Testimony by Mia Lewis, Associate Director of Common Cause Ohio
To the Senate General Government Committee
on Senate Bill 293

Chair Roegner, Vice Chair Gavarone, Ranking Member Blackshear and members of the Senate General Government Committee. My name is Mia Lewis. I’m the associate director of Common Cause Ohio and here today to provide opposition testimony on Senate Bill 293.

Common Cause is focused on strengthening public participation in our democracy and ensuring every eligible voter can cast a ballot and have it be counted. It would be reasonable to imagine the focus of this committee would be the same. But Senate Bill 293 would do the opposite – it would make voting hard – not because something is broken and needs to be fixed. Actually, for no legitimate reason.

If this bill becomes law, ballots of eligible Ohio voters that once were counted without incident would be thrown away uncounted. The very idea of this should be shocking to everyone on this committee. 

Last November, more than 2.6M Ohioans voted absentee or early in person – that’s 44% of all voters. Of those, more than 800,000 placed their trust in the US Postal Service to return their ballots.

So many Ohio voters are relying on the mail! I wonder how we could make it safer, easier, and more reliable for them to cast their ballots? We could increase the number of drop boxes. We could widen the list of people allowed to return ballots to include friends, neighbors, grandchildren… And of course we could lengthen the window in which mailed ballots are accepted. Is Ohio doing any of these things? I’m afraid not. It seems you all are bound and determined to do the exact opposite.

Despite knowing Ohioans rely heavily on mailing their ballots, two years ago, the state legislature enacted sweeping changes that were both unnecessary and harmful. House Bill 458 shrunk the window for receiving mailed ballots after Election Day from 10 to four days. A ballot postmarked and mailed before election day and arriving 6 days later – once considered perfectly valid – is now set aside uncounted.

Instead of correcting the problem, Senate Bill 293 would make it worse by eliminating the mail-in grace period entirely, disenfranchising thousands of Ohioans who did nothing but count on the legal deadline and the US Postal Service to deliver their ballot in a timely way. How does this help Ohio voters or improve our elections? It doesn’t.

In November 2024, almost 10,000 ballots arrived during the 4 day window that SB 293 would eliminate. That’s 10,000 ballots that would be discarded instead of counted if this bill goes into effect. 10,000 citizens disenfranchised. 10,000 “missing” votes – more than enough to flip the result in any number of races. 

A side note: From the 17 counties represented in your districts, 2,308 mailed ballots were received last November during the legal window you’re now wanting to eliminate. 2,308. 

I think it’s fair to ask why SB 293 exists at all? It is apparently a response to the Department of Justice threatening to sue – on very shaky grounds, at the behest of the President, for political rather than procedural reasons. 

How should Ohio respond when the DOJ tries to interfere with Ohio elections? The US Constitution gives the power to execute elections to the states, not Washington DC. Why is Ohio working to pacify an overly intrusive federal government chasing a false narrative rather than standing up for our citizens? Other states have taken a different path, choosing first and foremost to defend their constituents’ interests and access to the ballot. 

SB 293 has moved at lightning speed. It was introduced on October 14 and three weeks later, here it is, starred for a vote after only one person (from Texas) testified in its favor. Elections officials, busy carrying out an election, have not had a chance to weigh in. What is the rush? Are you trying to get it right or get it done? Are you even taking this testimony into consideration? 

Senator Gavarone often asks, “Isn’t even just one instance of a fraudulent vote too many?” Of course. If someone votes in an election when they are not eligible, it could theoretically skew the result. Luckily, this is so vanishingly rare it has not had and could not have had any impact. But just the same, if someone who is eligible to vote – who wants to vote, who does everything legally to vote – if they have their voted ballot cast aside uncounted, isn’t that too many, Senator Gavarone? What if 10,000 voted ballots are cast aside uncounted? Now THAT could threaten to undermine our elections. 

If you care about safe and secure elections, if you care about voters, this bill should never be voted out of committee.