Voting rights are under attack on multiple fronts in battleground Ohio

As Ohio returns to battleground status ahead of November’s midterm election, our state is making headlines for all the wrong reasons. 

In the span of just a few weeks, we’ve gotten an up-close-and-personal look at how the fight over voting rights is evolving. The Republican-controlled statehouse has pushed legislation and a constitutional amendment that would make it harder for eligible Ohioans to vote while the FBI, presumably on orders from Washington, raided a voting rights organization. 

When looking at the dangers of these attacks on voting rights in Ohio, let’s start with a simple fact: Ohio’s elections are safe, they’re secure and they’re free from widespread fraud. Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine (R) has stated this and Secretary of State Frank LaRose (R) has even called our elections the “gold standard.”

And yet, statehouse Republicans in Columbus recently attempted to pass legislation that would require voters trying to cast their ballot by mail to submit actual copies of their photo ID — legislation that DeWine had to veto because it was both harmful to eligible voters and unnecessary.

Statehouse Republicans also recently forced on the statewide ballot in November an unnecessary constitutional amendment to insert Ohio’s already existing voter ID requirement into the state Constitution. In other words, Republicans want voters to spend time and money enshrining in our Constitution a policy that is already state law, for Ohio’s elections — which are........

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