Increasing access to voter registration opportunities for low-income citizens is working in Ohio, according to a new report from the advocacy group Demos.
Over 100,000 low-income Ohio citizens have already submitted voter registration applications as a result of steps the state has taken to comply with Section 7 of the National Voter Registration Act of 1993–specifically its requirement that states’ public assistance offices offer voter registration opportunities and related services–according to a new report published this week by Demos.
Since passage of the NVRA, many states have neglected Section 7 of the Act, which requires that states public assistance agencies offer voter registration in conjunction with benefits applications, renewals and changes of address. Just before Thanksgiving of this past year, Ohio settled a three-year old lawsuit brought by Demos and its partners at the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law and Project Vote, with help from pro bono law firm Dechert LLP, on behalf of low-income Ohio citizens who had not received the required voter registration services.
“Ohio’s experience–the subject of this report–offers valuable lessons both for advocates and for state officials seeking to encourage voter registration and to achieve the full promise of the NVRA,” said report author Lisa Danetz.
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Ohio’s initial success is evident at the individual and county level as well, with larger county DJFS offices now submitting registration applications for significant numbers of clients every month, several counties that had not registered a single voter in the 2003-2004 reporting period now collecting over 100 registration applications each month, and smaller counties registering a significant percentage of their clients.
Ms. Danetz stated, “The results in Ohio show that, with proper implementation of the public agency provisions of the NVRA, hundreds of thousands or even millions of eligible low-income citizens throughout the country can be added to the ranks of registered voters, allowing increased political participation and moving closer to a fully inclusive and representative democracy.”
I wonder how well other states are doing?
Tags: Ohio, voter registration
Dan Heck — Working America Regional Director
This morning, I sat down in my office and saw a letter from Sylvia, a member from Chillicothe. It almost moved me to tears, even though I’ve heard this story countless times. Here’s what she wrote to her Representative, Zack Space:
“I’m a cancer survivor and have been in the process of healing for 10 years. In the middle of the ordeal, my health insurance doubled and we were left with bills we either couldn’t pay or a premium we couldn’t pay. I am a nurse and believe me, I worked long hours to not have any insurance. We as Americans need health care!! I want you to support a public option. However, real reform means not taxing our health care benefits.”
This is a story we’ve seen in countless letters, and heard from countless members. It is extremely widespread. Middle class people who think they have insurance suddenly lose it, or find the rates become unaffordable, when they actually get sick. Any system that does that is broken, and needs to be fixed.
Health care reform isn’t about whether we think corporations or the government are worse. It isn’t about message points and 10 point plans and mountains of policy details. It is about Sylvia, because we’re all in Sylvia’s shoes. Even those of us fortunate enough to be in the middle class are one illness away from financial ruin. Our homes, our kid’s college … they’re all on the line because of a broken system that takes advantage of people when they’re sick, instead of protecting them.
Anyone who bothers to look at the health reform package knows that it will help protect everyone who works for a living. It helps keep special interests honest, and helps focus our hospitals on healing us, instead of just making money. An American Public Insurance option is a necessary part of that, because it will bargain for us and set the standard for others to follow. And if it doesn’t do that, people will choose not to use it.
But ultimately, this health care struggle is a whole lot bigger than any single bill, or any policy. We’re fighting to get the best possible bill for Sylvia, and all of us who are in her shoes.
Tags: health care, Ohio
Mike Elk at Campaign for America’s Future draws attention to something really important when we talk about green jobs: Making sure that those jobs stay in the U.S. Specifically, GE is sending all of their manufacturing of compact fluorescent lightbulbs to China.
Why would they do that?
Ohio could indeed be a hub of new light bulb production. Recently, a Chinese-owned manufacturer of high-efficiency light bulbs has opened a factory, citing Ohio as having some of the world’s most highly skilled light-bulb workers.
Ohio’s legacy of bulb production, and its factories that could easily be converted from incandescent production to CFL production, presents a grand opportunity to employ workers in building a green energy economy in Ohio.
The IMPACT Act introduced by Brown in the Senate would help small and medium-sized manufacturers transition to the clean energy economy. Brown’s bill creates a $30 billion Manufacturing Revolving Loan Fund to provide these manufacturers with much-needed access to credit to improve energy efficiency and retool for the clean energy industry.
The Apollo Alliance—a coalition of business, labor, and environmental groups—estimates that the IMPACT Act could create 680,000 direct manufacturing jobs nationally and 1,972,000 related jobs over the next five years.
So far, GE has shown every intention to take the American tax dollars being used to subsidize the green-energy economy and use them to build Chinese factories and pay Chinese workers.
So Ohio has the skilled workers and the factory facilities, and needs the jobs. But GE is going to China, with our tax dollars. Remember this whenever anyone gets started with rhetoric about how workers need to be retrained, learn new skills if they don’t want their jobs shipped overseas. Nope. Companies are pretty much going to ship jobs overseas even when their workers are already skilled. Bills like the IMPACT Act will help create incentives for some companies to stay. But we also need stronger regulations and trade policies, and we need to shine a light on companies like GE that talk big about the importance of manufacturing in the U.S. while moving their own production to China.
Read Mike’s whole piece for more.
Tags: green jobs, Ohio
Dan O’Malley–Ohio
We had a great week organizing customers and employees of the Sandusky, OH Wal-Mart
around education reform. We heard the same thing we’ve been hearing all around the community: schools in towns like Sandusky are hurting badly, with recently announced layoffs the latest piece of evidence.
Of course, at Wal-Mart, we heard that message more loudly and clearly than anywhere else we’ve been. After all, this is a corporation that, while running up annual profits in the tens of billions, gives its new employees special forms to help them prove their poverty status for the purpose of public assistance.
I’m going to bet most Wal-Mart workers with whom we spoke are sending their kids to public schools.
Tags: education, Ohio
Dan O’Malley—Ohio
General Motors plants across the country all stood on the dartboard last week, each hoping to not be affected by a sweeping round of closings. The GM stamping plant in Mansfield, Ohio was not so lucky.
“Things are getting really bad out here,” a GM retiree told me on Tuesday. “I really don’t see how we’ll survive it.”
The man estimated the Mansfield plant had 3,600 employees when he retired from there in 1991. Today it employs just over 500. In a year it will be completely closed.
Cities like Mansfield and neighboring Ontario were once sustained by the good-paying jobs and secure benefits its residents earned at General Motors. For decades, Ohio stood on the shoulders of such working men and women throughout the state. Now, more and more hardworking Ohioans are finding themselves turning to unemployment assistance, their will to work unmatched by opportunity.
Just a few miles from the GM plant is Richland Mall, once a bustling commercial center with a diverse array of high-end shops. The mall is now a small collection of discount clothiers and other stores struggling to stay afloat. At 2 p.m., the food court is completely empty, save for a single teenage worker at Nicky T’s Grille who wipes clean the counter while waiting for customers. At the end of the mall is a large, vacant, dilapidated building that once housed the now-defunct Lazarus Department Store.
Signs off the entrance to Richland Mall direct passers-by to visit the Red Farms development, a newly-constructed community of homes that “combines country living with urban appeal.” A short drive proves Red Farms to be just two nice but modest houses, built a few years ago. One resident tells me that when the housing crisis hit, demand for the new homes plummeted, and the development was eventually stopped. Overgrown grass and a smattering of utility boxes are all that are to be found where a thriving new community of families once promised to be.
As if jobs, commerce, and home ownership weren’t enough to worry about in such an economy, residents of Mansfield are worried about how it all will affect their local schools. The results are likely to be devastating, because in Ohio, funding levels for public education are tied directly to property values in the local community. And with the city’s manufacturing plant, commercial center, and neighborhoods turning more and more into ghost towns, property values and money for education are sure to plummet as well.
Tags: education, jobs, Ohio
