News & Commentary

If you thought voting was confusing any other time than right now, coronavirus has most certainly beaten that standard by a long shot. With schools shutting down, polling locations changing last minute due to vulnerable population concerns, and the number of cases increasing daily, registered voters might be feeling panicked and wondering if you should even go out to vote.We’re here to tell you: Keep calm and VOTE ON!And here’s how to do it in the most informed way possible.FIRST – let’s talk about absentee voting. Are you a student who recently had to leave the area you vote in because your school closed without warning? Are you wary of voting in-person due to serious health concerns? Well, we’ve got good news: you still have enough time to vote absentee. The application for absentee voting must be received by noon on March 14 and all ballots most by postmarked by Monday, March 16. More details can be found here.SECOND – If you’re not interested in absentee voting but want to know another alternative, you have the option of early in-person voting. You can cast a ballot at your County Board of Elections on these dates and times:Friday March 13: 8AM-7PMSaturday March 14: 8AM-4PMSunday March 15: 1PM-5PMMonday March 16: 8AM-2PMTHIRD - You could take the standard route and vote on Election Day, March 17, from 6:30am – 7:30pm.Here is what you need to do before, during, and after. Read on!Before the big day:Make sure you’re still registered.With the voter purging this last year – and nearly 20% getting wrongfully purged, you may want to check to see if you’re still a registered voter. You are able to check on the Ohio Secretary of State’s website here.Find out your polling information and district information – check multiple times since polling locations are being changed due to the outbreak.Fortunately, the site also gives you information on your voting precinct and polling location. Furthermore, it will let you know what your U.S. Congressional District, Senate District, and State Rep. District is. There are multiple things to do with this information, read on to find out.Plan your day accordingly.With your polling location information on hand, it is imperative to jot down exactly where you can go to vote the day of – and make sure to plan accordingly. Allow yourself enough buffer time in case there is a long line you have trouble finding parking, or any other sort of obstacle that may arise (and given the unpredictability of the times we’re in, there might be extra-long lines).Figure out who is running and what their policies are.Not even going to lie – like so many others, I’ve been guilty of showing up to the polls ready to vote for who I believed the next POTUS should be – and so often, I’ve neglected to really understand who I was putting into my statehouse. After finally seeing the light and realizing just how important the statehouse is when it comes to my rights, I’m making sure to do my homework on all those who are running – and you should too!On March 17th, 2020:Make sure you have everything you need to meet the ID requirements to vote before leaving the house.According to the Secretary of State website, Ohio law requires that every voter, upon appearing at the polling place to vote, must announce his or her full name, current address and proof of identity. All acceptable forms of ID can be found here.Get to your polling location and VOTE!This one is pretty self-explanatory. Just don’t forget to grab an “I voted” sticker on your way out! One caveat – do yourself and fellow Ohioans a favor and wash your hands before coming into your polling location and immediately after voting.After you vote – whether absentee or in-person and (hopefully) post-Coronavirus:Pretty soon after the primaries, each party will put forward their candidates and gear up for November 3, 2020 – Election Day. Sure, you have the option of doing everything listed in this article for that day and be on your merry way… or you can do more.The Ohio registration deadline for the Nov. 2020 Election is October 5, 2020.That’s over half a year to make sure that everyone you know is registered to vote – and it’s more than enough to even get people you don’t even know signed up. You can campaign and educate others – not only on who is running for president, but you can also let people know about those who are running for seats to represent Ohio in Congress or in the Ohio Statehouse itself. If no candidate gets you super excited to knock on doors, perhaps there’s a ballot initiative that may excite you enough to do so.Regardless, what’s imperative to note here is that there is so much more that goes into just showing up and voting. Preparation is key – whether that’s making sure you have everything you need to vote or educating yourself on the people who are fighting for your vote.But, more importantly, making your voice – and ensuring other voices are also – heard is something anybody can do.Including you.Remember you and they are the difference and the voice of things yet to come.

On Tuesday, March 10, 2020, ACLU of Ohio Executive Director Ben Guess and Legal Director Freda Levenson sent Ohio Governor Mike DeWine a letter urging an immediate plan of action regarding the state's prevention and management of COVID-19 and its impact on incarcerated Ohioans.

Below is our Chief Lobbyist Gary Daniels' opponent testimony on Sub. House Bill 215. This was delivered to the House Criminal Justice Committee on February 26, 2020.

Below is our Chief Lobbyist Gary Daniels' opponent testimony on Senate Bill 260. This was delivered to the Senate Health, Human Services & Medicaid Committee on February 26, 2020.

Below is our Chief Lobbyist Gary Daniels' opponent testimony on Senate Bill 260. This was delivered to the House Criminal Justice Committee Committee on February 26, 2020.

Late last year, the Economics Policy Institute Economic Analysis and Research Network (EARN) released a new report which made something glaringly obvious: Ohio still has a major racism problem. The evidence is there in many glaring ways – for instance, Ohio is in the top ten states with the largest ratio between black and white unemployment; Dayton and Cleveland are two of the six metropolitan areas in which poverty among the black population exceeds 40%; and like many Midwestern states, Ohio also imprisons African Americans at more than five times the rate of white individuals.Here’s the thing, if there is anything that we can do to honor the legacy of Black History Month, then we must do exactly what the Director of EARN, Naomi Walker, suggests – we must hold our policymakers accountable so they “recognize the economic harm that structural racism has caused Black families in all parts of the country. In a time of federal inaction, states must step up to address disparate economic outcomes by strengthening public education, bolstering workers’ rights and strengthening labor standards, and eliminating discrimination.”So you might ask: how do we hold our policymakers accountable?To start, we must elect lawmakers who are well aware of the impact of racist and classist policies and actively work against the grain of such. And the timing couldn’t be any better – 2020 is Election Year, and we can take advantage of this opportunity in just a few months!Then we can do more.We can also go beyond this in several ways – by actively holding our own leaders and authoritative figures in our workplaces and in the school system accountable when it comes to racial divides and discrimination, we can make changes in our everyday lives to combat this systemic racism.But then we must go a step further.Organizations such as the Tamir Rice Foundation, Black Lives Matter, Columbus Urban League,  Ohio Conference of the NAACP, the United Black Fund of Greater Cleveland, INC – and many more across the state of Ohio – need support in a variety of different capacities that many of us can fill in one way or another. Whether that means financial support, volunteering for events, or even just showing up and supporting these organizations and individuals involved with them, everything you do can make a difference.We must stop letting Ohio take the top ranks of perpetuating systemic racism.And we must also do it in a way that doesn’t make us “saviors,” but posits us to recognize how we’ve maintained this systemic oppression and how to actively dismantle the systems that have been advanced by the people who have been placed in authoritative roles by us.Only in this way can we live up to the legacy of Black History Month.And it is imperative that we should.We owe it to this beautiful state – and more importantly, we owe it to the individuals and communities that we are celebrating this month of February.

In 2019, I moved to Columbus from Arizona four days after Senate Bill 23 was introduced in late February.Before I had even gotten to unpack the last of my items, the bill, which was dubbed by anti-choice groups as the “Heartbeat Bill”, was signed into law in early April. It followed in the quick and fast footsteps of similar heartbeat bills that were introduced and passed in Alabama, Kentucky, Georgia, Mississippi, and Missouri.Being born and raised in the D.C., Maryland, and Northern Virginia area, I was lucky enough to never have to deal with restrictive laws that ultimately decided what would happen with my body when it comes to reproductive health. But now I officially lived in a state that was making headlines all across the world for passing an incredibly egregious law that not only restricted abortions to a nearly impossible time frame, but essentially was outlined in a way that it ultimately was a near-total abortion ban.My friends and family all across the nation (and the world) would ask me what was going on in the state, constantly referring to Ohio as “crazy territory where women had no rights and couldn’t get abortions.” I, like so many other Ohioans, shrugged my shoulders, praying and hoping that the law would be overturned or news would break that it was all a sham. But the news never came to me. My social media timelines were stark silent after they had so frequently been inundated with news of all the bans being signed into law.It wasn’t until I started working at the ACLU of Ohio four months later that I realized that despite this bill being signed into law, abortion is still legal in Ohio.And actually, it’s still legal in EVERY state that the so-called “Heartbeat Bill” was passed in.  How?In particular for Ohio, before DeWine’s signature could even dry on SB 23, the ACLU of Ohio, Planned Parenthood, and Preterm-Cleveland were already gearing up to take the state to court. And we did just that – on May 15th, we filed a lawsuit challenging this near-total ban. Due to this, a federal judge blocked the law from going into effect in early July. Since then, we’ve filed a motion for permanent injunction on the ban, so again I reiterate, abortion is still legal in Ohio.Here’s the thing – while media outlets from all over covered the insanity that ensued when the bill was introduced and subsequently signed into law, the same attention was not given to the trajectory of the law afterwards due to a myriad of reasons. And because of that, there is a common belief that the law is effective – when it simply is not. The fact that there is utter confusion around the legality of abortion in Ohio has been confirmed by Preterm staff, who have stated that clinics in West Virginia have reported an increase of Ohio residents seeking abortion in their state due to the rampant misinformation.Let that sink in.Individuals are crossing state lines into West Virginia, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Indiana in order to obtain abortions that they have access to in their very own state – and likely their own city! And this isn’t even taking into account of the individuals across the state who are carrying out pregnancies under the misunderstanding that they cannot get an abortion in Ohio and do not have the means to travel out of state in order to get one.And this is exactly why we recently took to the highways and streets with ten massive billboards positioned all across the state with a very simple message: abortion is still legal in Ohio.Because it is.It’s a fact.These billboards aren’t an attempt to troll anyone or a subtle move to agitate abortion proponentsThey are to let people know the truth.And every Ohioan deserves to know the truth.Which is, simply put, that despite the “Heartbeat Bill” being signed into law last year – and another, even more outrageous bill being introduced – abortion is still legal in Ohio.

Below is our Chief Lobbyist Gary Daniels' proponent testimony on House Bill 1. This was delivered to the Senate Judiciary Committee on January 22, 2020.