The election workers have been swamped by unprecedented numbers of voter registration challenges.

The Browns ownership has filed suit seeking clarity of the model law.

The Cleveland sale should keep the team from moving out of downtown.

And a Hamilton County judge has ruled the state's six week abortion ban unconstitutional.

Ideas is next.

Hello and welcome to Ideas.

I'm Mike McIntyre.

Thank you for joining us.

There's been an unprecedented number of challenges to voter registrations at a number of county boards of election, where officials say they're being bombarded by activist appeals.

The Browns have filed suit in federal court seeking clarity on the so-called model law that Cleveland says should force the owners to keep the team downtown or sell it to someone who will.

Akron City Council has moved ahead with plans for a new waste transfer station to be built on the city's east side.

Despite strong pushback from residents there and a Hamilton County judge has struck down Ohio's six week abortion ban, saying it's unconstitutional.

After voters approved an abortion rights amendment last year.

Joining me in studio is general assignment reporter abigail voter and education reporter Connor Morris from Ideastream Public Media.

And in Columbus, Statehouse news bureau chief Karen Kasler.

Let's get ready to roundtable.

Ohio's county boards of elections have their hands full with early voting and gearing up for election day and night.

But adding to the workload now is the high number of voter registration challenges being filed.

Election officials say the number of challenges is on precedented and would county alone home to the great Bowling Green State university where I go to college.

Yeah.

Anyway, in Wood County alone, the elections board received challenges to 16,000 voter registrations.

They were filed by just one person and they all have to be investigated.

Karen, what's driving the number of challenges?

Just two registrations this election cycle?

Well, I don't know that there's a definite reason.

I mean, certainly you could point to the questions that have been raised by Republicans leading from former President Trump all the way down about the voting system and the security and the integrity of it.

And certainly that could be behind it.

There have been some conservative groups that have talked about cleaning the voter rolls and apparently have been providing some publicly available data to people who are interested in filing these challenges, which are allowed under state law.

You can challenge somebody who you don't think is properly registered, that maybe they're registered in a different county.

They're registered in a different state, and it's not illegal to register in a different county or a different state to be registered twice.

It is illegal to vote twice, Right.

And so that's the question here, is are these people registered to vote in the place where they're going to vote, or are they just registered in Ohio?

But actually, they live in Florida or something like that.

So if you make a challenge to that and the Board of Elections looks into it and says, yes, they're registered in in Florida and Ohio, well, since that's not illegal, what then happens?

Well, right now, I don't think anything can happen because we're in that period where the voter rolls can't be altered, as I understand it, under federal law, because there's a whole period I believe it's a 90 day period that keeps the polls as they are.

So you can't, quote, purge voters, which is a term you quite hear you hear quite often.

But there can be notes put in that, you know, this has been investigated.

The only person who can ask for their registration to be removed is the voter.

That Board of Elections can remove the registration after a hearing, but I don't believe they can do it right now.

So hearings take time.

They involve doing the investigation, subpoena ing the voter holding the hearing.

It's it's it's a work piece of work.

We're going to talk about a few news items, but all of them seem to be coalescing right around election time.

And all of this seems to be driven by the fact that there is a really a national push to question the validity of votes.

This after Donald Trump refused to accept the results of the last election.

Yeah, I mean this with two less than two weeks before the election, a lot of what people are talking about is the election because, I mean, in Ohio, presidential U.S. Senate, three Supreme Court seats, the entire Ohio House, half the Ohio Senate, all 15 members of Congress.

It's a big deal.

Not to mention issue one, the redistricting amendment.

And we're not even a swing state.

I mean, in some of the swing states, it's getting really there's a lot of things going on, potential challenges and that sort of thing.

We start talking about Georgia and places like that.

And voting rights organizations are concerned that recently naturalized citizens will be disenfranchized from voting in Ohio either due to poll workers confusion or because of a rule that could require them to produce their papers to vote.

Naturalized citizens are citizens of the United States.

They have the same right to vote, but concerned groups say the state's photo ID law, in a new form put out by Rose, may present difficulties for them should their status be challenged.

Basically, they have to show papers.

Yeah, and quite often it deals with that notification or that that certificate or whatever you call it on the back of your driver's license.

And it would say noncitizen.

If you're a non-citizen and you've been naturalized since then and you haven't gotten a new driver's license, then it would still have that that those words embolden on there.

And that would be a problem if you're showing that to vote.

And the poll worker says, wait a minute, you're a non citizen, I can't let you vote.

And you know, these activists, I mean, we're talking about the ACLU, although it is a local common cause of illegal end voters.

Yes.

All these folks are have been concerned about this photo ID law for quite a long time.

And this is just the latest of their concerns here, saying that they're very worried that the whole effort to try to remove citizens from the rolls, because there is a large number of them who are registered, which is not true, that the people are actually getting caught up in people who really can vote are getting caught up in it.

The ACLU and these other organizations are petitioning a federal court to enforce a 26 ruling in Ohio that already dealt with this issue.

Yeah, and I think we're talking about a small number of people potentially here.

But it's the idea that these laws do have an impact beyond just what voters are experiencing, people who are, you know, residents who've lived here their whole lives who are American citizens.

There are other people who are older, who don't have driver's licenses, who their licenses lapsed, expired or whatever, and they haven't gotten a new one.

You know, all these things that are part of this whole voter ID thing that really raise questions about are people prepared for this when they go to vote?

This week, Attorney General Dave Yost announced indictments in illegal voting cases in the state.

A total of six people.

One of them has been dead for two years in Cuyahoga County, the one there.

That person died two years ago, but still was indicted.

Yeah, and I think there are some questions about how that happened.

And some of this goes back to a struggle between Frank Legros and the county prosecutors because he had about 600 cases that were illegal voting and illegal voter registration or improper voter registration that he referred to county prosecutors.

They kicked most of those cases back saying there's not enough evidence LaRose was critical of county prosecutors for doing that.

They were critical of him for sending in cases, sending them cases that had no real evidence that they could use to indict.

And so Theros then took these cases to Attorney General Dave Yost, and Yost came back with six cases that he had presented to grand juries that grand juries had indicted.

But how this one Cuyahoga County voter got through when he had been dead since December 2022 was a real question.

The County Prosecutors Association tells me that the attorney general's office should have seen that he was dead and not indicted him.

Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Michael O'Malley had a very strongly worded statement saying that this is he is philosophically opposed to indicting deceased individuals who clearly have no way of defending themselves.

This is one of the greatest examples of prosecutor overreach I've ever witnessed.

I mean, he was he was really irritated by this.

And so the indictment will be dismissed.

But still, the idea that all of this work is going into finding this few number of people who may have cast ballots, voter fraud is important to guard against, but this is a lot of work.

And even Yost mentioned that there's a lot of investigation going on in here that people are spending time on when there are other things that are still important that people need to investigate.

I wonder if you when you come up with a number like six, it it confirms something that we have.

And an email from John who says time and time again, voting irregularities are minimal.

There's data available to confirm this.

Why must we continue to have the conversation and not just present data and clearly state that it's a disingenuous or at least uninformed push to disrupt elections?

I think you can trace some of that back to 2016 and the and 2020.

All the comments that we heard from former President Trump about how the election was stolen and there were huge numbers of people who were illegally voting and all that, and it's just not the case.

What about the timing?

Two weeks, less than two weeks before the election?

Again, the timing of this is is not great.

In fact, for instance, the dead voter in Cuyahoga County was scheduled for arraignment before Election Day.

Obviously, that's not going to be there.

Yeah, exactly.

But, yeah, the timing of this, I mean it I feel like it draws attention to exactly what we were just saying, that the voting system is safe.

There are a few irregularities and a few problems which need to be dealt with.

But overwhelmingly, the system is safe and the results should be trusted.

And when people hear that, oh, there's people who've been indicted, who were non-citizens, who voted, that trust, I feel, starts to wear away a little bit.

And that's that's really concerning, especially less than two weeks before the election.

And the city of Cleveland signaled it intends to fight the Browns plan, move to Brook Park by invoking the model law, which requires advance notice and allows others the chance to purchase the team.

The Browns reacted yesterday by filing suit in federal court, asking a judge to provide clarity to what the owners termed a vague law.

Meanwhile, Cuyahoga County Executive Chris Ronayne says county money for a move to the suburbs will be a tough sell.

He said on the Sound of Ideas yesterday, the Brook Park play just doesn't work.

And the mayor of Brook Park on the same program said it's the best plan for the region.

Abigail, the Browns filed the suit seeking a declaratory judgment.

They said they're disappointed in the city's move to bring this to a legal realm.

Right.

Right.

So this is this is a law that is named after Art Modell, a former Browns owner who moved the team to Baltimore in 1996.

And it was passed to require Ohio owners whose teams play in taxpayer funded seems like the Browns Stadium to either get permission from their home city or give six month notice with a chance for the city or an investor in the area, and putting that in quotation marks to offer to buy the team.

And so Cleveland for I mean, the past six months a year that we've been talking about with the Browns Day, will the Browns leave back and forth, back and forth.

Cleveland City Council members have kind of been, you know, bringing up this idea of is this a law that we can use to stop the Browns from leaving downtown?

And they had passed a formal resolution saying, urging that saying that the city you need to follow legal action if the Browns decide to do that.

And so when the Browns announced that they were moving, the city was moving forward with this to potentially litigate their move.

And then we got last night that the Browns kind of beat them to the punch on the lawsuit aspect.

Just asking for clarification on will this law actually apply to this move, because we've heard from legal experts that say it's kind of murky.

It's kind of unclear.

I mean, the law was meant to stop meant to mainly stop teams from moving out of state not 20 miles south.

You have a question, too, though, about even if the law is in effect, if it says you have to give six months notice, they've certainly done that.

Sure.

And it says you have to give it another chance to buy the team.

It doesn't mean you have to sell it.

You could say, okay, we're taking offers and we'll sell for no less than $20 billion.

So I just there's some questions just about really whether this is a real tool that could be used to keep a team in a particular location.

Yeah, it's very ambiguous.

I mean, yeah, it's going to take so much time to build this like more than $2 billion stadium, like six months doesn't really cover it.

And there's nothing that states that they have to even seriously consider selling to to a different person that would want to change.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean they can give them a chance for 50 seconds and then be like, nope, Bristol going to move.

So, you know, I think that they're just trying to kind of head off any potential, you know, kind of get the first word in on any legal action.

But they're saying that they don't want like contentious litigation or anything.

They're just trying to make sure all their ducks in a row to do this move to.

We had the discussion yesterday on the Sound of Ideas where Chris Ronayne said and this is might be the bigger hurdle, maybe it's not the law that's the issue for the Browns, it's the financing.

And Chris Ronayne said, we've got a lot of other things to pay for here.

You're asking for basically $1.2 billion from the public.

Whether that means the state backs a bond issue for half of that and the rest comes from where the county Brook Park.

Who knows?

In terms of the public contribution, the team says it's going to be putting in a couple of billion dollars of its own for the complex that it wants to build.

But it's not over, according to Chris Ronayne.

Right.

I think I think you're absolutely right that it seems like the where is this $1.2 billion of public funding that the Haslam's keep saying it's part of their plan.

Where's that going to come from?

That seems like that's going to be the bigger issue than the model law here, because Ronayne seems pretty firm that that's not going to come from the county.

And the Haslam's just keep saying about this public money.

So we're really not sure where that's going to come from, who's going to be coughing up this $1.2 billion, how well that's going to go over for taxpayers to be funding this this move, because it seems like a lot of people are upset that they're leaving Cleveland.

One people one person who's not upset is the mayor of Brook Park, Edward Orcutt, who was also on the show yesterday.

And he said essentially make having this dome stadium and having it where it is, which is where the team wants it, is going to be much better for the region.

He talked about cities like Detroit, in Indiana, Indianapolis that can host events throughout the year, whereas at Brown Stadium there's a limited number of events.

Of course, it doesn't bring into the fact that there would be competition then with all the other venues that are either downtown or elsewhere in northeast Ohio.

But he claims this is better for the region.

Yeah, I mean, I am going to the Taylor Swift concert in Indianapolis simply because she is not coming to Cleveland.

So no, I that that is that is the argument there that this would make more jobs if there's more events in in Brook Park, it would make more jobs for people running that events it would he's saying that it would spread out throughout the county that people would be flying across the country or even across the world to go to these huge shows like the Arab tour to to Cleveland and fueling our economy that way.

And Ronan is really maintaining here that this is not only going to damage Cleveland economically, but all of Cuyahoga County.

So that's kind of a the two different viewpoints there.

Akron City Council approved construction of a waste transfer station on the city's east side, despite community opposition and a call to delay the vote.

A lot of discussion about the neighborhood that did it in that it's the east side.

The folks there are talking a lot about environmental justice.

Yeah, the east side is really a disinvested part of Akron, and they have a really difficult history with industry like especially, you know, Akron's the Rubber City.

The rubber industry was in East Akron and then kind of abruptly left and did a lot of things that necessarily weren't great for the environment or public health.

So I went to a public meeting last week and people were talking about having asthma and different types of cancers that they believe are because of the kind of environmental impact of the rubber factories that were that were in the city, in their neighborhood, that have kind of like left them without jobs or without any sort of industry.

Now, I mean, where, you know, there's still rubber industry there, it's just not as robust as it used to be.

And I W.M.

has kind of pushed pushed back and kind of helped, I hope, explain what this actually would be.

I mean, there's kind of this sentiment that they don't want this dump in their neighborhood.

It's not a dump, like you said.

It's it's just a transfer station.

So the trash isn't even going to be there for a full day.

It's going the trucks are bringing the trash into this really fancy floor.

Then the floor moves it to a bigger truck and then it's out of the city to go to like a landfill situation.

Not in Akron.

You know, tell somebody in a more affluent neighborhood that hasn't had that.

By the way, we're going to bring in this really nice thing.

It's not really a dump.

It's just that we're gonna bring trash there every day.

Well, yeah.

And that's that's the argument is that they just don't want this in their neighborhood.

We want it to be in Akron because that's obviously where the most waste is, is being produced.

That's where the highest density of people is.

And they're moving from another spot, Fountain Street, which they say they have limitations there, that this new property would be better for them.

Right.

This new property is huge.

It's in an industrial zoned area.

The the location on Fountain Street right now was built in the 1970s during a time where we didn't really know or care about whether things like waste management facilities were right next to residential homes.

So this directly abuts people's homes and that's a problem and they can't really do anything to make it bigger.

It was never intended to be a transfer facility for for this much waste for the one thing.

So it just doesn't really work.

And they can't make it bigger.

And they you know, they can't it obviously is an issue being so close to people's homes.

And so the move to the arch would location, it's 500 to 2000 feet away from people's five, 500 to 1000 feet away from people's homes.

So it's way further away, surrounded by like industrial businesses, like trucking companies.

So it's it's a better location.

One says they also say that it'll bring like 45 new jobs to there that are really high paying, have great benefits.

They want to hire people from Akron to to have these really great jobs.

So those are kind of the pros and City council's moving has okayed it.

So we'll see how that goes.

You mentioned the name of the company IWM, which is their branding now.

But for those who wonder to waste management, that's what I had been known for forever.

So when AM is the former Waste Management and the administration of the Akron Public Schools is seeking to remove two police officers who serve as security at the Firestone Community Learning Center after one of the officers hit a student while subduing him.

Video of the incident prompted the school's action actually already one of the officers has been removed right counter and they want the other two.

Because I saw the video, the student was supposed to follow a particular procedure.

He kept trying to bypass whatever the procedure was.

Maybe the third time you could see the officers getting stern and then they basically get them by the arms and they start to lead him off.

And and it looks like one of them strikes him in the back of the head.

It's reported that it happened several times, brought the student down to the ground.

The school district says that shouldn't happen.

Yeah, and we're still trying to figure out I just asked the district yesterday if the second officer who was involved, who did not strike the student, but was involved with with kind of handling him and trying to pull him to the side.

And they initially they did arrest the student as well.

They charged him with resisting arrest and one or two other crimes.

And those have been dropped.

Those have been dropped charges.

City Prosecutor Yes.

And the school district is just saying, look, this was inappropriate.

This is not the proper way to handle this.

And yet, as you mentioned the video, it does show one of the officers striking the student at I think three times is what I counted when I was was checking out the video.

And so they're essentially saying that this is not how officers should be interacting with students.

Just as a reminder for folks, there are school resource school resource officers, as they're called, that are at school districts.

Typically, there's issues like one per building depends on the staffing they are hired by the school district, but they are Akron police officers.

In this case, again, we don't hear what was said, but it's clear that the student was not following whatever the procedure was and the police officer is essentially saying, I don't know if this person is a threat.

He's not following the procedure.

I need to get him in control.

The question then, though, do you do that by punching?

And that's been an issue that's been raised by the community Police Oversight board, the citizen police oversight board there?

Yeah.

The police auditor told Huntsman he was working on this story with me.

You know, he's previously raised concerns about the department's use of punching during arrests.

He said, you know, officers are, in my opinion, just going to punches way too fast right now for nonviolent offenses.

This student, the officer had said that he was worried that the student had a weapon and that's why he didn't want to go through the metal detectors, fully ended up be not the case.

The student just had a cell phone on him, which is kind of a whole other can of worms.

There's the students are not allowed to have their cell phones in class.

And so they're supposed to be locked up and they go through the metal detectors and they're locked up in yonder bags.

They're kind of magnetically sealed pouches.

And so that's kind of another angle of this.

That's was a concern that some folks had expressed when the cell phone policy was implemented, that this could lead to potentially an incident like this happening.

And a Hamilton County judge has struck down permanently Ohio's six week heartbeat bill abortion ban.

Judge Christian Jenkins said the abortion rights amendment approved last year by voters renders the ban unconstitutional.

He wrote.

Ohio voters have spoken.

The Constitution now unequivocally protects the right to abortion.

Judge had issued a temporary restraining order shortly after the amendment was approved by voters.

Karen, it's been nearly a year since that issue was approved.

The amendment.

This is far and away the largest ruling to implement it.

Yeah, and this was a ruling that came because the Ohio Supreme Court kicked it back down to Hamilton County where the case against the six week ban started.

And it's important to note that this six week ban would have outlawed more forced abortions in Ohio, because, I mean, when you look at the abortion report, most abortions are performed.

I mean, overwhelmingly are performed in that early period of 6 to 9 weeks.

So this is a big deal.

And I don't know whether the state is going to appeal.

I would expect that they might.

But, you know, we have to wait and see what the attorney general's going to do.

Attorney general has said that he intends to appeal, but he's also said that because of issue one last fall, that the six week abortion ban was unconstitutional.

So that's an interesting thing to note.

There.

The Ohio Department of Transportation is amping up efforts to reduce wrong way crashes along a corridor on I-90 and I-70, one in Cleveland.

And they're getting flashy about it.

ODOT will deploy the new systems on 25 ramps across this focus area, locations chosen based on statistics collected on wrong way drivers between 2016 and 2019.

Abbigail.

This is a system designed to get wrong way driver's attention, especially at night when most of these crashes happen.

And I know you've probably seen them too.

It's just terrifying when you see a video of a car just rocketing the wrong way down the highway and some unsuspecting person in their lane heading home from work or wherever they may be, and tragedy is about to happen.

So what they want to do is make sure that people don't get on the highway, the wrong way.

How is this going to help them do that?

So is using signs, cameras and the flashing lights to alert drivers that they're going the wrong way?

And if and if it detects drivers are going the wrong way, the video clip will be sent to an office in Columbus where they can review the footage and then immediately notify local law enforcement to respond.

So instead of a driver about to be hit by this wrong way around their car calling 911, they can immediately catch it right as they're entering the wrong way.

So you'll be alerted.

So if you're somebody who's a groggy driver or you just.

Yeah, just made the turn wrong, it'll let you know.

And in fact, this has already been employed in some areas in Cincinnati.

What has been the result there?

Yeah.

So I was really shocked by this.

Among the 50 wrong way drivers detected in the past five years since ODOT launched the similar program in Cincinnati.

They said that the system has prompted most of those drivers to turn around and I don't think they needed any further intervention.

They saw the flashing lights in the signs.

They realized what they were doing is wrong and did not for get on the highway.

I'll tell you, one of the things that sometimes confuses me when you see the wrong way signs, but they're on an exit ramp and the entrance ramp is right next to it.

So I'm in the right lane.

I'm going on properly.

But half the time I'm like, Wait a minute, check myself.

And I think maybe that's okay because it makes me extra hyper about Am I doing it right?

Sometimes, though, it makes me think, Oh no, I'm in the wrong lane.

So, you know, there's going to have to be some education to this as well.

No, I'm the same way because sometimes it's especially depending on the angle that you're coming up on, you can conduct only seem like you're in the wrong lane.

And so I'm just looking around to make sure I'm doing what everyone else is doing.

But if it's the dead of night and no one else is getting off, it seems even easier to accidentally turn down the wrong one.

So this seems like it's been great.

Such a success in Cincinnati, and hopefully it'll be able to decrease these accidents which are really dangerous, especially if you're going on the speeds of the highway in the Cleveland area to Monday.

On the Sound of Ideas on 80 97w KSU more discussion about the incident where a student was struck by police in an Akron high school.

Connor Morris We'll be back for that.

I'm Mike McIntyre.

Thank you for watching and stay safe.