a veto-proof supermajority in the state House as well as in the state Senate, which enables the legislature to override any veto by the Governor.  A sign of what may come is legislation relaxing gun law requirements, which passed through a veto override in March.

A bill limiting the governor’s appointment powers is likely to become law as well because of the new supermajority. And on May 4, 2023 the legislature passed a bill that would ban most abortions after 12 weeks of pregnancy from its current 20-week period, setting the stage for a test of the Republican Party’s new, but slim, supermajority.

With their supermajorities, Republican legislators have also begun assembling and enacting bills that would limit or suppress voting access.  The legislature has already passed funding for a Voter ID law; such measures may, and often do, disproportionately affect Black and younger voters.  Although the prior Democratic majority on the Supreme Court rejected that law as discriminatory, the new Supreme Court Republican majority reversed the previous decision.

Among the bills under consideration is a proposal to scale back absentee voting (Senate Bill 88/House Bill 304) with a floor vote likely to be scheduled in the near future.  The bill would allow absentee ballots to be counted only if received by 5 p.m. on election day.  Under current law, ballots are counted if they are postmarked by election day and received within three days thereafter.

The bill would also require voters to mail or deliver their absentee ballots in person to the county board of elections office and would prohibit the use of one-stop voting sites for ballot drop-offs.  These provisions could impose onerous burdens on many voters who are homebound, have physical limitations, inflexible work schedules, pressing familial obligations, and/or lack the ability or means to travel to their county board of elections office.  Such concerns led Governor Cooper to veto a similar bill in 2021. The fate of this current bill will most likely be different because of the legislative supermajority’s ability to override such a veto.                 

For those of you who live in North Carolina, write or otherwise contact your representatives to let your concerns be known.  You can also express your views on this and a series of other proposed voter suppression bills under consideration on the website of Democracy North Carolina.

In addition, we can all help voters or prospective voters by volunteering for or donating to organizations that provide guidance on registration as well as other voting information and assistance to residents in North Carolina.  Such organizations include VoteRiders, a 501(c)(3) entity helping North Carolina residents deal with voter ID laws and exercise their right to vote, and the League of Women Voters of North Carolina.  We need to be vigilant and work together to protect the right to vote in North Carolina.

Hispanic Americans overwhelmingly support the Democratic Party rather than the Republican Party. Sixty percent of Latinos say the Democrats “represent them well”, compared to 34 percent for Republicans. That split is consistent among age groups, education levels and gender (but not all groups of national origin). Furthermore, the Republican Party has a serious image problem with Hispanics, with two-thirds saying the Republican Party “does not really care” about them. The numbers cited here are drawn from Most Latinos Say Democrats Care About Them, Pew Research Center, Sep. 29, 2022. However, the Democratic Party cannot take Latinos’ support for granted. A third of Hispanics think the Democrats do not represent their interests well. And close to 50 percent don’t see much difference between the two parties. Nonetheless, although former President Donald Trump won a larger share of the Hispanic vote in 2020 than in 2016, the talk about a big shift of Hispanics to the Republican Party in the 2022 midterms appears to be hype. Latinos are attracted to the Democrats because of the party’s more liberal approach toward immigration, of course. But most Hispanics also share Democratic positions on key cultural issues such as abortion and gun control. Almost 60 percent of Latinos say abortion should be legal in some cases, which is close to overall public opinion in the U.S; 40 percent oppose it. That 60/40 split holds true for Hispanic Catholics, who represent almost half of Latinos. Not surprisingly, 70 percent of Hispanic evangelicals oppose abortion rights. However, evangelicals constitute only 15 percent of Latinos. Hispanics firmly oppose the expansion of gun rights. This is not a group that on the whole supports permitless carry or eliminating background checks. A striking 73 percent of Latinos want more stringent gun controls, while only 26 percent favor greater gun rights. This is in sharp contrast with the overall public, which is divided roughly 50/50 on this issue. Cubans are a distinct political group among Latinos. About 60 percent lean Republican, probably because many families suffered under the Communist regime in Cuba (Most Cuban American voters identified as Republican in 2020, Pew Research Center, Oct. 2, 2020). The Cubans are concentrated in Florida, where they are very influential politically. They hold conservative views and abhor anything labeled “socialism.” Still, Cubans represent only five percent of Hispanics in the United States. Mexican-Americans, the dominant group, are 56 percent of Latinos. In the 2022 midterms, they preferred Democratic candidates over Republican by 58 to 25 percent. Puerto Ricans are the next largest, at 14 percent. Dominicans, Salvadorans, and other national-origin groups represent less than five percent of Hispanics. About half of Latinos say it is very important to establish a way for most immigrants who currently live in the United States illegally to stay here legally. However, 42% think that increasing border security is also very important. Sixty percent of Cubans give priority to increasing border security rather than finding a pathway to legal status for current illegal immigrants.

We highlight below the results of two elections that we have mentioned in the past few months as presenting opportunities to volunteer to promote voter engagement.

WISCONSIN: SPECIAL JUDICIAL ELECTION FOR SEAT ON WISCONSIN SUPREME COURT

Judicial elections in the United States rarely garner much interest. However, the special election for Wisconsin State Supreme Court Justice held on April 4, 2023 was closely followed by political pundits, politicians and voters nationwide. Although this was ostensibly a non‐partisan election, the Wisconsin Supreme Court will be evenly split between liberals and conservatives 3 to 3 after the retirement of conservative Justice Patience Roggensack.

The result: Janet Protasiewicz, described as a liberal County Circuit judge from Milwaukee, defeated her conservative challenger, Daniel Kelly, by almost 11 percentage points (54.5 to 44.5 percent). Kelly, a former prosecutor, had previously been appointed by Governor Scott Walker to the Wisconsin Supreme Court to serve the remainder of a ten-year term of another judge. However, he did not win re‐election in 2020.

Political commentators have opined that this election may be a bellwether for the 2024 presidential election, because Wisconsin is a battleground state and because voters have increasingly viewed judicial elections through a more partisan lens. President Biden won the Wisconsin vote over former President Trump by only a 0.63 percent margin, far less than predicted, while Trump carried the state in 2016 by 0.77 percent over Hillary Clinton.

The importance of this election is perhaps best reflected by the stunning amount of money raised and the voter turnout. The two candidates combined spent about $45 million. That amount was almost triple the previous $15.2 million record spent for a judicial election, in a race for the Illinois Supreme Court. Significantly, more than 1.7 million Wisconsin voters cast their ballots, surpassing the 1.6 million citizens participating in the 2020 Presidential election.

The change in the make-up of the Supreme Court may have an impact on a number of significant issues that are currently or will be brought before it. These issues include abortion rights, voting access, redistricting, and legislation enacted by Gov. Walker effectively eliminating collective bargaining for most public employees.

The right to an abortion was a major point of contention in the election. Protasiewicz and Kelly took conflicting positions on Wisconsin's 1849 law banning abortions, which was automatically reinstated after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. That law permits abortions to save a mother’s life, but does not allow exceptions for rape or incest.

The redistricting maps drawn by the Republican legislature have also been challenged. Wisconsin is a “purple state,” with voters evenly divided between Democrats and Republicans. However, the state electoral districts drawn have been described as “among the most gerrymandered in the nation, a result of aggressive cartography from the Republican majority elected in 2010,” which, despite “a Democratic sweep of statewide elections,” enabled Republicans to retain a 19-to-14 majority in the State Senate and 63-to-36 majority in the Assembly. ( Liptak, Adam. “Supreme Court Sides With Republicans in Case on Wisconsin Redistricting.” New York Times. 23 March 2022.) Republicans also hold six of the eight Wisconsin seats in the U.S. House of Representatives.

Republican State Senator Dan Knodl, who also was elected on April 4, indicated before his election that he was open to impeachment of Protasiewicz. With Knodl’s election as State Senator, Republicans now have a super-majority in the State Senate. (Roche, Darragh. “Janet Protasiewicz May Be Impeached by GOP After Wisconsin Election Win.” Newsweek. 5 April 2023.)

VIRGINIA: SPECIAL ELECTION FOR 4TH CONGRESSIONAL DISTRICT

Democrat Jennifer McClellan won the special election on February 21, 2023 for Virginia’s 4th Congressional District. She will succeed the late U.S. Rep. A. Donald McEachin, who died in November at age 61 after winning reelection. McClellan, a state senator, is the first Black woman to represent the Commonwealth of Virginia in Congress and will serve the remainder of Rep. McEachin’s fourth term.

Did you know that one in five Americans is Latino? And that one in six eligible voters is Hispanic? Latinos/Latinas, now the second-largest ethnic eligible voters is Hispanic? Latinos/Latinas, now the second-largest ethnic group in the U.S., are becoming a major force in national politics and a dominant factor in several key states.

(For ease of reference, we will refer to Latinos rather than Latinos/Latinas and use “Latino” and “Hispanic” interchangeably).

Hispanic Americans constitute 30% of the eligible voters in California and Texas, where they outnumber eligible white voters, based on the 2020 Census (Pew Research Center, Key facts about U.S. Latinos). Hispanics represent 20% or more of eligible voters in six states, including hotly contested states such as Arizona (24%), Florida (20%), and Nevada (20%), as well as New Mexico (43%), a Blue state. One politician who might benefit from Latinos’ growing political clout is Democrat Ruben Gallego, H’ 2004, who is running for the Senate in Arizona against the incumbent, Sen. Kyrsten Sinema.

Source: U.S. 2020 Census Data, as reported by Pew Research Center

The number of Latinos rose almost 20% from 2010 to 2020, and they accounted for half of the population growth in the U.S. during that period. As Hispanics have moved to regions throughout the country, they have become an important factor in several other “battleground states.” Latinos represented 5% or more of eligible voters in “purplish” states such as Georgia, Pennsylvania and Virginia, based on 2018 data from Pew.

Although that percentage may seem low, bear in mind that elections in those states are often won by tiny margins. The number of Latinos is smaller, but growing, in states such as Michigan, North Carolina and Wisconsin, where the electorate is split roughly 50/50.

Like other Americans, Latinos are not a monolithic voting bloc, of course. Puerto Rican Americans and Mexican Americans generally lean Democratic. Puerto Rican Americans and Mexican Americans generally lean Democratic. Cubans and Venezuelans, many of whom fled oppressive far-left regimes, tend to favor Republican candidates. We will discuss the political views of Latino subgroups in greater detail in another article.

We have referred several times to “eligible voters”. Unfortunately, many Hispanics have not registered to vote, so they don’t participate fully in our democracy. However, numerous organizations, such as Voto Latino and Mi Familia Vota, focus on registering Latino voters and fighting voter suppression, on a national level and in specific states.

For a more comprehensive list of such organizations, please see Voting Activism Opportunities on our website.