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The COVID-19 pandemic has changed many aspects of our daily lives: what we wear, where we go, and who we can visit- but it does not change your vital role in our democracy.

With the 2020 General Election right around the corner, it is important to be aware of upcoming deadlines and processes to make your vote count and your voice heard. 

Before heading to the polls on Nov. 3, 2020, you must be registered to vote. The deadline to register to vote for this election is Oct. 5, 2020.

To register, you will need your Ohio driver’s license or Ohio identification card number, name, date of birth, address, and the last four digits of your social security number. If you have recently moved, you will need to update your voting address. Last year, the Ohio Secretary of State’s office purged thousands of citizens from voter rolls. Some of these names were removed in error, so even if you have not moved and you have previously voted, you should verify your voter registration out of an abundance of caution. 

The unpredictable nature of a global pandemic makes the possibility of in-person voting unclear for many. To be safe, you can vote by mail. To do so, you will need to complete and mail an absentee ballot application to the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections at 2925 Euclid Ave Cleveland, OH 44115. The deadline to request an absentee ballot is three days before the election, but it is highly recommended that requests are submitted as soon as possible. Once you receive your ballot in the mail, you will need to return it to the board of elections, which can be done by mail or in person. When mailing the completed ballot, it must be postmarked no later than the day before the election (Nov. 2, 2020) and received no later than 10 days after the election. You can also deliver your ballot in person prior to 7:30 p.m. on Election Day. 

Election Day 2020 will look different, but you too can help the process run smoothly by signing up to be a poll worker if you are less vulnerable to the virus. Many of our older Election Day volunteers will be unable to help in November due to COVID-19 related risks, so it is a great time for young people to sign up as paid poll workers through the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections. 

While this election will present new challenges, we must remember that our foremothers and fathers fought for our right to vote and make our voice heard. This is an important time to participate in our democracy. 

PHOTOS BY ELIZABETH HALKO

Featured top photo caption: Senator Antonio at the Cuyahoga County BOE drop box at E. 30^th and Euclid Avenue.

Last May, while the pandemic and recession sapped state revenue, Gov. Mike DeWine cut funding for education and health care. As policymakers prepare for the next budget year, a Policy Matters Ohio report shows how the cuts set a lower baseline for critical programs like education, mental health and public defense attorneys.

“Congress has yet to provide the kind of aid state and local governments need to protect the public,” said report author, Senior Project Director Wendy Patton. “That’s forcing state lawmakers to make cuts they shouldn’t have to make. However, years of cuts at the state level have left Ohio ill-prepared. State lawmakers have underfunded programs that make Ohio communities stronger and healthier in favor of tax cuts and tax breaks that benefit corporations and the wealthy few.”

In May, Gov. DeWine cut $776 million from the current 2020-21 state budget’s General Revenue Fund (GRF). Partly due to the pandemic, GRF spending came in $1.5 billion below appropriations. The cuts have established a lower baseline for 2021 appropriations. The Office of Budget and Management said spending on many public services should be held to 2020 levels. Budget cuts for FY 2021 have not been announced, but Patton confirmed at least $440 million in planned reductions: $309 million from K-12 schools, $89 million from higher education and $46 million to help counties fund public defenders. Also vulnerable are important programs that were scheduled to receive increased funding in 2021, like the programs to lower Ohio’s high infant mortality rate among Black communities.

With Congress unable to come to an agreement about the next COVID-19 aid package, Patton said it’s more important than ever for state leaders to leverage Ohio’s public revenue in ways that will support all communities.

“State policymakers have tools to help Ohioans keep the lights on, the rent paid and food on the table,” Patton said. “They can rebalance the tax code so the wealthy and corporations pay their fair share. They can stop unproductive tax giveaways. They can tap the rainy day fund. They can use different buckets of federal funds. During this unprecedented public health crisis and recession, everything must be used to help struggling families.”

By Malcolm Burnley and Rachel Dissell, The Fuller Project

(Pictured: Lynn Rodemann) 

Lynn Rodemann walked up the driveway, a mask fixed tightly to her face. 

A mother of five welcomed her into the backyard, where she was cleaning up the colorful, damp decorations from a child’s birthday party the evening before. 

Rodemann, a community outreach specialist, is part of a pandemic response team traversing Slavic Village to check on residents and offers information on a rent assistance program – and an application to vote by mail in the upcoming November presidential election. 

Working the overnight shift as a corrections officer at a women’s prison during a pandemic, coupled with limited child care options is a daily struggle, the woman said. 

“You could see how tired she was,” says Rodemann, who broke social distancing protocol to give the woman, who started to cry, a hug. “I was so devastated for her.”

After that encounter, she  wondered how a mom like the one she had met could have any energy left to worry about voting. A few days later, Rodemann returned to the home with a care package: masks, alcohol wipes and a thermometer. 

“If there’s a possibility that they’re losing their house, they don’t give a shit about voting,” says 39-year-old Rodemann, who has worked for Slavic Village Development in the historic but under-resourced neighborhood for six years. 

“They’re worried about keeping a roof over their head and still eating.”

And just as fears of evictions remain in this community 10 minutes south of downtown Cleveland, it’s a concern facing thousands of Americans nationwide. 

Policy experts predict an “avalanche” of evictions to hit low-income renters across the country this fall. Women are expected to be the majority of the 30 to 40 million Americans at risk of eviction by year’s end, according to findings from the Aspen Institute. If income-insecure women face losing  their homes – and access to a stable address to receive voting registration, ballots, applications, and critical change-of-address forms –  this could impact how many of them vote in the upcoming presidential election, experts say, adding this could also have a significant impact on the outcome of the November election. 

“These aren’t issues that people look at together, but they should be looking at together,” says Shailly Gupta Barnes, policy director for the Poor People’s Campaign and the Kairos Center. 

A recent NPR analysis found neighborhoods with higher evictions had lower voter turnout than the rest of the city, including other low-income neighborhoods. In Slavic Village, the worry is that voter turnout, which hasn’t rebounded from the last housing crisis more than a decade ago, could get worse. In 2016, only 38.5 percent of eligible voters cast ballots, the second-lowest among neighborhoods in the city. 

Cleveland and Cuyahoga County  have allotted $18.1 million in federal CARES Act and Community Development Block Grant money to help renters. As she goes door-to-door, Rodemann and others spread the word about the rental assistance program, administered by CHN Housing Partners, a housing nonprofit, which can cover rent for up to three months. 

Energizing people to vote in a community like Slavic Village could prove difficult. The same has been true for encouraging people to fill out the U.S. Census.

 The neighborhood has followed the pattern of other industrial and urban communities: a booming population at the start of the century, then deindustrialization post World War II, urban flight, and declining populations, empty homes and increases in poverty and crime rates. By the Great Recession, the 5-square-mile neighborhood had more foreclosures in its 44105 zip code during the spring and summer of 2007 than any other zip code in the United States. The housing market, then in crisis across the country, was devastated in Slavic Village. As it continues its climb to recovery, the community again staves off another wave of housing displacement wrought by COVID-19.

Now get-out-the-vote efforts are more difficult as coronavirus cases top 5 million in the U.S. and nearly 4,500 in Cleveland. That’s why a vote-by-mail application is included in the same handout packet alongside rent payment assistance information that Rodemann hands out. 

Organizers are also helping voters navigate Ohio’s ballot request process through smaller hands-on events at places like Daisy’s Ice Cream on Fleet Avenue and Neighborhood Pets, a local pet food pantry and resource center. 

Dozens of volunteers hand-wrote 2,000 postcards to new and infrequent voters in Slavic Village, encouraging them to vote this cycle.

I’ve been helping to coordinate the postcard packets. This is the pile in my living room and it’s still growing.

Thank you @slavicvillage! pic.twitter.com/0ZDQh2Igfs

— Rebecca Maurer (@maurerlawllc) August 20, 2020

Women have consistently outpaced men in voter turnout across racial groups and education levels since the 1980s. And because women, as a voting bloc, have historically leaned toward Democratic party candidates, evictions could mean a partisan impact. In 2016, then -Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton led among women voters by 13 percent compared to President Donald Trump. That gap has widened in 2020, putting former Vice President Joe Biden ahead of President Trump by 25 percent among women voters, according to recent polling.  

For now, the anticipated surge in evictions hasn’t manifested. In July, there were 423 eviction filings in Cleveland, down 55 percent from the same month the year prior. But there’s reason to believe the data doesn’t yet reflect the situation to come.

The national moratorium on evictions — a 120-day freeze that applied to many renters and was part of the CARES Act — was lifted in July. On August 11, President Trump said: “We are stopping evictions. We’re not going to let that happen,”  But the president’s top economic policy analyst, Larry Kudlow, walked back those comments days later. 

Meanwhile, Congress has been unable to agree on further relief for keeping people in their homes, despite the success of CARES Act protections. 

“Eviction and voting don’t go real well together. It becomes a form of voter suppression,” says Bill Faith, executive director of the Coalition on Homelessness and Housing in Ohio.

In the months leading up to the election, community groups in Cleveland  have stepped in to register voters and recruit poll workers, canvassed door-to-door while passing out supplies like masks, bandanas and hand sanitizer. 

One of those groups is  Cleveland VOTES, a nonpartisan organization founded by two Black women. The group aims to get low-income residents involved in the democratic process in tandem with the board of elections. As of Aug. 17, the county elections board had  received more than 40,000 vote-by-mail applications.

 “I know that people are getting the message, I know that more people are applying for vote-by-mail,” says Jennifer Lumpkin, civic engagement strategist for Cleveland VOTES. 

In this year’s primary election, Ohio voter turnout was down close to 45 percent compared to 2016, according to a July report by the Stanford-MIT Healthy Elections Project. That was the steepest four-year dip of any state. 

The decline has been attributed to a confluence of factors, including fear of the virus, conflicting information about when and how to vote, slowed mail delivery and primary races that were less competitive than in 2016. Another factor was the two-step process to vote by mail, or absentee, in Ohio. Voters have to fill out and return a paper ballot application to their local board of elections before getting a ballot to cast. 

Early and in-person voting will still be offered, though the state is limiting secure ballot drop boxes to one in each of the state’s 88 counties. Given health and safety concerns, particularly in the city’s Black community disproportionately hit by COVID-19 infections and deaths, groups like Cleveland VOTES are emphasizing mail-in ballots.

When it works properly, voting by mail can actually help to overcome some of the gendered barriers – like lack of transportation – that interfere with women’s votes, Lumpkin says. 

That aligns with Rodemann’s conversations with women in Slavic Village. 

“You can talk about voting and say, ‘I also want your voice to be heard. I want you to be counted,” Rodemann said. “Folks who don’t feel like they have a voice or they feel unheard, they feel unseen, then they don’t participate.”

Fuller Project reporter Jessica Washington contributed to this story. 

Malcolm Burnley is a journalist with The Fuller Project, a global nonprofit newsroom reporting on issues that affect women. Rachel Dissell is a contributing journalist with The Fuller Project.

• Vote-by-mail application
• Ballot applications can be dropped off in a secure drop box in the parking lot of the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections at 2925 Euclid Avenue. 
• Rent assistance applications

This story was originally published by The Fuller Project, a nonprofit newsroom reporting on issues that affect women.

Native Americans demand more recognition from universities they funded, sometimes unwillingly

By Caitlin Hunt 

This story was funded by a grant from the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting. This article provided by Eye on Ohio, the nonprofit, nonpartisan Ohio Center for Journalism. Please join our free mailing list or text us at (216) 867-6327 as this helps us provide more public service reporting.

Growing up in Cleveland, Cherokee tribal member Nicole Doran said Chief Wahoo always made her uncomfortable. 

“I remember growing up and seeing this caricature of Native Americans that I knew wasn’t true,” Doran said. 

Later she earned a biology degree at the Ohio State University. Doran loved the campus and appreciated the opportunities given to her, but she was not happy about the lack of Native American acknowledgement on campus. Instead, she found the university took pride in their status as a “Land Grant” university. The school sits in the heart of Columbus, home to the best-selling Land Grant beer. 

“There’s nothing really on campus that signifies the Native American history of the land,” she said. 

In recent months, outrage over racial injustices has sparked protests across the country. This outrage has helped uncover hidden histories and spark new conversations regarding the treatment of minorities in America. One area of discussion has been the place of minorities in higher education, particularly as many states created renowned public universities from the proceeds of land sales from Native American cessations. 

In Ohio, land grant funds went to one of America’s most prominent schools, The Ohio State University.  According to research conducted by High Country News, the 1862 Morrill Act redistributed nearly 10.7 million acres from nearly 250 tribes, through 160 land cessions, the legal term for giving up territory. 

Eye on Ohio mapped all lands that supported Ohio schools, a total of 4,411 parcels spread out over 14 states. (Though only 4,060 could be mapped. Click here to see our code and methodology.)

The Morrill Act and Ohio State University

Starting in 1862, the federal government gave Ohio 630,000 acres of public domain land to sell to establish Ohio State.

All of this land was out of state and included parcels in Mississippi, Michigan, Missouri, Florida, Kansas, Nebraska, Iowa, Wisconsin, Minnesota, California, South Dakota, Oregon, Colorado, and Washington. 

The U.S. paid $35,410 for the land and land sales raised $340,818, creating a return nearly ten times the purchase amount. When adjusted for inflation, the U.S. would have paid $1,015,519 in current dollars for 614,165 acres of land with the university raising $6,849,131. 

(The Second Morrill Act of 1890 supplemented funds from the original law and provided for the nation’s black colleges, which were not part of the 1862 act. Central State University near Dayton, Ohio started in 1887 as a publicly-funded department within private Wilberforce University, a historically Black college. So CSU is a land grant school but the lands sold to support it were not included in the survey.)

The United States government paid less than $400,000 to remove Indigenous titles from all Native lands, usually obtained through force or by treaties that the government never ratified, said Robert Lee, a lecturer in American History at the University of Cambridge.

Lee traced 97.5% of the land sales for Ohio under the 1862 law. Much of the land sold came from several tribes, including several Chippewa, Ottawa, Osage, and Sioux bands. Out of the 162 lands listed in Lee’s research, 96 were taken by unratified treaties, 53 were ceded by treaties, and eight were taken either by executive order or without a treaty. How the other four pieces of land were obtained is unknown. 

Michael Charles, a member of Navajo nation and a doctoral student at Ohio State, said data like this continues a narrative in Native communities that universities are not for them or in support of them. 

“These universities can be seen as the evil system that keeps taking and taking,” he said. 

According to Fall 2019 statistics, American Indian students made up just  0.1% of the student population on the Ohio State Columbus campus, though nationally 0.7% of Americans are Native American alone. In total, 1.7% or 5.7 million people identified as Native American alone or in combination with another race. 

But, Charles said research like this can help universities acknowledge more of their history and help them to become allies to current and future Native students. He also said this data could help higher education better understand why Indigenous youth may not consider pursuing a college degree. 

“I think this is a very specific way that universities can start to understand kind of the conflict between Native people and universities,” Charles said. 

OSU and Columbus Area Today

Today, Ohio State University has taken steps to create an inclusive environment for all, including American Indians. 

“Today, the university’s commitment to diversity and inclusion has never been stronger,” Benjamin Johnson, Director of Media Relations at OSU, said via email.

Part of that commitment has been to create groups and programs on campus centered on Native culture. Native American student groups on campus include the Native American Indigenous Peoples Cohort and the American Indian Science and Engineering Society. OSU also offers courses in American Indian studies, including a minor. 

The university also operates the Newark Earthworks Center. The center researches American Indian cultures and their contributions to architecture and other scientific achievements in the Midwest. Like other universities, OSU is responding to recent concerns of racial inequity with a task force. Johnson said the school’s intercultural specialist for American Indian/Indigenous, Melissa Beard Jacob, serves with the group. 

To acknowledge Native American lands, OSU has a land acknowledgment posted on its Multicultural Center website. 

Charles said that an effective way for OSU to recruit more Indigenous students would be to send Native faculty out to the reservations and other large Indigenous communities. He also said the university should initiate a “bridge program” that would help the students make a successful transition into university life. 

“It’s going to have to take initiatives on both ends at the same time to make sure we recruit,” Charles said. “And make sure we have people responsible for making sure they’re coming into a community set-up that’s going to set them up for success.” 

Former OSU student  Nicole Doran also said she thinks the university could do more outside of the land acknowledgment to address Native American history in Columbus and on the Ohio State campus. 

“I think the land acknowledgment is definitely a first step, but it can come off as very performative,” she said. 

Doran spoke of the Society of American Indians, the first American Indian activist group, on campus. They first met in 1911. But, Doran said there was nothing on campus that marked this historic event. 

Groups like Land-Grant Fierce still celebrate the legacy of Ohio State’s beginning, though in April they called High Country’s expose the land grant university’s “original sin.”

Off-campus, the history of OSU’s land grant pride still prevails. 

Land Grant Brewery, run by two OSU alumnus, Adam Benner and Walt Keys, first opened its doors to the public in 2014 after a successful 2012 Kickstarter campaign. After discovering their original name, Oval Brewing, was already copyrighted, Benner said they decided land-grant gave the same feel and gave a nod to their beloved alma mater. 

“If you didn’t understand land grants or what a land grant college came from, then the name still had a strong feel to it,” Benner said. “And then we could still tell that story of what happened with the land grant act and how it established higher education throughout the country and that whole history.” 

Benner said he was now aware of the history of where the Morrill Grant’s land came from but said the brewery takes pride in its name for how the grant made higher education more accessible for those outside of the upper-class and minority races. 

“What we talk about every time we give a tour and why we are proud of the land grant heritage is that it was a law that was written right around the time of the civil war and was signed by Abraham Lincoln and the way it was written was that it couldn’t preclude race,” he said. 

Benner acknowledges that the Morrill Act could have added to America’s history of mistreatment of American Indians and that there is more to uncover of our nation’s history. 

“There’s a lot to look into from our entire nation’s history,” Benner said. “I think our entire nation’s history unfortunately has a red stain on it from how the Natives were treated early on.” 

A Growing Recognition of Native Rights and Representation Beyond Grants

In a landmark decision in July, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in favor of a defendant who asked for a new trial because he said his alleged crime had taken place on land owned by the Muscogee (Creek) Nation of Oklahoma. The ruling is significant because much of eastern Oklahoma, including most of Tulsa, is historically Native land. 

John Low, an OSU at Newark professor and member of the Pokagon band of the Potawatomi tribe, said the Supreme Court’s decision to honor Native treaties is a big win for the Native American community. 

“It’s an important victory for tribal sovereignty and honoring treaty rights,” Low said. “It’s a watershed moment.” 

While this decision calls for celebration, Low said there is more that needs to be done by the government to allow for tribal sovereignty. 

“It’s time for Indians, as an expression of their sovereignty to arrest and prosecute felonies,” Low said. 

After years of refusing,  the Washington DC National Football League team recently announced they would change their name. This name change has caused other sports teams with Native American names to consider changing logos or names, including the Cleveland Indians. 

For years, American Indians and American Indian groups have fought against the use of racist Native American names, logos, and mascots, with many stating the harm these images do for the Native American community. According to the National Congress of American Indians, “derogatory ‘Indian’ sports mascots have serious psychological, social and cultural consequences for Native Americans, especially Native youth.” 

Even with these concerns for stereotypes and Native youth, these negative images of Natives persist, and Low says they remain for one reason. 

”The only reason why they have gotten away with it is because people know nothing about us or our influences,” he said. 

Low said the removal of these mascots would help distinguish stereotypes surrounding Natives. 

“The sooner we get rid of the mascots, the sooner we get rid of the stereotypes,” Low said. 

Graphics by Lucia Walinchus

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State Reps. Bride Rose Sweeney (D-Cleveland) and Jeffrey A. Crossman (D-Parma) will host a virtual town hall at TODAY, August 10 at 6:30 p.m. 

The event is a part of the Ohio House Democrats’ Ohio Promise Virtual Town Hall Tour, a series of digital events this summer where local lawmakers give a Statehouse update and provide their constituents with the opportunity to ask questions and offer input on ways to address the issues facing their communities.

The event is education-themed and includes special guests Eric Gordon, CEO of Cleveland Metropolitan School District, and Dr. Charles Smialek, Superintendent of Parma City School District.

The event will be free and open to the public, with member availability for media following the event.

For the latest information on the Ohio Promise Virtual Town Hall Tour, dates and more, visit www.ohiohousedemocrats.org/ohiopromise.

WHO:           State Reps. Bride Rose Sweeney and Jeffrey A. Crossman

                        Eric Gordon, CEO of Cleveland Metropolitan School District

                        Dr. Charles Smialek, Superintendent of Parma City School District

WHAT:          VirtualTownHall on Education amid the COVID-19 Pandemic

WHEN:         Monday, August 10 at 6:30PM

LINK:            Ohio House Democrats Facebook Page