Ohio 2018 Races To Define Future Of Voting Rights In Bellwether State
By Alice Ollstein | April 18, 2018 3:05 pm
PORT CLINTON, OHIO — When Joe Helle returned to his small, rural hometown in 2011 after six years of active duty in Iraq and Afghanistan, he found his voter registration had been purged from the rolls, leaving him unable to cast a ballot in local and statewide elections that year.
“To go off to defend the right to vote only to find I’d been kicked off and couldn’t utilize that right myself, it was crushing,” Helle told TPM.
That experience, along with other frustrations with the area’s political leadership, motivated him to run successfully for mayor in Oak Harbor in 2016. This year, he’s running for his district‘s seat in the state legislature, which he hopes to flip from red to blue. If he wins, he plans to sponsor bills that would make it easier for Ohioans to vote.
“I’m a huge proponent of automatic registration. There’s no good reason we don’t do it,” Helle said. “I also think we should have same-day registration, so that if somebody decides an issue is important to them and they typically aren’t a voter, they can still show up at the polls on Election Day. I want people to vote when they want, as easily as they can.”
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/ohio-2018-races-to-define-future-of-voting-rights-in-bellwether-state
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