(gentle suspenseful music) - Governor DeWine says, if voters say no to Issue 1, the state may soften abortion restrictions, Issue 1 supporters don't believe it.

Cedar Point's owner Cedar Fair will merge with Six Flags.

And Cleveland City Council may change public participation rules after protests disrupted a meeting.

"Ideas" is next.

(dramatic music) Hello and welcome to "Ideas," I'm Mike McIntyre.

Thanks for joining us.

Election day is Tuesday and voters will decide on the constitutional amendment enshrining abortion rights, and the statute legalizing recreational marijuana.

This week, governor Mike DeWine said, if voters reject Issue 1, the abortion amendment, the state could soften the heartbeat law, now suspended due to a legal challenge.

Issue 1 supporters don't believe him.

Democrats want the state to restore the nearly 27,000 voter registrations recently removed from the state's database.

Secretary of State, Frank LaRose says it was his duty required by federal law to purge the inactive registrations.

The company that owns Cedar Point and Kings Island announced this week that it's merging with another amusement park operator, Six Flags.

And Cleveland City Council is pondering changes to its public participation rules after Palestinian supporters disrupted a meeting with a protest this week.

Joining me for the round table from Idea Stream Public Media reporter Abbey Marshall and Associate Producer of Newscasts, Josh Boose.

In Columbus, State House News Bureau Chief Karen Kasler.

Let's get ready to round table.

Governor DeWine is an ardent opponent of abortion and he wants voters to defeat Issue 1.

If they do, he says he knows people want the state's restrictions to be loosened, to include exceptions for rape and incest, and he'll work to make that happen.

Supporters of Issue 1 say it's a hollow promise.

Karen, we were saying before how it looked like the early voting was lagging the August numbers, although there were more people who had asked for ballots, they just hadn't turned them back in.

So what we're seeing now is basically the return, - Well, I wish I could give you more updated figures than this, but the last time the early vote tracker on the Secretary of State's office website was updated was last Friday.

And so I'm hoping to get an explanation on why that is the case.

Actually, it was October the 26th, so last Thursday was last time it was updated, but going from that point, it looks like early voting has exceeded what we got in August, which is a big deal because what happened in August 39% of voters turned out, and that was for the election where there was only that one question on the ballot, the question of whether we should make it harder to amend Ohio's constitution by requiring a 60% voter approval threshold.

And so we're on track to beat that, which is good.

If you go back to 1983, the average for odd year elections in terms of turnout is about 42%.

So that puts us probably close to that average.

- So what does that say?

I saw some coverage that early voting was coming from rural areas.

Do we, can we have any idea how this might affect both of those state issues?

- Well, I know that both political parties have really tried to embrace early voting.

Certainly Democrats have talked about it for a while.

Republicans are now really pushing it.

Republican Party Chair, Alex Triantafilou has said several times it's okay to vote that way, which is a phrase that he's trying to push toward voters in the Republican party who have been concerned about early voting led by the unsubstantiated claims of former President Trump, that early voting is somehow problematic.

So the idea of banking your vote is something that both parties are getting out there and the parties have been pretty clear, especially on their stances on Issue 1, where Republicans are opposed to Issue 1, Democrats are supportive of Issue 1.

- Let's talk about an interesting development this week, Governor Mike DeWine floated the possibility of tweaking the heartbeat law, which is right now on hold due to litigation, but his promise was, if you defeat Issue 1 because it's far too extreme, then we've heard you, we know that you want exceptions in the heartbeat law for incest and rape and perhaps some others, and we'll work on that.

That didn't come across as a solid promise to those who are supporting Issue 1.

- Well, he's been talking about this stance since about April.

My State House News Bureau colleague, Jo Ingles, talked to him back then and he had suggested that lawmakers should revisit the six week abortion ban, which is currently on hold.

It's before the Ohio Supreme Court being decided on a technical issue.

But the question of course is if Issue 1 passes, will it be gone?

If Issue 1 fails, will it go into effect in fairly short order?

And DeWine has been saying, and including in an interview for our TV show, "The State of Ohio" last week, that the vast majority of people in Ohio feel that there needs to be an exception for rape and incest, which I'll note, the six week ban does not include exceptions for those.

And so DeWine said quote, "So that certainly will be a part of what together we would all come up with if this was defeated."

Now, I don't know that DeWine is really somebody who could promise what the legislature will or won't do.

And so it certainly raises the question of whether, if it does fail, will there be a potential to revisit the six week abortion ban or will it just stand because there are some lawmakers who actually wanna go further than that.

- Right, I was gonna say that the evidence is there are people that want further restrictions not to lessen the restrictions.

And you just brought up an interesting point that this isn't the first time the governor has said this.

He said it back in April.

Well, if he wanted to push it back in April, the legislature certainly wasn't on board with it because it's been many months and nothing's happened.

So, is it a hollow promise?

- Yeah, and there is a split in the pro-life community over whether there should be exceptions.

I went back and listened to the testimony from the sponsor of the six week ban, Senator Kristina Roegner from Hudson, and she made the point that there are no exceptions in that ban because there should not be any discrimination based on how the child was conceived.

And so that really shows that there is the split among people who are opposed to abortion, whether they wanna go full on, no exceptions, absolute ban from conception to exceptions and getting to a certain point of viability or whatever.

There's a real split there and that has made it difficult to come up with a compromise.

- We've got some feedback from our listeners and you can join us with your thoughts by sending an email to soi@ideastream.org.

Kim says, "If the Republicans had wanted to tweak Issue 1 they already could have."

And Connie says he, meaning the governor, "Can promise whatever he wants, but the legislature doesn't have to go along as gun restrictions have shown us, don't believe him."

And that's an interesting point too.

Governor DeWine wanted certain gun restrictions, legislature said no go.

- Yeah, he proposed a bill that would do some things with regard to gun regulations after the mass shooting in Dayton in 2019 when a crowd greeted him when he was out there, and the crowd was saying, "Do something," that didn't go anywhere.

And it shows that there is definitely not the same attitudes on some of these issues between the governor and state lawmakers, though Mike DeWine has been strongly pro-life, strongly anti-abortion his entire career.

He signed the six week abortion ban.

He said he signed it because he wanted to see it go to the US Supreme Court.

And of course the US Supreme Court did decide to overturn abortion rights.

But the issue of whether he could actually make something like this happen or there's any appetite in the legislature for a change in the six week ban that's real questionable at this point.

(dramatic music) - Democratic lawmakers want Secretary of State Frank LaRose to restore almost 27,000 voter registrations he removed from the roles for inactivity.

LaRose directed elections boards to remove inactive registrations in late September after the early voting window for military and overseas voting began.

Karen, story's gotten more exposure over the last week with both LaRose and Democrats accusing each other of playing politics.

LaRose said something like, "It's fitting on Halloween that liberals want to let dead people vote."

- Yeah, he shared this response on social media saying that he will "Never apologize for protecting the integrity of Ohio's elections.

It's the law, it's my duty."

And then he closed it with, by saying, "It's fitting that liberals are trying to help dead people vote on Halloween."

He says that those who were removed had either moved or died and had not voted in their registered address for four years and had not responded to multiple rounds of warnings that they were gonna be removed from the voter rolls.

But the timing of this has a lot of people questioning what's going on because the voters were removed after the August special election, which we just talked about a minute ago.

That was one that had one question on it, and Secretary of State, Frank LaRose, along with most Republicans supported Issue 1 in August.

And now here we are going into November where Issue 1 is about abortion and reproductive rights and LaRose, and most Republicans are opposing Issue 1.

And that's when these 27,000 or so voter registrations were removed.

His office keeps saying that this is part of the law that none of these, these aren't people who were removed, these were inactive voter registrations that were removed.

And that's what we're trying to find out is, are there people who are behind this who had done voter activity?

They'd either voted or they'd responded to one of these mailings or they had done something that's supposed to trigger voter registrations being updated.

That's the real question.

- So what should voters do if they find themselves removed from the database in error?

If they want to vote, what's your recourse?

- Well, you should check on the Secretary of State's website to see if you are still registered to vote.

If it doesn't show up that you are, then there's early voting this weekend.

Early voting ends on Sunday.

There's no early voting on Monday, election day is Tuesday.

The best course of action potentially could be to go to the Board of Elections with an ID, and you do have to bring a photo ID, and explain the situation and asked to vote provisionally.

The Secretary of State's office has said that there is room for people to vote provisionally if they've been mistakenly removed from the roles.

But you know, that's a step, that's an extra step that maybe you weren't expecting to take if you find yourself on this list.

(dramatic music) - Amusement park operators, Cedar Fair and Six Flags announced Thursday they're merging.

The new combined company will operate under the Six Flags banner and own 27 amusement parks, including Cedar Point, 15 water parks and nine resorts.

Its headquarters will be in Charlotte, not Sandusky.

Josh, although the headquarters will be in Charlotte, company retains this footprint here.

What's the reaction that we've seen so far is that, as I understand it, a lot of the business already is done in Charlotte.

- A lot of, since the new CEO of Cedar Fair came in a couple of years ago that was set up in Charlotte at Carowinds one of the Cedar Fair's parks there.

So that's not surprising, but again, the major operation of Cedar Fair is still at Cedar Point, right on the park, I think, or at the park.

I think a lot of people, especially as I was looking through social media and X, formerly Twitter, last night, people still wanted that Sandusky connection.

That was the big concern.

People being just average ticket holders or season pass holders that are gonna go.

I know Eric Wobser, the CEO of Greater Sandusky Partnership said, you know, they did have their executives in Charlotte.

It's not a major shift, that's where Carowinds is located.

So no big surprises here, but what a huge, huge merger that Cedar Fair has certainly been considering the last couple of years and finally went through.

- Seems like a no-brainer in that the boards of both unanimously approved, they've got a system in place where the Cedar Fair CEO is gonna run the company, the CEO of Six Flags is gonna be the Chairman of the Board.

All of that stuff seems to be worked out and the idea that there'd be some synergy between those parks.

But I wonder in Cleveland if people just aren't really into Six Flags because of what happened with Geauga Lake.

- Well, there's a lot of loyalty and as I was looking last night, again ,on social media, people were saying, "No, look what happened.

Look what happened, look what Six Flags has done here.

Look what Six Flags has done there."

They put Cedar Point certainly in a different league, if you will.

And I think there's a certain sense of pride because it does have such a huge name recognition around northeastern Ohio and northern Ohio.

Lots of selling points though.

I mean, look, you have less competition with this merger.

More cash flow, I was in, listening to that conference call yesterday morning between Six Flags and Cedar Fair and they were very excited.

Obviously they're looking to brand this as a whole, but they made a very clear point that, look, "We our people that come visit us.

Our visitors, our ticket holders have a lot of loyalty to us and we don't want to make, essentially rock the boat too much."

(dramatic music) - After a raucous protest by Gaza supporters Monday, Cleveland City Council may tighten rules regarding public behavior at council meetings.

The protestors packed the meeting and disrupted proceedings as they called on Mayor Justin Bibb to denounce a social media post he made in support of Israel after the Hamas terrorist attack October 7th.

As some spoke during the public comment session, demonstrators held up signs with names and ages of Palestinian children, they said had been killed in the war in the response by Israel.

It had to be a bit of a surreal scene usually at city council, it's pretty sedate affair.

- Yeah, so since this October 7th Hamas attack and Bibb's social media post where essentially he tweeted or Xed, I don't know the right term, - [Mike] We can still say that.

- He basically said, you know, "Cleveland stands in solidarity with Israel."

And people came to say, you know, "That's not representative of my experience or my Cleveland."

They came and spoke against, you know, some of the things that Israel has been doing in Gaza, all these things that public comment period is for.

Now where President Blaine Griffin says it crossed the line is that they violated rules, and for example, one of the rules he cited was, you're not allowed to hold up signs in counsel.

And so he called it civil unrest and he said it crossed from public comment to civil unrest, especially when we got into the later part of the meeting with chanting, which we'll get into I'm sure, but I mean, to be fair, was it civil unrest?

I don't know, but the point of civil unrest is to be disruptive and that's what happened.

- Right, and you were saying there was chanting in that meeting, so just, was it drowning out what's going on there?

- Yeah, so the public comment period, like I said, First Amendment, you can go in, say what you wanna say.

The chanting that happened in the later part of the meeting, which again Griffin says, you know, disturbed the meeting and broke the rules, was when council members have the floor, they can talk about whatever they wanna talk about.

Councilwoman Howse-Jones was talking about trunk-or-treat and then said, you know, let's go vote.

And then all of a sudden this chanting breaks out.

It sounded something like, "Mayor Bibb, you can't hide.

We charge you with genocide."

And it just kept going for several minutes.

President Griffin asked that the person that was leading the chant to be removed after several minutes, police escorted him out, some people left, but it was disruptive 'cause it was over, you know, council members trying to speak.

People weren't listening as Griffin was banging his gavel, that sort of thing.

But again, if the intent is to disrupt, that's sometimes how these protests go.

- The senior statesman on the city council, Mike Polensek says one of the responses should be that only Clevelanders get to speak.

Some of these folks might have been suburban residents.

I'm not sure that would solve the problem.

You'd probably get a Clevelander with the same kind of opinion, and perhaps the people could still pack you can't say only Clevelanders can come into the room.

But that's one of the things, what else is council looking at to change its rules?

- Right, so that was, yeah, one suggestion.

As you mentioned, some of the people that spoke were from the surrounding suburbs, but some were from Cleveland.

Griffin tells me that he will be meeting with the full body soon to discuss tightening rules in how people can behave in public comment.

But just in council chambers as a whole, there are some concerns about First Amendment freedoms as that goes.

And it's not just related to this specific incident, but last month I wrote a story where they had cut the mics of two speakers during public comment period.

One of whom was, you know, giving some of that hate speech, being anti-Semitic, being homophobic, but as First Amendment experts say, that is still protected speech.

In another case, someone was just, you know, running through the list of, here are some council members that have received funding from this political action group and they cut the mic because you're not supposed to directly attack members, I guess is is the rule.

So what those rules will be, we don't know yet.

Griffin said he'll make that public as soon as they meet and discuss and approve those.

But we will likely see some sort of fight about First Amendment rights, 'cause if you have, you don't have to have a public comment period in government meetings, but if you do, according to the Supreme Court, you have to adhere to the First Amendment.

- And it's a relatively new development public comment.

It hasn't been a tradition in Cleveland City Council.

It's been a recent.

- 2021, I believe, was when it was instated.

(dramatic music) - The massive higher education overhaul bill targeting woke culture on campus proposed by Senator Jerry Cirino, a Kirtland Republican has been amended again this time to drop a provision that would've prohibited professors from going on strike.

Karen, Cirino believes neither faculty nor staff should be able to strike, but he agreed to remove the provision from this bill, why?

- He says that this is something he was asked to do by the house.

The bill is not passed the house, it's passed the Senate.

They tried to put it into the budget and it was removed.

But he said that this is a compromise that he's willing to make to get this bill forward.

Of course, the question then becomes, when it comes back to the Senate, what's gonna happen to it there?

One of the other things that he did in terms of compromise, I think, potentially is the trustees, the term of university trustees, it's now nine years.

He made it, I think it was four years, and then this bill now sets it at six years.

Governor DeWine, who actually appoints trustees had said he was concerned about shortening those trustee terms that dramatically.

But this is one of the other things it does.

And you're right, the student groups that oppose this, the union groups, faculty groups that opposed this bill before and have been very vocal about it, still don't like it.

- He still maintains though college campuses are so far left that this bill promoting what he calls intellectual diversity is needed.

- Yeah, and he says that even with these changes, he thinks that that is going to be something that's gonna happen with this bill.

But you know, the question, of course, is, are college campuses really discriminating against people who have conservative views?

And there aren't any reliable studies or anything that you can point to that says definitively that yes, people who have conservative views are being discriminated against and though he has his own studies and reports and the faculty and other people who are supportive of getting rid of this proposal have theirs as well.

- There's a process called retrenchment where basically programs and degrees and by extension faculty can be cut that remains in the bill, and that's a sticking point.

- Yeah, this is really important because he's talked about how this bill is a way for colleges and universities to keep up and to keep competitive.

And he says, just like in business when there's no need for something anymore, colleges and universities should be able to get rid of, say, majors that aren't needed anymore.

Though there are faculty members who are associated with that major, and so that's an issue, I think that's a potential sticking point here.

If you get rid of a major, he was using in committee the example of a French major, if you get rid of that major, what happens to those people who are majoring in that?

What happens to those professors who teach that?

And so that's a another area that's really of interest here.

(dramatic music) - Look up in the sky, it's a bird, it's a plane.

It's your lisinopril?

The Cleveland Clinic announced this week it aims to start direct delivery of pharmacy prescriptions to patients' homes using airborne drones by 2025.

And Abbey's like, what's lisinopril?

Well, anybody over 40 something knows what it is.

It's for your blood pressure.

The clinic is hooking up with a San Francisco company that already uses drones for all kinds of deliveries, Abbey?

- Yeah, so they deliver vaccines, blood animal health products and more to homes, hospitals, businesses in the United States and other countries.

We obviously haven't seen that yet here, but we might here soon, which actually would be quite convenient because when I used to live in Akron sometimes I'd be waiting for my prescription for like an hour, so it seems great - The humanity.

(Abbey laughs) 10 minutes for a prescription to show up, Josh.

I've waited longer in the pharmacy at CVS while a lady scanned through all of her over the counter Metamucil.

So this is gonna be a real convenience, but I just imagine, you know, the sky's full of drones.

I guess this happens already, so I'm old fashioned and can't envision it, but eventually that's gonna be a thing.

- Welcome to the future, Mike.

I know I was showing my partner last night when I was reviewing this story, I said, "Watch this animation of this drone."

And yes, it flies from the pharmacy, a small drone, it goes right to your house, a zip line lowers a container, your prescription is dropped off at your doorstep.

I think an episode of "The Jetsons" this happened a couple of times.

So yeah, it's actually unbelievable, but very efficient.

- And there's also a central Ohio healthcare concern that's moving to drone delivery.

So this is gonna be something throughout the state, but Abbey, the FAA, the Federal Aviation Administration has to be consulted.

These things can't fly at any height and anywhere.

- Yeah, and that's true of any drone operation though, commercially or recreationally.

You have to have a certificate, again, whether you're flying commercially or recreationally.

And anyone that's used our newsroom drone knows that our brand new newsroom drone, which I have not, but it's on my list.

- You can't, you gotta get your license first.

- [Abbey] I will, yeah.

- Well that's, I'm telling you, I heard from somebody that is going through that training and it's not like, "Oh, just get on and you're playing like a video game."

Like it is hard training to be able to control a drone.

Our Ygal Kaufman is our drone expert, and anytime you see something like the exit in Strongsville at 82 that Amy Eddings had done a story on, we had this great video from overhead, that's Ygal flying the drone with FAA approval.

(dramatic music) This weekend we'll set our clocks back one hour ending daylight saving time, that means an extra hour of sleep or fun and like clockwork, as we prepare to fall back, there's another push by lawmakers to put an end to falling back and springing forward.

The issue of whether to switch clocks crops up almost as regularly as the time change itself.

- Oh yeah, this is a perennial concern.

Everybody hates going forward in the spring.

Everybody hates losing the daylight in the fall.

I mean, it just, it's a continuous thing.

But I mean, I think that this is the kind of thing that maybe a federal piece of legislation would have to resolve because what are you gonna do?

Just in Ohio not change the clocks, I don't know.

But that the resolution here, a resolution does not have the force of law so it wouldn't be able to make a change like all of a sudden we do not go to, we don't change the clocks or whatever.

- Got an email from John who lives in Coventry Township.

He says, "I don't mind getting rid of the time change, but I'd rather we were on standard time all year, not daylight saving time.

I would like the sun to be overhead at noon rather than an hour later.

If businesses or schools want more evening daylight for employees or students, they can change their schedules."

Does it screw you up as much as it does me, Josh?

- You know, I lived in Indiana, lemme tell you this, a couple, well, several years ago now, and for part of the year, we did not change the time when I lived there, for part of the year we were on Eastern Time and then for part of the year we were on Central Time.

So that was more confusing than changing the clocks, you know, one hour before or one hour back.

Indiana has since changed, it's now Eastern standard time.

But yeah, I mean, I think it's certainly, yeah, annoying.

- You hosted "Morning Edition" earlier this week.

I think that would do more to screw up your clock.

- Definitely, I'm still recovering, I think a little bit.

- And we had another thought from a listener who said, "It's easy, just make it permanent standard time."

So apparently that means that is the vote here.

Not daylight saving time, but standard time all the time.

Appreciate all your feedback on that.

Abbey, what are you gonna do with your extra hour?

- Sleep.

- [Mike] Okay, I thought so, Karen, same thing.

- That sounds like a good idea, yeah.

- I think you'll probably spend it pouring over a budget of some sort.

- Well, we've got an election coming up next week, go vote.

(dramatic music) - Monday on the "Sound of Ideas" on 89.7 WKSU we'll explore how artificial intelligence is making inroads into creative fields and how it's impacting the art world.

I'm Mike McIntyre, thank you so much for watching and stay safe.

(inspiring music) (bright music)