{"id":2756,"date":"2025-11-05T00:26:41","date_gmt":"2025-11-05T05:26:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.commoncause.org\/ohio\/?post_type=article&#038;p=2756"},"modified":"2025-11-05T11:33:13","modified_gmt":"2025-11-05T16:33:13","slug":"mia-lewis-testifies-against-senate-bill-293","status":"publish","type":"article","link":"https:\/\/www.commoncause.org\/ohio\/uk\/articles\/\u043c\u0456\u0430-\u043b\u044c\u044e\u0457\u0441-\u0441\u0432\u0456\u0434\u0447\u0438\u0442\u044c-\u043f\u0440\u043e\u0442\u0438-\u0437\u0430\u043a\u043e\u043d\u043e\u043f\u0440\u043e\u0435\u043a\/","title":{"rendered":"\u041c\u0456\u0430 \u041b\u044c\u044e\u0457\u0441 \u0441\u0432\u0456\u0434\u0447\u0438\u0442\u044c \u043f\u0440\u043e\u0442\u0438 \u043e\u0431\u043c\u0435\u0436\u0435\u043d\u044c \u0433\u043e\u043b\u043e\u0441\u0443\u0432\u0430\u043d\u043d\u044f \u0443 \u0437\u0430\u043a\u043e\u043d\u043e\u043f\u0440\u043e\u0435\u043a\u0442\u0456 \u0421\u0435\u043d\u0430\u0442\u0443 293"},"template":"","class_list":["post-2756","article","type-article","status-publish","hentry","article_type-blog-post"],"acf":{"details":{"summary":"","featured_image":"","article_type":153,"authors":"","related_issues":[109,420],"related_work":false,"location":38},"sidebar":{"helper_enable_sidebar":false,"helper_media_contact":{"heading":"Media Contact","manually_enter_person":false,"person":"","name":"","role":"","phone":"","email":""},"helper_links_downloads":{"heading":"Links & Downloads","links":null}},"page_layout":[{"acf_fc_layout":"layout_wysiwyg","_acfe_flexible_toggle":"","component_wysiwyg":{"content":"<p style=\"text-align: center;\">Testimony by Mia Lewis, Associate Director of Common Cause Ohio\r\nTo the Senate General Government Committee\r\non Senate Bill 293\r\n\r\n<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n[caption id=\"attachment_52071\" align=\"aligncenter\" width=\"238\"]<img class=\"size-medium wp-image-52071\" src=\"https:\/\/www.commoncause.org\/ohio\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/OH_LewisSenateTestify_110525-238x300.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"238\" height=\"300\" \/> Lewis testifies at Ohio Senate General Government Committee, November 5, 2025.[\/caption]\r\n\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Chair Roegner, Vice Chair Gavarone, Ranking Member Blackshear and members of the Senate General Government Committee. My name is Mia Lewis. I\u2019m the associate director of Common Cause Ohio and here today to provide opposition testimony on Senate Bill 293.<\/span>\r\n\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">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 \u2013 it would make voting hard \u2013 not because something is broken and needs to be fixed. Actually, for no legitimate reason.<\/span>\r\n\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">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.\u00a0<\/span>\r\n\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Last November, more than 2.6M Ohioans voted absentee or early in person \u2013 that\u2019s 44% of all voters. Of those, more than 800,000 placed their trust in the US Postal Service to return their ballots.<\/span>\r\n\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">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\u2026 And of course we could lengthen the window in which mailed ballots are accepted. Is Ohio doing any of these things? I\u2019m afraid not. It seems you all are bound and determined to do the exact opposite.<\/span>\r\n\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">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 \u2013 once considered perfectly valid \u2013 is now set aside uncounted.<\/span>\r\n\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Instead of correcting the problem, Senate Bill 293 would make it worse by <\/span><b>eliminating the mail-in grace period entirely<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, 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\u2019t.<\/span>\r\n\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In November 2024, almost 10,000 ballots arrived during the 4 day window that SB 293 would eliminate. That\u2019s 10,000 ballots that would be discarded instead of counted if this bill goes into effect. 10,000 citizens disenfranchised. 10,000 \u201cmissing\u201d votes \u2013 more than enough to flip the result in any number of races.\u00a0<\/span>\r\n\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">A side note: From the 17 counties represented in your districts, 2,308 mailed ballots were received last November during the legal window you\u2019re now wanting to eliminate. 2,308.\u00a0<\/span>\r\n\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I think it\u2019s fair to ask why SB 293 exists at all? It is apparently a response to the Department of Justice threatening to sue \u2013 on very shaky grounds, at the behest of the President, for political rather than procedural reasons.\u00a0<\/span>\r\n\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">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\u2019 interests and access to the ballot.\u00a0<\/span>\r\n\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">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 <\/span><b>right<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> or get it <\/span><b>done<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">? Are you even taking this testimony into consideration?\u00a0<\/span>\r\n\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Senator Gavarone often asks, \u201cIsn\u2019t even just one instance of a fraudulent vote too many?\u201d 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 \u2013 who wants to vote, who <\/span><b>does<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> everything legally to vote \u2013 if they have their voted ballot cast aside uncounted, isn\u2019t that too many, Senator Gavarone? What if 10,000 voted ballots are cast aside uncounted? Now THAT could threaten to undermine our elections.\u00a0<\/span>\r\n\r\n<span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">If you care about safe and secure elections, if you care about voters, this bill should never be voted out of committee.\u00a0<\/span>\r\n\r\n&nbsp;"}},{"acf_fc_layout":"layout_add_component","_acfe_flexible_toggle":"","component_add_component":null},{"acf_fc_layout":"layout_work","_acfe_flexible_toggle":"","component_work":{"heading":"Work","manually_curate":false,"work":null}},{"acf_fc_layout":"layout_related_articles","_acfe_flexible_toggle":"","component_related_articles":{"heading":"Updates","button_text":"See all Related Articles","manually_curate":false,"articles":null}}]},"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v26.6 (Yoast SEO v27.1.1) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-premium-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Mia Lewis Testifies Against Voting Restrictions in Senate Bill 293 - Common Cause Ohio<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.commoncause.org\/ohio\/uk\/articles\/\u043c\u0456\u0430-\u043b\u044c\u044e\u0457\u0441-\u0441\u0432\u0456\u0434\u0447\u0438\u0442\u044c-\u043f\u0440\u043e\u0442\u0438-\u0437\u0430\u043a\u043e\u043d\u043e\u043f\u0440\u043e\u0435\u043a\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"uk_UA\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Mia Lewis Testifies Against Voting Restrictions in Senate Bill 293\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.commoncause.org\/ohio\/uk\/articles\/\u043c\u0456\u0430-\u043b\u044c\u044e\u0457\u0441-\u0441\u0432\u0456\u0434\u0447\u0438\u0442\u044c-\u043f\u0440\u043e\u0442\u0438-\u0437\u0430\u043a\u043e\u043d\u043e\u043f\u0440\u043e\u0435\u043a\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Common Cause Ohio\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2025-11-05T16:33:13+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/www.commoncause.org\/ohio\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/08\/OH.png\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"1200\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"675\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/png\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.commoncause.org\/ohio\/articles\/mia-lewis-testifies-against-senate-bill-293\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.commoncause.org\/ohio\/articles\/mia-lewis-testifies-against-senate-bill-293\/\",\"name\":\"Mia Lewis Testifies Against Voting Restrictions in Senate Bill 293 - 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