(upbeat music) - Early voting begins in Ohio for the high stakes midterm general election.

The Ohio State School Board moves a resolution opposing LGBTQ student protection to a committee rather than a vote.

And Ohio's six week abortion ban is on hold indefinitely, but state leaders want to challenge that.

"Ideas" is next.

(suspenseful music) Hello and welcome to "Ideas."

I'm Marlene Harris-Taylor in for Mike McIntyre.

Thanks for joining us.

The general election has begun.

Early voting started this week in Ohio.

Voters can expect lengthy ballots with a number of statewide races and issues in addition to local ones.

For a second time, the Ohio State School Board considered a resolution that would oppose federal protections for LGBTQ students.

And for a second time, after hours of testimony, the board sent it to a committee without a vote.

Ohio's so-called heartbeat, abortion law is paused indefinitely as a case in Cincinnati determines whether the law violates the state constitution.

But Ohio leaders say they will appeal and try to get the law re-implemented.

And Cleveland wants out of its police consent decree.

But a judge says, "Not enough progress has been made."

Joining me this week to talk about those stories and other news from Ideastream Public Media Deputy Editor for News, Andrew Meyer, and from the Buckeye Flame editor Ken Schneck, and from the Ohio Public Radio State House News Bureau reporter Jo Ingles, let's get started.

We are a little over three weeks to the general election, a midterm contest that will decide statewide executive officers as well as the balance of power in both Columbus and Washington DC.

Early voting began statewide this week.

So Andrew, people are already voting.

Early voting started this week.

- Yep, started earlier this week.

And at least as far as Cuyahoga County is concerned, we're seeing maybe a potential turnaround from the lackluster turnout that we saw in Ohio.

It's not one but two primaries this season.

I mean, I went back and looked at the numbers, 20% for the May primary, which was scheduled.

The August primary turnout was 8%, that was awful.

What Mike West at the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections is projecting at this point.

They're expecting maybe 60% turnout, which would be a dramatic turn around.

- That would great, right?

That's fantastic.

- That's Democratic participation.

And you talk about a long list of candidates and issues that are on the ballot, there are indeed.

And there are important ones too.

I mean, we're talking about potentially control of Congress.

We're talking about what's going to happen in the state legislature and a number of local issues that vary from municipality to municipality across Northeast Ohio.

But there is a lot to consider.

- And we should note that it's in person and mail-in that's going on already now.

- That's right, that's right.

There are options.

- So Jo, among the statewide races to be decided will be the makeup of the Ohio Supreme Court and the next Chief Justice, but a planned debate between Sharon Kennedy and Democrat Jennifer Bruner, that's falling through Jo.

- Well, it was actually a forum, we should say that it wouldn't be a head to head debate, but it has fallen through.

And the Ohio Debate Commission, that was the organization that was putting it together, hasn't really given a clear reason.

However, earlier this year, the Debate commission said that Jennifer Brunner, Justice Jennifer Brunner had agreed to be part of it.

So somewhere along the line, negotiations broke down.

But this is, one of those situations where statewide, we've had very little debates, forums or anything like that where people could be asked tough questions.

- And I should note that that debate commission, which canceled it Ideastream is a part of that.

So I should note that.

And my understanding is the negotiations reached an impasse.

At least that's what we're saying, that what we know about that situation.

- [Jo] Right.

- So Andrew, the interest among voters in Cuyahoga County and statewide is likely high.

As you were talking before, because we've got this high political climate right now and people are looking at that recent overturning of the Roe decision.

What do we know about how that's gonna influence folks?

- Well, it's really all intertwined and I'm hoping voters at home are paying attention to this.

Because usually the down ballot races and even something significant like the State Supreme Court doesn't get as much attention because people don't really know that much about the candidates who are running and what's at play.

But in the case of the State Supreme Court, so much is going to hinge on who gets to be the next Chief justice, because we're talking about critical decisions at the state judicial level when it comes to abortion and whether or not it can be constitutionally protected in Ohio, we're talking about the ongoing redistricting mess.

That's the four letter word I'll use for it.

But it's all going to continue to be in front of the state's highest court.

And currently the Chief Justice has sided with the Democrats when it comes to redistricting in continuing to rule over and over again that the, what the they've gotten from the State Redistricting Commission is unconstitutional.

You know, who is that Chief Justice, who is that Final Seventh member of the court is going to have a huge sway on the outcome of these cases that could impact, much more about government.

- Absolutely and Ken, how much do you think the fact that voters or will not be able to see the two Chief Justice candidates side by side in that forum?

How much do you, how important do you think that is that voters won't be able to have that information?

- Yeah, and we should say trending right now on Twitter, Rovember.

- Rovember.

- Rovember, interesting.

- So that's gonna catch on.

But I think that you hear from a lot of different organizations, inequality, Ohio, a ton of organizations, that this is the most important Supreme Court judicial election that Ohio has ever seen.

And that also means this is the first time anybody is talking about the judicial elections in Ohio.

'Cause that's not usually a huge topic of conversation.

So the opportunity to see these two candidates side by side in a forum or debate, whatever it was going to be, and hear how they would approach the position differently, wouldn't have just been about the two candidates, but also educating Ohio voters on what it is the Supreme Court actually does.

It's a real missed opportunity.

And as Jo said, we're not really sure why, except that they kept their negotiations confidential.

- So Jo, as Andrew said, election officials are expecting to turn out to be pretty high.

So are there indications that new voters are being engaged in this process?

Are new voters, the ones going to push that number up higher?

- Well, I talked with Jen Miller at the League of Women Voters of Ohio earlier this week, and she indicated that there has been a lot of interest in registration, new voter registration over the summer.

She said in the spring, it wasn't really, it was very lackluster, let's put it that way.

But she said since the beginning of the summer that's picked up.

Now, we also know that on June 24th, that's when the Supreme Court, the US Supreme Court ruled that Roe was no longer valid in the United States and Ohio's six week abortion ban, which banns abortion at the point fetal cardiac activity can be detected, that went into effect on June 24th.

We started hearing stories through the summer about the 10 year old rape victim who had to go to another state to get an abortion.

We've heard stories from doctors about how they cannot treat people because of different things that tied to the abortion ban.

So whether that's played into the uptick in registration is another question.

And would it be enough to really sway a vote significantly, maybe not, because the numbers still are not enough that they're going to really drive something, but they could affect close races.

(suspenseful music) - A resolution before the Ohio State School Board that opposes proposed federal protections for LGBTQ students brought hours of testimony to this week's meeting.

But once again, the board did not vote.

Instead, the state school board moved the resolution to an executive committee for further consideration.

So, Jo, do you expect that this resolution will come back for a vote?

- Maybe it could.

The sponsor of it, Brendan Shay, who is a member, he said that he fears that this will now just go into limbo and be shelved and not come back or not come back soon.

But it certainly will not come back before some of these school board members are up for a vote.

And it may happen that because the executive committee doesn't meet every month like the school board does, and there are questions about legality, there are a lot of questions about this actually, that school board members want to explore.

This may not come up for a vote until next year.

If that happens, some of the very members of the school board who have been listening to hours, and I do mean hours, it was more than four hours this month.

It was four hours last month.

I mean, a lot of testimony, they've been listening to this and they won't get the chance to vote on it.

It will be other people who haven't been there for all the testimony.

And so it could very well just get buried and not come back at all.

- And if it does come back to your point, maybe they'll have to do more hearings again for the new members on the board.

- Yeah, that's open too.

I mean, there are so many ways that this could go, but a lot of people are saying it really shouldn't have been brought so early without having more homework done on it anyway.

And that was the, the take on some of the members that, of the school board, they were saying we just, we have to look at these things because you're talking about Title IX, you're talking about money for school lunches.

This is a, I should say that this resolution is basically a pushback on a federal policy.

It's a federal anti-discrimination policy, and it's through the FDA and it affects schools that receive federal school lunch money, which is most public schools.

- Most schools, yeah.

- Yeah, so the thing is, what happens if there are cases of discrimination and the schools don't investigate those.

What happens then?

Could the federal government pull school lunch money?

Could the school district be penalized in some way?

Is the state liable?

Lots of questions about this.

And that's what they're looking at.

And we'll be looking at in this executive committee.

- So Ken, this proposal, this has changed under different administrations, right?

So these current protections that are currently in place came from the Bibb administration, but they haven't always been there, right?

- Yeah, if you want to look at how presidential administrations change public policy, we talk about this all the time in my public policy course, look at Title IX.

People are like, oh, what are they gonna do about social security and taxes and other things?

No, Title IX is one of the real litmus tests of what a presidential administration is going to do.

So President Obama had expanded the protections.

President Trump restricted the protections.

And what President Bibb has done is said, hey, in order to qualify for this school funding, you need to not discriminate against people based on sexual orientation, gender identity and gender expression.

That's it, that's all they're saying is you can't discriminate on these basis.

And then you have states, including Ohio and Attorney General Dave Yost, who has sued the Bibb administration to say, no, we should have the right to discriminate and that's really what the lawsuit is.

You can't tell us that we can't discriminate and threaten lunch money.

And so when you hear some of these narratives out there about, well, the Bibb administration is threatening school funding.

They're threatening school funding if your school district is discriminating against students based on sexual orientation and gender identity, that's what it's about, so.

- And after that part gets left, I heard a political ad and of course that part got left out.

- But they're take milk money.

They're only taking milk money if you're discriminating against students for sexual orientation.

Can I say this is the first time that I've covered one of these?

Well, no, it's the exact opposite.

I didn't cover this hearing.

Our staff reporter HL Camrado covered the hearing.

So I just listened as an LGBTQ person in Ohio without the frame of being a reporter, it was grueling.

It was absolutely rough.

What you mentioned earlier about the polarity between the two sides at the hearing last month, it was many, many more people who were against the resolution.

This was more split, but it wasn't just people supporting the resolution.

This was denying people getting up to that microphone for three minutes each denying the very existence of LGBTQ youth and for me as individual.

- Yeah and speaking of the youth, I mean this hearing again, we heard LGTBT youth say this doesn't make Ohio feel like a welcoming place to them.

- No, no, when we hear that at the Buckeye flame all the time, we've had op-eds from parents writing and saying, and we talked about it here on Ideastream.

We actually need to leave this state now because it's not safe for our LGBTQ youth.

We hear that from parents.

One of the other arguments that came up, which I thought was really aeffective, aeffective with an A and an E, was that this affects us economically.

That why would young, new Ohioans, potential Ohioans come to this state when we are so publicly promoting policies that would restrict the very identity of LGBTQ people.

It got to the point in the testimony where the executive director of Kaleidoscope, which is an organization in Columbus that works with LGBTQ youth across Ohio, she had to shelve one minute of her three minute remarks to just say, I just wanna comment on the fact that if you're an LGBTQ hearing this testimony, this has gotta be rough for you and know that we see you and we hear you.

She had to really pause and say that because that's how grueling and assaultive many saw this testimony as being to LGBTQ youth.

As an individual, it was hard to hear.

(suspenseful music) - Attorney General Dave Yost has taken steps toward appealing a Cincinnati judge's order in definitely blocking Ohio's so-called heartbeat law.

That law bans abortion at about six weeks.

The law is subject to a legal challenge in Hamilton County.

So Jo, I'm gonna start with you on this one.

Opponents claim that the law violates Ohio's constitution.

- Yeah, they say that the Constitution protects Ohioans.

That this is kind of an invasion against the privacy of Ohioans under the Constitution.

And they've had these hearings in the Hamilton County Court.

They had affidavits that showed from doctors, that showed situations where families could not make decisions about, for example, someone who had cancer could not get treatment for cancer because they could not get an abortion.

There were cases, very difficult cases that were mentioned in these affidavits and in the hearing itself.

And you heard from doctors who said, it has, now the heartbeat as it's called, heartbeat law has an exception.

And this exception is for the life of the the mother.

And there's also an exception in there that's kind of strange.

It's hard to explain, but it involves, if there's a organ that could fail or something like that, some kind of significant bodily injury.

But it's a very narrow exception.

And the doctors are saying that that exception is being interpreted differently by different doctors.

And the effect of that is that a lot of people who might be able to get an exception under the law and get an abortion, they're not getting it because the law is so vague.

So after all of this testimony, the Hamilton County Court, they put this on hold indefinitely.

But let's face it, there's an appeal now and this is not going to probably, this is going to be in court for a while.

- So Jo, there's been discussion about putting a referendum on the ballot about this, where does that effort stand?

- Well, I've had some people kind of pull me aside and when I've questioned about, when are you going to do this?

How are you going to do this?

All those reporter type questions, they really don't have the answers to right now, but they're telling me that they're kind of waiting to see what happens in the election and what happens with lame duck because it's possible that that things lame duck session.

By the way, I talk political sometimes I forget to explain what it is, but it's that period of time after the November election until the New General Assembly is seated.

And typically we see at the State House just a whole bunch of very controversial legislation being rushed through without hearings and all of that stuff.

So there's a definite thought that abortion could be one of those issues that is brought up.

There are several bills that the State House, including one that would totally outlaw abortion.

And those could be brought up in the lame duck session.

So the people behind this ballot issue, who would likely be the people pushing it are saying, well, we kind of wanna see what's going on, get the lay of the land before we go out there, start collecting signatures on a ballot issue and find out it doesn't really address all of the situations.

- That makes sense.

So Ken, you talked about this being a galvanizing issue with Rovember.

Is it really a galvanizing issue, what do you think?

- Yeah, I mean we are seeing right across the country, the registration of new voters of women is just far outpacing what it's been in the past.

I think that core question of will this motivate people to fill out that ballot or show up on election day?

That's what we don't know yet.

And we'd love to believe that what they're indicating in a poll is how they're going to vote.

But that doesn't mean that they're going to vote.

So that gap between beliefs and actually getting up and getting to that 60% would be great.

Also, a 100% would also be great of people voting.

- We can wish.

- We can wish, that's.

- We can wish, yeah.

- Well let's just manifest that right now, Marlene.

That's the big question is whether it's gonna get people to actually show up.

But I don't think that Ohio could do a more clear job in saying we are going to take action as a state around reproductive health.

And so you probably should vote 'cause we're gonna do something.

- And Andrew, you talked about the will of the voters.

If the supporters were actually able to get an initiative on the ballot about this, how do you think that would play out in Ohio?

- Well, I think it could push things in a different direction.

One of the big concerns this election cycle, there've been some discussion about putting a measure on the ballot to legalize recreational marijuana.

- Right.

- And the concern was that, oh, that could mobilize a certain segment of the political base to get out there and could skew things.

I have a feeling it had much less impact on the Ohio State level as opposed to the federal level.

But still, the same thing could hold true if a measure with abortion makes it on, it will motivate, it will drive a segment of voters definitely to the polls.

(suspenseful music) - Cleveland will not be ending its consent decree anytime soon.

A federal judge ruled this week to extend his oversight for two more years.

The consent decree is aimed at reforming the department's policies, training, and relationship with the community.

So Andrew, the city and the mayor wanted this to end.

- Yeah, because part of it is economics.

It's costing the city tens of millions of dollars to comply with and have the federal monitor in place.

So they're saying, look, we've had this for seven years, we've made progress.

And specifically the city put out a statement saying that, well actually it was community police commission cited chair, cited that the Bibb administration's contention has been the mayor is behind reforms.

It's great but the community, the report also most recently found that while there's been progress that has been made, significant progress, they're only about halfway there in the total list of 300 recommendations for reforms that is out there under the federal consent decree.

- That number really surprised me.

- Yeah.

- Because there's been, what is it, seven years?

- Seven years.

- And only halfway there.

- Only halfway there.

And it actually, this is a little more damning that, despite the fact that the Bibb administration says, the mayor's committed to this, we're pushing ahead with this.

What they find is that they've only made about 1% more improvement in progress in the time that the Mayor, Mayor Bibb has been in office.

- Well, we don't have a poll on this, Ken.

- [Ken] Right.

- But what do you think the feeling is in the city around this?

- Yeah, okay.

And I can say, as a reporter, you gotta love when the judge is unequivocal.

And the judge could not have been more unequivocal in his response in saying, it is clear that while the city has made substantial progress, it has not yet achieved substantial and effective compliance at this time.

And so you're certainly seeing Reform advocates saying, "Yep, that feels about right."

And I know that's gotta be hard for the Bibb administration.

One of the arguments that they are putting out there is that yes, we've only done this 1%, but that's 'cause the previous administration took all the low hanging fruit.

So they got rid of all of the 151s that they could just change some language on a website right quick.

And now we gotta get into the more substantial pieces.

So I think the advocates here in the city say, yeah, we're clearly not there yet.

And there's so much more reform that has to take place.

- Now, we did hear from the mayor Spokesperson late in the day yesterday, and they said that, okay, fine, but here's what we're looking for for the next step.

The first phase of this has been really on assessment.

- Right.

- And now they're looking at a new phase, which they say would be nice to hold back a little bit on the amount of oversight that's coming from the Federal Monitor.

I think that may still be a tough sell to Judge Oliver, but we'll have to see.

- So Andrew, what's the new timeline now?

- New timeline is the Federal Monitor is here for at least another two years.

Not two years, but at least another two years.

It's an ongoing process so that that kicking the can down the road is gonna be a few more years away and it could be longer.

(suspenseful music) So I was in New York City earlier this week to attend the Edward R. Murrow Awards, WKSU Ideastream Public Media picking one up for best documentary for the great work that Jacqueline Marino did last year on the documentary, "The Rural Doctor Is In."

- I'm clapping over here.

- She did reporting, taking a look at rural Ohio and how it is underserved by medical professionals, but not just that, but a solution for that.

Where NEOMED is training and focusing young doctors to go not just do a few years in those areas, but to set up shop and live and do their lives and careers there.

- It's a great honor, but can you explain to our listeners and viewers why this is such a big deal to get a Murrow.

- It's a national award.

First you compete for regionals, then you, if you're one of the regionals, you're up against 14 others potentially to get the national.

It is essentially the Oscars of the broadcast news world.

That's how big a deal it is.

- And for a organization like ours to get this, how often have we gotten Murrows?

- Rarely, rarely.

No, seriously, they're that competitive.

Not only that is they will get hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of submissions.

And in any category, the judges are told explicitly, if you don't feel there is one in there that rises to the standards of Edward R. Murrow, do not award an award.

And so, - So they may not, some years they may not give out anything?

- They may not give anything.

- I listened to the report last night and it's just some fantastic reporting.

Can you talk about how it came together?

- So Jacqueline came to me and said, "I want to do this reporting during a sabbatical period."

She's an established magazine writer in addition to being a great journalism faculty member at Kent State University, I've known her for years.

She said, I want to do this project, but I've never done audio and I want to create an audio story that goes with this.

So I said, I'm all in on this.

I worked with her in editing the script, I brought in our great producer, John Nun Guesser, who worked with her on helping her to develop her broadcast voice.

We worked over a series of months, putting it all together.

- Monday on the Sound of "Ideas" on WKSU, we look back on our series "Changing the Course of a River," the series focused on the comeback of the Mahoney River and the effort to reconnect the river's cities, and towns to it.

Plus we'll learn more about Rick Steve's new TV series on PBS called "Rick Steve's Art of Europe."

I'm Marlene Harris Taylor, Mike McIntyre will be back next week, thanks for watching.

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