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Ellen Belcher is the Dayton Daily News opinion pages editor. She writes about state government, education, the environment, higher education and all things Dayton.
Martin Gottlieb is an editorial writer and columnist for the Dayton Daily News opinion pages. He focuses on the political process itself and does such national issues as war, the economy, taxes and Social Security, as well as a hodge-podge of local and state issues.Home > Blogs > A Matter of Opinion > Archives > 2011 > March > 04
Friday, March 4, 2011
Editorial: Online registration a good idea
Secretary of State Jon Husted’s proposal for online voter registration is an idea whose time has come.
It would make registration easier, perhaps especially attracting young people, the least frequent voters. It would save time for state and local employees. It would get the election process started on computers, improving record keeping.
It would not foster cheating, because people would have to prove who they are, and because records would show when somebody tries to register more than once.
Eight other states have already adopted online registration.
Other than that, Secretary Husted’s first batch of proposed reforms stops short of bold. He’s not calling for “same-day registration,” that is, merging the voter registration and voting processes into one, as some other states have done.
He’s also not calling for an increase in the number of places where people may cast early votes. That’s been one of the more widely discussed ideas for advancing the early-vote idea.
Under current rules, each county may have only one site. That can create problems in bigger counties. Montgomery County’s main government building was pretty much shut down by crowds at the end of the early voting period in 2008.
Secretary Husted says he’s open on that issue, but didn’t see it as one he had to resolve in preparation for the 2012 election.
Generating the most controversy among the Husted proposals is what some see as a step back. In recent elections, Montgomery County and some other urban counties have been sending voters application forms for absentee voting. Some counties even pay return postage; Montgomery County does not. (Warren, Greene, Miami, Preble and Clark counties don’t mail the applications.)
The Husted plan would ban sending the applications and paying postage. He says only some counties can afford to send applications, and he gets a lot of complaints about double standards from people in counties that don’t do it. He says the courts might side with them.
He favors all counties adopting the practice or none. But the state isn’t likely to either put up the money for all or pass a mandate on all.
Montgomery County elections chief Steve Harsman argues that encouraging absentee voting is a way to save money in the long run, by allowing for a reduction in the number of election machines and polling places needed on Election Day.
Most counties that send out the applications lean Democratic. But it’s worth noting that the elections boards that make these decisions are evenly balanced between the two parties. This isn’t a game being played by Democrats. (Secretary Husted says the political leanings of the counties don’t figure into his decision.)
Truth is, county efforts to gin up absentee-ballot applications are likely to be redundant with efforts by various political forces. That’s more true in presidential elections than other years, but presidential elections are the ones in which the long lines at voting places occur, which is one of the problems the counties say they are addressing by encouraging other forms of voting.
Also, there are plenty of ways to get absentee ballots — including online. And the people who want them are pretty motivated.
Other Husted proposals: Like his Democratic predecessor, Secretary Husted wants to shorten the early-voting and absentee-voting periods from 35 days to about half that. That has several advantages, the most important being that a lot of candidates have not even begun the most public parts of their campaigns by the beginning of October.
(This reform would also eliminate a silly debate that arose when the registration period and early voting overlapped by a week.)
Mr. Husted would also like to require elections boards to be open on a couple of Saturdays before an election to accept early votes, not just weekdays.
He also has proposals that are more technical. They’re designed partly to deal with Ohio’s chronic problem with “provisional ballots,” those cast by people whose right to vote at a particular place is questioned.
Electronic registration should also help, because it will encourage people to report their changes of address, and, if they re-register, they’ll receive info about their new location. Many disputes at polling places result from lack of updates.
The Husted proposals are not the last word on election reforms, but they’re a respectable start for a new secretary.
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Editorial: Some critics not out to kill bargaining bill
Wednesday’s vote in the Ohio Senate on the collective bargaining bill was big, but it was not the end. Now the legislation goes to the Ohio House of Representatives, which is more conservative.
The review there may — or may not — be perfunctory. Some House Republicans don’t think the bill is restrictive enough.
But the bill only passed in the Senate by one vote, 17-16. If the particulars change too much, then there might not be Senate support to approve any House changes.
(Six Republicans voted against the legislation. Republican Sens. Peggy Lehner, of Kettering; Bill Beagle, of Tipp City; and Chris Widener, of Springfield, voted for the bill. So did Clearcreek Twp.’s Shannon Jones, who was the sponsor.)
Meanwhile, later this month, Gov. John Kasich will propose a budget. He’s said he’ll offer still more changes related to collective bargaining in that document.
Then there’s the possibility of a referendum. If critics of the bill get enough signatures, then the law — if it passes — would be put on ice until after November.
Over and above the complexities of the process, confusion reigns about how exactly some changes would play out in the real world.
For instance, layoffs couldn’t be imposed based only on seniority. But the rules for how they could proceed aren’t clear.
The legislation also requires teachers to get raises according to merit, which presumably would take into account their success in the classroom. But there’s a lot of debate, even among people who believe in merit pay, about how much reliance there should be on standardized testing and how you fairly evaluate teachers who teach special-ed or music where student proficiency isn’t tested.
There’s a requirement that public employees would have to pay at least 15 percent of the cost of their health care. But public administrators don’t know if that minimum applies just to insurance premiums or also to the financial incentives some employers offer to entice workers to choose insurance plans that cost less but have high deductibles. (Those plans have helped slow the increase in health care.)
Binding arbitration for police and firefighters — where an outsider can impose a settlement — is eliminated in the legislation. Instead, if management and a union couldn’t agree, a fact-finder would size up the situation. Then there would be a public hearing, after which the relevant elected officials would have to pick either management’s or the union’s last offer.
Some people say this arrangement stacks the deck against management, that elected officials would never side with a city manager when they’re facing a packed room of police or firefighters in uniform.
Other people say just the opposite — that elected officials will be in the position of making an offer and then saying, of course, we like ours best.
Professor Charles Wilson, of Ohio State’s Moritz College of Law, worries that the legislation is a “full employment act” for lawyers. A Worthington school board member whose practice formerly was to represent management, he thinks age-discrimination lawsuits, for instance, could become common if school districts aren’t careful about how they decide whose teaching contracts aren’t renewed and who is laid off.
(Ohio’s debate on this issue is, like Wisconsin’s, being widely followed. Mr. Wilson, on Thursday, fielded calls from reporters in Libya and Egypt about the legislation.)
The stakes are high. State and local governments and school districts have negotiated away too much authority, and their hands also have been tied by Ohio’s collective bargaining law.
Just the same, the changes being proposed are so extensive that there are bound to be unintended consequences that get in the way of government being effective.
Ohio’s public employee unions have said they don’t want to negotiate about the legislation, that they’re taking their complaints directly to voters.
There are, however, others who want to see collective bargaining reforms, but who are worried about specific provisions of the Senate bill.
They need to be listened to. Those who actually will have to implement the law can prevent headaches down the road.
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