I’ve been voting regularly in Ohio for a while now, yearly at least, if not primaries too, so my registration has stayed current. I haven’t needed to get registered for years. I always check, though.
So this is a heads-up to everyone else in that position. Check your registration, today. Check the website of your local county board of elections to verify you’re registered, first.
I checked my registration status today and VOTER NOT FOUND in the county’s website. I just had to go online to the Secretary of State’s site and march through the online form real quick.
A note from personal experience: If you march through the online form and things seem to act weird toward the end, you’re probably still registered and that confuses the site. If the form works like it should, you weren’t registered.
Here’s what’s up with August:
Long story short, abortion rights are on the line, but the August vote is actually about the ability to amend the state constitution. This August vote was the Republican’s idea, and its goal has been publicly stated, to prevent the voters from getting abortion rights into the constitution, later, as in this November when it will likely be on the ballot. The full details are better handled by that Dispatch story, above.
So, being Republicans, they’ve been getting shady, which means long-time voters, probably ones with D on their record, are finding themselves purged from the rolls.
If you’re lefty at all, and I assume you are if you’re here, you need to go to your county website, check your voter registration, make sure you haven’t been purged, and then I strongly suggest that you take full advantage of early voting and walk into your county office to vote as soon as possible.
I was relying on mail ballots for a while, but things started getting dodgy when Trump took office, I don’t trust those ballots to show up in a timely manner, anymore, and I don’t want to trust the mail with this, specifically. Nice mail-in ballot you’ve got there, it would be a shame if it got lost in the system somehow.
You might as well register online at the Secretary of State’s website, I just did. For good measure, you might consider walking into your county office and inquiring in person, though don’t be surprised if they tell you to go online or give you a form to mail.
Get yourself registered, TODAY, and make plans to walk your butt into that office and put a stylus on the screen. If a mail ballot is your only option, then get that going, today, but I warn you that you first have to send in an application for the ballot, by mail, then wait for the ballot to return, by mail, and the time to do that was months in advance.
For the record, I follow the Ohio Capital Journal online to stay on top of this stuff, I recommend it.
Check if you are registered here:
Why “I assume you’re a lefty if you’re here”? I personally don’t feel that’s a helpful assumption from either (or any) party. Honestly everyone should register to vote - and do it! Everyone’s voice should count.