Trending
Area residents who live in Ohio know there are a couple of important elections coming up.
First will be the June 11 special election in which residents of the state's 6th Congressional District will choose between Republican Michael Rulli and Democrat Michael Kripchak. The winner will serve through the end of the year while filling the remainder of the term of former U.S. Rep. Bill Johnson. Johnson, a Republican from Marietta, resigned from Congress in January to become president of Youngstown State University.
Then will come the Nov. 5 general election, when, among other issues, a seat in the U.S. Senate will be up for grabs; Rulli and Kripchak will face off again to determine who will fill the full term in the House of Representatives that begins in January; and we'll choose the next president of the United States.
It all means that those who are eligible and registered to vote are no doubt thinking seriously about the decisions they will make.
They must also be certain they are registered properly, and not about to get a nasty surprise. Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose has ordered county boards of elections to begin a "routine but enhanced" sweep of the voter rolls to clean out inactive registrations.
"Every state is required to have an ongoing process to verify the accuracy of its voter rolls, but Ohio has the most advanced and effective protocols in the nation," LaRose said. "This work is not only critical to keeping our elections honest, but it's also essential to making sure our election officials can properly plan for the right number of ballots, voting machines, polling places and poll workers."
LaRose's effort will target changes of address, past due removals, new registrations that counties acknowledged with an informational postcard that was returned as undeliverable and Bureau of Motor Vehicles mismatches -- registrations that don't match certain details a person provided to the Ohio Bureau of Motor Vehicles such as their name, birth date, Social Security number or driver's license number. Going through this process also will help identify registered voters who have died.
Check on your registration, especially if you've sat out the last few elections and want to make sure your voice is heard in the special election and general election. Registrations set for removal are supposed to be listed on the Secretary of State's website on a Registration Readiness roster.
If you have not registered to vote or need to change your name or address, the deadline to do so for the June 11 election is 9 p.m. Monday. And, if you want to sit the special election out and wait until November, the deadline to register for that election will be Oct. 7.
Be vigilant and thorough, and be sure you are able to participate. Don't let a bureaucratic mistake silence your voice.