- Friday, April 10th - Candidate Forum for Ohio Senate 21st District   6:00 pm.   There are two candidates - Kent Smith and Delores Gray Ford .  Held at the Darl Center for the Arts, 5437 Broadway, Cleveland, 44127 (formerly a Carnegie Library and GORGEOUS!) Please Register!  

- Monday, April 14 - Candidate Forum for the 11th Congressional District  7:30 pm.  There are three candidates - Sean Freeman, Ardelia Holmes, and Shontel Brown (unconfirmed).  Also held at the Darl Center for the Arts - 5437 Broadway, Cleveland  44127  Please  Register!

 

First, we've all heard the reports that voter registrations are being purged in Ohio.  Just because you've been voting doesn't mean you are still registered. 

Second, the only chance we have to weaken the false impact of Gerrymandering is for more people to vote.

Third, because of Gerrymandering, many races for Congress and for the Ohio House and Senate will be decided in the primary, and so it is important for people to be registered NOW and not just by October.

 

 

1) Check your own registration, both to make sure you are still registered and also so you can see how easy it is to do. Go to VoteOhio.gov and click on "Look Up Your Voter Registration" on the right-hand button.  You will see that you're there and that your address is correct.  If you find that there is an error you can then click on "Update Your Registration."  IF you find that you are not registered, you can click on Register to Vote Online" and submit your registration to the Secretary of State.  If you prefer to register with your Board of Elections, we will have forms available which can be submitted to the Board of Elections. 

2) Text your phone contacts who vote in Ohio:  Suggested text:  Hello (X). The Ohio Primary is May 5th when many election outcomes will be decided.  Please check to be sure you are registered to vote by going to VoteOhio.gov (which is the Secretary of State site) and click on "Look up your Voter Registration" to make sure your information is correct.  If it isn't correct you can click on Update your Registration. If your name isn't there you can click on Register to Vote.  Easy peasy. Note that you need to do this before April 6th.  Help spread the word.

3) Attend a voter registration event:  We are arranging to go to the student pickup lines at each of the elementary schools the week of March 16th.  Parents begin lining up about 3:10 and all the students are picked up by about 3:45 so it's a short commitment. Robin Koslen is arranging the details.  Let Robin or me Heights@lwvgreatercleveland.org know if you are able to help with that.   In the past we have also set up a table outside the South Euclid County Library, and are open to other suggestions.  (Note that chain stores generally do not allow us to be outside. Local businesses might give approval.)

4) GET BOLD and speak out.  Talk to your neighbors, people at book club, your yoga class, the person you have become friendly with at the grocery store.  Betsy spoke at her church's women's group, Janice organized a program at her church, and Robin is speaking to the Heights Dems about changes in voter laws. If you remain nonpartisan you might be able to talk to people at work about the registration deadline and the importance of the primary election.

 

There is a publicly available page on the LWV Ohio website detailing the changes to voting in Ohio: https://www.lwvohio.org/ohiovotingchanges   I urge everyone to check out this page and learn of the changes.  Some of them have been in place for a few years, some of them are new.

 

The newest changes to voting laws are:

- Absentee Voting (Vote by Mail): All mail ballots MUST BE RECEIVED at the correct Board of Elections building by 7:30 pm on election day.  The four-day grace period has been removed.  If you decide to drop it off instead of mailing it due to time constraints, it can only be dropped off at the Board of Elections Building - polling places can not accept absentee ballots.  Note that the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections Building has moved to 1803 Superior Ave.

- Voters may NOT use a mobile driver's license nor state ID.  These are images that are on your phone.  You must use the actual physical driver's license or state ID when voting.

- Voters who are naturalized citizens but whose driver's license was issued before they became a citizen and so is stamped non-citizen must bring along their naturalization papers when voting.

- Voters who are unable to return their absentee ballot in time by mail and are unable to travel to the Board of Elections can have their ballots returned only by their spouse, father, mother, father-in-law, mother-in-law, grandfather, grandmother,  brother or sister of whole or half blood, or the son, daughter, adopting parent, adopted child, stepparent, stepchild, uncle, aunt, nephew or niece. The person dropping off the ballot must go inside the Board and sign an attestation form.  IF THE VOTER HAS A DISABILITY they may select any person of their choosing to deliver their ballot, other than their employer or an officer in their union.

Additional previous changes to voting laws are listed on the website link above.

 

MANY people have not voted in a primary.  We can tell this by the number of voters who are listed as No Party.   Because rules vary from state to state regarding voting in a primary, many people assume that asking for a Democratic or a Republican ballot will automatically make them a member of the party.  It does not!  It is true that voters in the primary must choose one party and receive that party's ballot.  You can't vote for a democrat in one race and a republican in another race in the same primary.  But selecting one ballot over another does not make you a member of that political party.  The following year you are free to choose the other party's ballot if you wish, or even the ballot of one of the smaller parties. 

 

Thanks to Gerrymandering in Ohio though, many districts for the Ohio House and Senate and for the House of Representatives are divided specifically so that a Democrat or a Republican will win.  Because the seats in Ohio have been divided by a heavily Republican legislature, the seats heavily favor the Republican party.  It is telling that in 2024 Shontel Brown (D) won with 78% of the vote while Max Miller won with 51% of the vote, and this was by design. When drawing the maps they placed as many Democratic voters as possible into District 11 and just enough Republican voters as needed into District 7.  It is almost guaranteed that Congressional District 11 will go to the Democrat.  While there are three Democrats running for Congressional District 11, only one of them will be on the ballot in November and the race will already have been decided.  And the results are similarly skewed for Ohio's House and Senate.

 

And thanks to the increasing focus on our elections and our government, it seems more people are running for office than ever, and so many seats are contested.  How do voters decide who to vote for?  The League is already hard at work compiling candidate responses for Vote 411, and candidate forums are being organized. SO: Explain to voters the importance of voting in a primary, to stay tuned for more information, and make sure they are registered to vote.

 

 

NEWLY ADDED: The CHUH school district is currently seeking residents with financial, accounting or banking backgrounds to join the Lay Finance Committee. The committee will meet quarterly and will review the district's annual state audit report and financial forecasts, make recommendations regarding any future levies, and collaborate with other district committees regarding capital improvements and state funding. If you are interested in participating in this committee, contact Angele Latham, Chief Financial Officer, at  a_latham@chuh.org  or 216-320-2078. For more information, contact league member Paula Goodwin 216-952-2115.

We have begun our nominating committee process for the next League year (July to June).  If we have a phone number for you we will contact you to see what might interest you.  If you don't get a call feel free to email me (Heights@lwvgreatercleveland.org) with contact information.  I admit we are having some significant issues with the system we are using and we are currently only able to see some of the numbers.)  For starters we are looking for:

  - Voter Services

  - a few people to head up program planning - community forums and social events

  - someone to help Greater Cleveland and Ilene with membership records in the database

 

Future Heights is working on a community forum on school funding.  League has  done several forums on school funding in recent months so we wondered if anyone is interested in working with Future Heights on their forum?   We have knowledge on school funding and on forums.  Can we lend a hand to Future Heights?  Let me know if you're interested.  Heights@lwvgreatercleveland.org

 

- Democracies do not fail because of a single villain or a single event.  They weaken when citizens disengage, when exhaustion replaces participation, and when people forget that institutions are not self-sustaining machines.  They are collective agreements that require care.

 

- History is filled with examples of ordinary people altering the course of events without any guarantee of success.  The long fight for women's suffrage unfolded over generations, marked by ridicule, violence, and repeated defeats. Many who marched never lived to vote, yet their persistence reshaped democratic participation. The civil rights movement faced overwhelming force, internal doubt, and constant danger. Its victories were not inevitable. They were earned through sustained action by people who refused to wait for permission.

 

- The past is fixed, but the present is not.  The value of historical knowledge lies in recognizing familiar patterns while there is still room to choose differently.  Democracies erode slowly, but they are also rebuilt slowly, through participation that feels mundane rather than heroic.

 

Some of you are aware of the "Card Campaign" which was started last year to provide informational handouts to voters. They have just issued two new cards - on our Constitutional Amendment Rights and our Voting Rights.  These cards are designed to be printed out or shared in social media.

 

 

WE HAVE A NEW DIRECTORY!!! With thanks to Judith Beeler who offered to learn how to use Excel and take over this project, and with gratitude to Janice who just couldn't believe we didn't have a directory in the first place and figured out how to do the first one.

 

Going forward the directory will be updated quarterly and posted to our chapter's website at www.lwvgreatercleveland.org (and emailed to new members.)  The link will be included in the email and can be downloaded by members (which means you need to log in to the website.)

 

This remains a somewhat manual process since the switch to paying memberships through LWVUS, so please make sure you are included in this roster if you are a Heights member (the newsletter does go out to a few people who are not in our chapter), and please make sure the details are correct.  At this point we only have cellphone numbers so if you entered your phone number in the home phone box we can't see it currently.  If your phone number is not listed, and you would like it to be, please, click HERE and let me know what needs to be updated/added/deleted.

 

CHUH Chapter Leadership