Ohio
Far fewer Ohio women could vote if top election officer gets way | Opinion
The SAVE acronym should stand for Suppress American Votes Everywhere.
Trump pushes voter ID bill that could burden married women
President Donald Trump is advocating for the passage of the SAVE America Act, a voter ID bill critics say could make voting harder for married women and other eligible voters.
Richard Topper has been a trial attorney in Columbus for 45 years and is actively involved in voting rights efforts.
As chief election officer of our state, Frank LaRose should be focused equally, if not more, on how election laws affect Ohio citizens’ rights to vote as he does to the miniscule numbers of undocumented citizens who attempted to vote in our elections.
To support our right to vote, LaRose, a Republican candidate for Ohio auditor of state, should speak out against the SAVE Act pending before the U.S. Senate.
The SAVE acronym should stand for Suppress American Votes Everywhere.
The bill would require all U.S. citizens to present a birth certificate or passport in person when they register to vote. The act could prevent thousands of Ohio citizens from participating in a single election.
The number far outweighs the 167 noncitizens whom, according to LaRose, “have appeared to cast a ballot in (over 15 elections) since 2018.”
How will the Save Act affect you?
Let’s say you’ve lived and worked in Ohio all your life but decide to move.
To vote, you’d have to re-register in person at your county board of elections and show them your birth certificate or passport. If you have neither, you will be unable to vote.
For Ohioans who’ve changed their name due to marriage or remarriage, it becomes even more difficult to prove your citizenship with a birth certificate.
This will affect Ohio women’s right to vote, since 70% change their name when they marry.
Every person who wants to vote in Ohio for the first time, who moves to Ohio, or who moves within the state will need to have a birth certificate or passport to vote.
In 2023, close to 1.2 million Ohioans moved within or to Ohio. Under the SAVE Act, every one of those Ohioans is considered a non-citizen until they prove otherwise.
Not everyone has or can get access to a birth certificate.
An argument that sinks
A study by the Center for Democracy and Civic Engagement showed over 9% of voting-age citizens, or 21.3 million people in the U.S., cannot timely obtain a birth certificate or passport. In fact, only 37% of Ohioans own a U.S. passport.
The argument that too many non-citizens vote holds no water.
In 2024, Secretary LaRose required poll workers to challenge voters whose driver license read “non-citizen.”
Of the 5,851,387 people who cast ballots in 2024, only five alleged non-citizens attempted, but were not able to vote that day. One in a million. Nationwide, the figures are similar.
Kansas legislators tried their own SAVE Act. The 67 non-citizens who registered to vote paled in comparison to the 31,000 Kansans who were denied their right to vote.
Ohioans need Frank LaRose to take a stand
LaRose should focus his attention on what the SAVE Act requires and how this will affect the average Ohioan.
In the past five years in his chief election officer position, LaRose decried costly and non-participatory August elections, then supported an August 2023 election that would have taken Ohioans’ longstanding right to amend our constitution by a majority.
He also voted in favor of unconstitutional gerrymandered Ohio legislative and Congressional districts which diminished the votes of 45% of Ohioans.
Recently, LaRose bowed to the Trump administration and supported an Ohio law which would nullify up to 7,000 legitimate Ohio mail-in ballots received during the four-day grace period after election day.
LaRose can redeem himself by supporting Ohio voters and taking a bold step to speak out against the voter suppressive SAVE Act.
Richard Topper has been a trial attorney in Columbus for 45 years and is actively involved in voting rights efforts.
Having lived with Donald Trump’s infamous and baseless insult against them — “they’re eating the dogs … they’re eating the cats” — Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, are bracing for a far bigger injury.
More than 10,000 Haitians across Ohio and hundreds of thousands more around the country who had Temporary Protected Status now face the imminent prospect of deportation. The Supreme Court ruled Thursday that the Trump administration can halt those legal protections for Haitians and Syrians and resume forcing them to leave.
Justice Samuel Alito’s opinion for the court’s Republican-appointed majority curbed the power of courts to review government decisions to terminate protections under the TPS program.
“They side with him on everything that he says or everything that he does, which means there is no check and balance,” said Viles Dorsainvil, a Haitian TPS holder and executive director of the Haitian Support Center in Springfield, a town Trump catapulted into a maelstrom of misinformation about immigrants when he was running to retake the White House in 2024.
“The president has that freeway in front of him to do whatever he wants to do, unfortunately, and most of the time to a minority group of people,” added Dorsainvil, who has lived in the United States since 2020.
In a country rife with political and economic instability, Haitians returning from the U.S. are in danger of being killed or kidnapped, said Dorsainvil’s colleague at the Haitian Support Center, Rose Thamar Joseph.
“There is this perception in Haiti that if you are living here in the United States, you have money, so you are living your good life, so sending people back to Haiti will put them in real danger,” Joseph said.
Staying in the U.S. without legal status creates a different crisis.
“We received calls this morning from people saying that, unfortunately, starting on July 1, they won’t be able to go to work anymore,” Joseph said Friday.
Joseph predicted that families would be separated during the deportation process.
“We know that there will be separation,” she said. “A lot of those parents with TPS … they have kids who were born in the United States, so we know that it will happen, not for everybody, not for all the families, but it will happen,” she said.
The oncoming nightmare for the Haitian community in Springfield was, in many ways, predictable after Trump notoriously targeted them on the debate stage against then-Vice President Kamala Harris in the fall of 2024.
The Oregon Ducks and coach Dan Lanning have lost out on a top offensive lineman target for their 2027 recruiting class.
On Friday, four-star interior offensive lineman Caden Moss committed to the Ohio State Buckeyes, per On3’s Hayes Fawcett. The 6-5, 320-pound offensive lineman from Jackson Academy in Mississippi chose the Buckeyes over Oregon, Ole Miss, LSU, and Kentucky.
In his commitment post on Instagram, Moss said, “Go Bucks, I’m home.” Moss arrives at Ohio State rated as the No. 72 overall player nationally and No. 7 offensive tackle in the 2027 recruiting class, per 247Sports Composite rankings.
How Moss Commitment Impacts Oregon’s 2027 Recruiting Class Ranking
Despite the loss of Moss to their 2027 recruiting class, the Ducks are ahead of the Buckeyes in the rankings, per 247Sports. The Ducks are No. 6 in the 2027 recruiting class rankings, while the Buckeyes are two spots behind Oregon at No. 8 overall in the country.
The Ducks and Buckeyes, the way things stand at the end of June, have the two best 2027 recruiting classes in the Big Ten and are the only schools from the conference currently ranked inside the top 10. Oregon, however, has four more commits than Ohio State following Moss’ commitment to the Buckeyes on Friday.
The four Big Ten teams behind the Ducks and Buckeyes, but inside the top 20 of the 2027 recruiting class rankings, per 247Sports, include the Penn State Nittany Lions (No. 13), USC Trojans (No. 14), UCLA Bruins (No. 16), and Nebraska Cornhuskers (No. 18).
Oregon and Ohio State’s 2027 recruiting classes are very similar as they both have 11 total blue-chip commits, per 247Sports, including two five-stars and nine four-stars.
Oregon 2027 Offensive Line Commits
While wide receiver Dakota Guerrant and edge rusher Rashad Streets are Oregon’s two five-star commits in the 2027 recruiting class, the Ducks have four offensive line commits despite the loss of Moss to coach Ryan Day and the Buckeyes.
Offensive lineman commits in the Ducks’ 2027 recruiting class include a pair of four-star recruits, Gus Corsair and Cameron Wagner. Three-star commits Avery Michael and Lex Mailangi also highlight the offensive line commits in the Ducks’ 2027 recruiting class.
Over the course of his four seasons as coach of the Ducks, Oregon has been known for its efficient offensive line play, building one of the best groups in the country. In the last four seasons, the Ducks have been the only school to have their offensive line named a semifinalist for the Joe Moore Award.
With the commits in Oregon’s 2027 recruiting class, along with the returners that the Ducks have for the 2026 season, the offensive line looks to continue that trend heading into a year with national championship expectations.
As for the Buckeyes, Ohio State hopes that a dominant offensive lineman can help it continue to be a Big Ten championship and national title contender consistently, as it looks to avenge last season’s loss to the Miami Hurricanes in the CFP Quarterfinal at the Cotton Bowl.
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