{"id":10472,"date":"2014-10-21T13:22:09","date_gmt":"2014-10-21T18:22:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/?p=10472"},"modified":"2014-10-21T13:22:09","modified_gmt":"2014-10-21T18:22:09","slug":"early-voting-2014","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/tartan-news\/2014\/10\/21\/early-voting-2014\/","title":{"rendered":"Early Voting 2014"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

With the midterm election season upon us, Sinclair students were presented with multiple opportunities to register to vote in time for early voting here in Ohio, which began last Tuesday.<\/p>\n

Ohio early voting has been a topic of controversy as the American Civil Liberties Union challenged a state law that shortened \u201cGolden Week,\u201d the first week of early voting in Ohio, by one week.<\/p>\n

The U.S. Supreme Court stayed the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals\u2019 decision to restore early voting times in Ohio, meaning that the ACLU\u2019s challenge has been halted.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhile not a final decision on the merits of the case, this is a real loss for Ohio voters, especially those who must use evenings, weekends and same-day voter registration to cast their ballot,\u201d said ACLU of Ohio Legal Director Freda Levenson in a press release issued by the ACLU. “Early voting works\u2014cutting popular days and hours is unnecessary and only hurts voters. To make it even worse, this last minute decision will cause tremendous confusion among Ohioans about when and how they can vote.\u201d
\n<\/p>\n

The deadline to register to vote or change your address was Monday, Oct. 6. Prior to this date, Professors Kathleen and Jennifer Sooy of the political science department, along with Tom Roberts and Karen Williams of the Student and Community Engagement office, as well as Dr. David Bodary of the communication department all made efforts to register students to vote for this election season.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe believe that there is a federal expectation, because we get financial and federal dollars, that we are to encourage students to register to vote and that\u2019s why we\u2019ve been doing it for a number of years, but we\u2019ve stepped it up. So it\u2019s really just providing opportunity,\u201d said Roberts.<\/p>\n

Early voting cuts restricts the opportunity for minority groups, especially Black churches, who use Sunday voting to help people to
\nthe polls and to hold \u201cSouls to the Polls\u201d voter drives, according to U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder.<\/p>\n

\u201cRestricting voting hours in ways that would disproportionately impact minority communities is not only unnecessary and unwarranted\u2014It is out of step with our history of continually expanding the franchise,\u201d said Holder in a video message released by the U.S. Justice Department.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s contrary to our fundamental values of equality, opportunity and inclusion. And it is an affront to millions who have marched and fought, and too often died to make real America\u2019s most basic promise.\u201d<\/p>\n

Citing the potential for \u201cfraud and abuse\u201d the Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted defended the cut in early voting.<\/p>\n

\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not like we eliminated early voting. We still have a more expansive menu of opportunities than almost any state in the country,\u201d said Husted in a New York Times report on October 7.<\/p>\n

As of Friday, Oct. 3, over 650,000 Ohio voters requested absentee ballots. Sinclair student, Hannah Mingle, 24, registered to vote while still in high school and has voted in the last two elections. She plans to vote at her polling place on November 4.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy Mom encouraged me to go out and vote, so I did. She stressed the importance of going out to vote,\u201d said Mingle, while discussing why she chose to register to vote. \u201cShe\u2019s somewhat of an activist herself. Everybody\u2019s vote counts.\u201d<\/p>\n

Marcus Dorsey, 19, is a Sinclair student who is not a registered voter, but he expressed that the right to vote and receive an education is a privilege, and that we should consider ourselves lucky for such opportunities.<\/p>\n

\u201cI will be doing that sometime soon because I want to be able to have my decisions heard. I think it\u2019s important that we get our opinions across,\u201d said Dorsey, while talking about his plans to register. \u201cI plan to register to vote if not this year then sometime next year.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIf students weren\u2019t registered to vote we had availability for them to register to vote here on campus in our office, and once this November election is over, we will continue to do it,\u201d said Roberts.<\/p>\n

When learning that voter registration will continue to
\nbe offered in the Student and Community Engagement office. Dorsey said he may register to vote for the next election sooner than he expected.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s good to know,\u201d said Dorsey.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

With the midterm election season upon us, Sinclair students were presented with multiple opportunities to register to vote in time for early voting here in Ohio, which began last Tuesday. Ohio early voting has been a topic of controversy as the American Civil Liberties Union challenged a state law that shortened \u201cGolden Week,\u201d the first […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4407,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10472","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-tartan-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"cc_featured_image_caption":{"caption_text":false,"source_text":false,"source_url":false},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5s3vR-2IU","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10472","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4407"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10472"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10472\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10475,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10472\/revisions\/10475"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10472"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10472"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10472"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}