Read the original story here.
Members and supporters of Ohio University’s Iranian Students Society rallied Thursday afternoon in protest of President Donald Trump’s travel ban.
legislation
Student Senate denounces executive order, votes in favor of becoming sanctuary campus
The New PoliticalRead the original story here.
Student Senate passed bills dealing with denouncing an executive order and becoming a sanctuary campus at its meeting Wednesday night.
Following a presentation from Better Bystanders, a group aiming to educate students on how to diffuse potentially dangerous situations, Senate turned to addressing concerns about how international students might be affected by President Trump’s recent executive order, titled “Protecting the Nation from Foreign Terrorist Entry Into the United States,” by passing a bill that would denounce it.
Student Senate holds forum to discuss #ConcealCarry referendum
The New PoliticalRead the original story here.
Student Senate held its first of two forums on Thursday to address how a concealed carry referendum will work. At the last Senate hearing, Senators voted to put the question of allowing concealed carry weapons on campus to Ohio University students. The result of the campus’ vote will be issued to the Board of Trustees as a recommendation on deciding to allow concealed carry on all OU campuses.
In the House
Class projects, Data, The New PoliticalRead the original story here.
Despite this lack of recognition, Ohio’s state legislators, both in the House and the Senate, put significantly more time into their jobs than legislators in many other states do, from deciding how to vote to simply finding a way to get to and from the statehouse.
Data: Ohio House of Representatives 2015
DataI recently compiled a spreadsheet of every vote taken by the Ohio House of Representatives in 2015. It was extremely tedious and time-consuming, so hopefully someone else out there who needs this information can benefit from downloading my data set here rather than having to sort through all those session journals themselves.
Online voter registration could soon come to Ohio
The New PoliticalRead the original story here.
Ohio voters could be registering online before the 2016 election, if one Ohio Senate bill becomes law.
Senate Bill 63 deals primarily with creating a system for online voter registration and, if passed, would make Ohio the 29th state to implement such a system. Registration would involve the Bureau of Motor Vehicles database verifying personal information, allowing anyone with an Ohio driver’s license or state ID to register remotely.
“It’s convenient for voters, and what that means is that it can help them take that first step of participating in our democracy,” said Sen. Frank LaRose, R-Copley, the bill’s primary sponsor. “Obviously, before you vote, you have to register, and every year we’ve got a new group of people that are turning 18 and should be registering to vote, and yet they don’t register until later in life.”
State elections determine fair districts are in and pot is not
The New PoliticalRead the original story here.
More than 7.5 million Ohioans participated in Tuesday’s election and voted on the issues appearing on the ballot. Ultimately, two of the three issues passed.
Issue 1, which dealt with ending gerrymandering in Ohio’s legislative districts, passed by the largest margin of any of the three issues with 71.46 percent voting in favor, according to Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted’s website.
“It was just one of those moments in time — a rare moment in time, in a very divided state — where the two major parties came together and fortunately did something greatly in the public interest, to give the public rational-looking legislative districts,” said Rep. Michael F. Curtin, D-Columbus, who has supported Issue 1 since its introduction to the House. “Even though it won’t take effect until 2022, it’s a huge move forward in good government for the people and now hopefully we can get the second half of the job done, and that’s to do the same thing with congressional districts.”
The New Political: Voters’ Guide 2015
multimedia, The New PoliticalThe New Political has put together a voters’ guide for the November 2015 city and state elections. As state editor, I contributed the blurbs for state Issues 1, 2 and 3. See the full guide here.
Kasich vetoes voting restrictions
The New PoliticalRead the original story here.
After receiving a letter from all members of the Senate Democratic Caucus encouraging him to do so, Gov. John Kasich used his line-item veto last week on a controversial amendment to the state transportation budget that would have affected new and temporary Ohio residents’ voting rights.
This section of House Bill 53 included restrictions that would have required people wishing to drive in Ohio to register for an Ohio driver’s license within 30 days of registering to vote.
While the language directly connected to voting has been removed, the provisions that require drivers to obtain an Ohio license within 30 days of establishing residency in other ways were left in the transportation bill.
New bill regulates farmers and stops algae from blooming
The New PoliticalRead the original story here.
A bill aimed at preventing more algae from contaminating water in Lake Erie was passed Wednesday after being considered by the Ohio House for a month.
Senate Bill 1, which would regulate farmers’ use of fertilizer, manure and other substances and practices that have contributed to harmful algal blooms in Lake Erie, is expected to be signed into law by Gov. John Kasich and will go into effect 90 days later.
The bill forbids surface fertilizer application by anyone in the western basin when the ground is covered in snow or when the top two inches of soil are saturated by precipitation. However, there are some exceptions; this is permitted if the manure is injected into the ground or if it is applied to a growing crop.
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