With the midterm election season upon us, Sinclair students were presented with multiple opportunities to register to vote in time for early voting here in Ohio, which began last Tuesday.
Ohio early voting has been a topic of controversy as the American Civil Liberties Union challenged a state law that shortened “Golden Week,” the first week of early voting in Ohio, by one week.
The U.S. Supreme Court stayed the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals’ decision to restore early voting times in Ohio, meaning that the ACLU’s challenge has been halted.
“While not a final decision on the merits of the case, this is a real loss for Ohio voters, especially those who must use evenings, weekends and same-day voter registration to cast their ballot,” said ACLU of Ohio Legal Director Freda Levenson in a press release issued by the ACLU. “Early voting works—cutting popular days and hours is unnecessary and only hurts voters. To make it even worse, this last minute decision will cause tremendous confusion among Ohioans about when and how they can vote.”
The deadline to register to vote or change your address was Monday, Oct. 6. Prior to this date, Professors Kathleen and Jennifer Sooy of the political science department, along with Tom Roberts and Karen Williams of the Student and Community Engagement office, as well as Dr. David Bodary of the communication department all made efforts to register students to vote for this election season.
“We believe that there is a federal expectation, because we get financial and federal dollars, that we are to encourage students to register to vote and that’s why we’ve been doing it for a number of years, but we’ve stepped it up. So it’s really just providing opportunity,” said Roberts.
Early voting cuts restricts the opportunity for minority groups, especially Black churches, who use Sunday voting to help people to
the polls and to hold “Souls to the Polls” voter drives, according to U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder.
“Restricting voting hours in ways that would disproportionately impact minority communities is not only unnecessary and unwarranted—It is out of step with our history of continually expanding the franchise,” said Holder in a video message released by the U.S. Justice Department.
“It’s contrary to our fundamental values of equality, opportunity and inclusion. And it is an affront to millions who have marched and fought, and too often died to make real America’s most basic promise.”
Citing the potential for “fraud and abuse” the Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted defended the cut in early voting.
“It’s not like we eliminated early voting. We still have a more expansive menu of opportunities than almost any state in the country,” said Husted in a New York Times report on October 7.
As of Friday, Oct. 3, over 650,000 Ohio voters requested absentee ballots. Sinclair student, Hannah Mingle, 24, registered to vote while still in high school and has voted in the last two elections. She plans to vote at her polling place on November 4.
“My Mom encouraged me to go out and vote, so I did. She stressed the importance of going out to vote,” said Mingle, while discussing why she chose to register to vote. “She’s somewhat of an activist herself. Everybody’s vote counts.”
Marcus Dorsey, 19, is a Sinclair student who is not a registered voter, but he expressed that the right to vote and receive an education is a privilege, and that we should consider ourselves lucky for such opportunities.
“I will be doing that sometime soon because I want to be able to have my decisions heard. I think it’s important that we get our opinions across,” said Dorsey, while talking about his plans to register. “I plan to register to vote if not this year then sometime next year.”
“If students weren’t registered to vote we had availability for them to register to vote here on campus in our office, and once this November election is over, we will continue to do it,” said Roberts.
When learning that voter registration will continue to
be offered in the Student and Community Engagement office. Dorsey said he may register to vote for the next election sooner than he expected.
“That’s good to know,” said Dorsey.