No voting changes in Ohio as other states scramble to tighten or loosen voter laws
OHIO (WSYX) — Despite a majority of Republicans in at least 43 other states pushing some form of voting law, Ohio's GOP-led legislature has not introduced a single bill in 2021 to change how Ohioans cast election votes. Analysts say it signals a majority party that is content with the status quo.
From Georgia to Michigan and Pennsylvania to Arizona, Republicans in state legislatures near and far have proposed some 306 voting law bills this year, according to ABC News partner fivethirtyeight.com. The bills deal with everything from enacting stricter voter I.D. requirements, to tightening the criteria for submitting a mail-in absentee ballot, to purging voter rolls and decreasing the amount of days for early in-person voting.
But in Ohio, there are no such efforts underway or proposed to date. A single election-related bill, HB 149, would assign party affiliations on the ballot next to the names of candidates for Ohio Supreme Court and Ohio Court of Appeals. Currently, those candidates are not identified by party on statewide ballots. Ohio Supreme Court justice was the only statewide race Republicans lost in 2020, as Democrat-backed judge Jennifer Brunner won a decisive victory over Republican Judith French.
With no other efforts currently underway, observers point to one main factor.
"Ohio went what, eight-plus percent for Donald Trump in 2020? " noted Ohio State political science professor emeritus Paul Beck. "Republicans haven't really seen a need to (make changes) in Ohio...I think there's an assumption that doesn't matter."
Beck, who has watched local and state politics for decades, says Ohio's voting laws are already rather airtight: the state requires voter identification both in-person and on absentee ballots; has a two-step application and voting process for absentees; and purges dead or inactive voters from the rolls if they haven't participated for six years.
The purges, along with drop boxes, have been controversies that went to the courts in the last two election cycles; little change was brought about as a result. Ohio still limits drop boxes for hand-delivered absentee ballots to one per county, located at the Board of Elections office.
It's unclear whether such voting laws, which accomplish what many other states are trying to do, have been responsible for Republican dominance at the polls. Beck says such changes in other states might move results by a few percentage points, but not enough to flip the wide victory margins Republicans enjoy in Ohio.
However, Beck cautions that Republicans in other states should not look to Ohio as an example of how to win. He says more restrictive voting laws, even if somehow meant to suppress Democrat votes, do not guarantee that result.
"It may well be that all these efforts to suppress the vote, are motivators for minority voters. And I suspect they are," Beck said. "I don't think we know for sure how this is going to play out."
