(staccato music) - [Mike McIntyre] New voting rules are creating confusion and cries of hypocrisy as early voting begins for the August election to decide State Issue 1.

Akron and Cleveland move toward implementing voter-approved citizen oversight of police.

In Cleveland, it's been messy.

And a shooting in Cleveland's popular warehouse district has intensified the struggle to quell violence in the city.

"Ideas" is next.

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

I'm Mike McIntyre.

Thank you for joining us.

Early voting has begun for the August special election to decide State Issue 1.

If it passes, citizens will have a much harder time amending the state constitution.

New election rules this year may take people by surprise.

Already there's confusion and claims of hypocrisy over mail-in ballot applications.

Both Cleveland and Akron voters approved measures to give civilians oversight of police.

Akron's board appears to be making progress.

Cleveland's is a mess.

A group that wants citizens to spend a chunk of Cleveland's budget is pushing for a November ballot issue and turned in signatures this week.

And police are called on to perform a lot of duties in Cleveland's neighborhoods, but this might be a first.

They corralled a bull roaming the city's east side.

Joining me this week from Ideastream Public Media, reporters Abigail Bottar and Matt Richmond to talk about these stories and more.

State House News Bureau Chief Karen Kasler joins us from Columbus.

All right, let's get ready to round table.

Early voting opened this week for the August 8th special election where voters will decide Issue 1, which would raise the threshold to pass constitutional amendments to 60%.

There are new rules for voting this year.

They include requiring photo ID for in-person voting, and requiring absentee voters to use a standard mail-in ballot application form from the Ohio Secretary of State.

That already though, has led to confusion for voters, and Karen, let's dig into that.

The "Cleveland Jewish News" sent an older form out to prospective voters.

It said, "Go ahead and use this form."

The folks did for Issue 1, to register to vote, or I'm sorry, to get their mail-in ballot.

It appears that the Secretary of State's office handled that a little differently than another group, which was supporters of Issue 1, did when they sent out what weren't official forms.

- Well, here's the scenario.

When I talked to Secretary of State Frank LaRose on Saturday, which was before early voting started, he mentioned that the "Cleveland Jewish News", he didn't say it by name, but that this newspaper had published a form that did not work in terms of accepting voter, being an acceptable application form.

And he said about 30 people returned it.

The Board of Elections has been contacting those.

Well then, on Tuesday when early voting started, there was this report that this pro-Issue 1 group, Protect our Constitution, sent out mailers also using the wrong form, an old form.

And then LaRose's office that evening put out a directive saying, or an email saying older forms are okay, as long as they are still compliant with the law that requires photo ID.

So you have to have certain things on this application, such as a copy of your photo ID, the last four digits of your social security number, or your driver's license or state ID number.

And so if a form doesn't have that, it's not gonna be accepted.

When I talked to the Secretary of State's office yesterday, they said this has been the way it's been since the directive was issued in February, and that the "Cleveland Jewish News" published an old form that didn't have all that information.

And the "Cleveland Jewish News" said, hey, they downloaded the form from the Secretary of State's website.

All of this really speaks to how complicated voting laws have gotten.

I mean, the Secretary of State's office even said they didn't expect people to necessarily notice that the voter application, the absentee voter application law had changed, but it did.

And so now, it was in effect in May, but now you've got a lot more people requesting those early ballots.

And so they're concerned about sending in the right form, making sure they get their absentee voter, their absentee ballot so they can return it on time.

- It got a little ugly, because we've got folks that are accusing the Secretary of State of hypocrisy, because the way they see it is he said no to these ballots that were, or these applications that were sent in from the newspaper.

But then he said yes to the ones that were clearly going to be pro-Issue 1.

And by the way, he has been campaigning relentlessly for Issue 1, as the Secretary of State.

Some people have some questions about that, but he's a huge advocate of that and has been doing it on his social media.

But it got a little ugly with people calling him hypocritical, and there have been some news stories.

He gets on his Twitter and starts attacking reporters like Morgan Trau from WEWS and the Capital Journal, essentially accusing them of shoddy work for reporting what people are saying.

- Well, let's keep in mind one thing too, that not only he's one of the initiators of Issue 1, I mean, going back to November when they were first talking about this.

He's also potentially launching a U.S. Senate campaign.

So there's that thing to keep in the back of your mind, I think.

But I'm still trying to sort out exactly what happened here, because the "Cleveland Jewish News" tells me that they got that form from the Secretary of State's website, whereas the Secretary of State's office suggests that they took that form and kind of made it their own and kind of altered it a little bit.

But yeah, the timing of this really makes people wonder, "Hey, if a mailer'd come out from an anti-Issue 1 group, would the Secretary of State say, 'Oh, yeah, that's an old form, but we will still use that.'"

So when I talk to voting rights groups, which are on board against Issue 1, they say they're pleased at least these older forms will be accepted, as long as they have that valid ID that I mentioned.

But they're watching this, and they're concerned about the timing of this to make sure that the law is not being applied unfairly.

- Karen, one of the reasons that August elections were ruled out by legislatures who then brought it back in for this one particular issue was that turnout is very low.

And for this particular election, we now have the Secretary of State predicting that it's going to be similar to the last time we had an August election.

He thinks it's gonna be single-digit turnout.

- Yeah, and when I asked him about that this weekend, I mean, I asked him, "What do you expect turnout to be?"

He said he wasn't gonna predict turnout, but he wouldn't be surprised if turnout were about what it was last August, when there was a legislative primary.

You might remember that because all the redistricting saga resulted in a situation where the primary couldn't be, for legislators, couldn't be in May, it had to be in August.

And that was a change, that was a change from what we've heard from Republican officeholders who have supported Issue 1, who have said, "Hey, the reason we're gonna put this on the August ballot, it's gonna get a lot of attention.

People are gonna be paying attention.

Even though it's a summertime election, we expect turnout to be fairly good."

And now Secretary of State is saying he expects turnout, he wouldn't be surprised if turnout were 7.9%, which is what it was last August.

So that's a change in tune, I think.

- It's interesting, Abigail, if you're looking at social media, which isn't the, you know, the arbiter of all things, nor do signs vote, when people count yard signs.

But it seems to me that for an August election particularly, knowledge is a lot higher than it usually is, and it seems like excitement is as well.

- That people know about this?

I mean, yeah, I think I'm seeing a lot of, like you said, yard signs, a lot of people talking about this on social media.

But then I think we're also in our own little bubble where we all do this for work, and we talk about this a lot.

I was on my TikTok yesterday.

On my For You page, I got a video of someone talking about HB 1 and trying to get people to vote no on it.

And all of the comments were people from Ohio talking about how they had no idea there even was an August election, let alone what was on the ballot.

So, I mean, yes, I think that there is, what I'm seeing on social media and from talking to people in the community, is that there is a lot of support and opposition to this, and maybe more than an August election in years past.

But there's still a lot of people in the state that don't even know that we're gonna be voting in August at all.

- That's important, Karen, for us to step back and think of that, because we talk about it every week.

We have it on the air every day.

"The Plain Dealer" and cleveland.com are hammering coverage, as are the other newspapers across the state, you guys at the State House News Bureau.

So we're like, "Of course, everybody knows about this."

And yet you find out people on social media are like, "Wait, there's an election?"

- I've been doing this long enough to know that of course, no, there are a lot of people who don't know about this.

I mean, when we talk about Republican officeholders suggesting there will be big turnout, I mean, elections officials have said it could be 30%, which is not big turnout at all.

I think it's interesting to look at the early voting numbers that are coming in from the various counties.

I mean, in Franklin County, there was a line outside waiting when the Board of Elections opened on the first day of early voting, which is really unusual for a summertime vote.

It's really kind of extraordinary.

Now that suggests that there is more interest here.

But again, there's so many people who don't know about this.

One thing that helps is ads.

And so the Vote No people have done about three, three and a quarter million dollars' worth of ads on TV and then also on radio.

The Vote Yes people have only been on radio, but now they're launching, from what I've heard, a TV ad campaign.

There's potentially a lot of money here to put that forward on both sides of this issue.

And so those ads may help raise some awareness, but it's still gonna be really low turnout compared to a presidential election, or even a gubernatorial election.

- Which adds to the argument that the folks had who didn't want to see this go on an August ballot, which is, this is a very important change in state law.

It's a big issue in terms of the threshold to get something on the Constitution, get an amendment to the Constitution.

So let's have it in one of those more populated elections.

- Yeah, and that was the argument when the Constitutional Modernization Commission met 10 years ago, they talked about raising this threshold to 60%, 55%, whatever.

But the idea was brought up as this should be something, a constitutional amendment, should be something that should be on a ballot, on a November ballot, and ideally on a November ballot during a presidential year, because that's the most number of people who vote.

We get, you know, potentially 70% of registered voters.

And when you start talking about 30% of registered voters might turn out for this election, that's 30% of registered voters.

Not all Ohioans are registered voters.

So it's really an even smaller percentage of Ohioans who could potentially decide this very important issue that would go forward, you know, in perpetuity.

(dramatic music) - Cleveland voters approved civilian oversight of police with Issue 24 in 2021.

It's halfway through 2023, and the Cleveland Community Police Commission is too busy bickering to actually get down to overseeing police conduct, training, and policies.

Akron voters approved their own policing Issue in 2022, and implementation there appears to be much smoother.

As Matt reported on the "Sound of Ideas" earlier this week, the commission's June meeting devolved into shouting, as members disagreed over appointing an executive director, actually spent their time arguing over the definition of the word, or.

It seems in contrast to what's going on in Akron, where they've also approved such a board, and just this week approved their rules and said, "This is what we're gonna do.

We want Council to give us approval of that."

It seems like it's moving the way bureaucracies do.

Cleveland's, Matt, is a mess.

- Yeah, it's been pretty tough to watch.

There's a lot of personality clashes, a lot of sort of power struggles.

There's growing factions.

So there's a lot of fighting going on and it's been really ugly.

And then I think, you know, when you go to the meetings, members of the public who are there and are kind of commenting are the ones who really want to see this work.

So there's a lot of anger from some members of the public about the way things are going.

- It's been nearly two years since Issue 24 passed.

What's the biggest stumbling block to them moving forward?

I mean, they haven't yet appointed, well, they finally voted yes, that was what the contention was over, an executive director.

The mayor has not yet given his approval.

But is that the biggest stumbling block, who's gonna lead it?

Or what else has been the problem?

- Well, I think, so now they have set up some committees where the actual kind of work is gonna be done.

So they have a committee, you know, they're issuing over a million dollars in grants this year to community groups.

They have a committee for officer accountability, they have a committee on policies.

And those are, I think three members, three to five members each.

And so I think the biggest stumbling block moving ahead now that that work is gonna get started is gonna be trust among Council, among Commission members.

Just about everybody told me that it's just broken on the commission right now.

And so when you start to see those committees doing all this important work and then just kind of bring it back to the full commission, is the full commission gonna kind of accept the work of these other Commission members?

- Does this give some validity to what we heard when Issue 24 was a thing not yet voted on, where only Justin Bibb, as a mayoral candidate, was in favor of it?

Mayor Frank Jackson was vehemently against it, as was Kevin Kelley, who was the candidate for mayor, all warning about how difficult this would be.

That it, not only the issues you've discussed with trying to organize and get something done, but also trust with the police department, the effect on the police department.

It's now at very low numbers.

Is it making it difficult to attract cops to come to Cleveland, all of those types of things.

What's the thinking on that?

- You know, I mean, it is two years since it's been passed.

It's still early, as far as like getting the commission members seated.

It's still, I mean, you know, like you mentioned, in Akron, they've reached the point where they've sent their rules for approval of the City Council.

This commission's about at that point too.

And they've had to come up with a lot more rules 'cause they have a lot more authority.

You know, I think drawing a connection between this commission and the low numbers of police officers is a stretch, 'cause they haven't done anything yet.

If officers are leaving at the idea that this commission might someday do something to them that they don't like, you know, that's a pretty big leap.

You know, I don't doubt that maybe some officers who are 25 years are looking around and thinking that the department is about to change a lot and they're at their full pension, so, you know, good time to leave.

But the recruiting part of it seems to me to be a stretch, or the, you know, officers early in their career saying, "Whoa, I didn't sign up for this," it does seem to be a bit of a stretch at this point.

- And it should be noted that difficulty in recruiting police officers is happening in departments all across the country, those that are in consent decrees and those that are not, those that have citizen oversight and those that don't.

- Yeah, and here, you know, in the last budget session when the administration went in to talk about recruiting, 'cause it's just been a running issue, they explained to Council that, you know, over COVID, this kind of system of recruiting in neighborhood businesses, recruiting in schools, trying to get people where they are, to get 'em to sign up to go to the academy, all that broke down.

And the person who set that up, Charmin deLeon, she left the department.

They have not, you know, it's not like the recruiting team is just gonna sit there and wait for COVID to end and not be reassigned.

So they've had to build it back up, and that's played a big role in why the last class had like nine officers in it.

- Let me ask this too.

There's a consent decree, obviously, and that's been going on for some time.

Cleveland's trying to get out from under it while all of this is happening.

What is the commission's impact on the consent decree?

- That's an interesting question.

You know, I think they have a role in the consent decree.

The previous commission before Issue 24 was created by the consent decree, they are supposed to do work, engaging the community in the reform process.

They now are kind of, their powers have expanded quite a bit.

But the work that they do has to kind of fit in with the goals of the consent decree.

So, you know, I think the city is moving ahead with kind of the changes to policy, with increased recordkeeping, with trying to meet the requirements of the consent decree.

But the Community Police Commission's role kinda is supposed to be worked out as part of the process within the city for all this stuff.

So, you know, I don't think that the consent decree is ending anytime soon.

And I think as the CPC gets up and starts doing more of the work, that you'll start seeing it play more of a role in the monitoring team's evaluation of the consent decree and in the federal judge's.

- And CPC is the Community Police Commission.

- [Matt Richmond] Sorry, yes.

- Just so we know.

Real quick, Abigail, in Akron, as I mentioned, they approved their rules.

It includes investigatory and subpoena power.

That's been a big sticking point, because the union, the police union is like, "Hold on a second, that's not your job."

- Right, right.

The biggest issue is that the union believes that the power, if the board had the power to investigate, it would go against the police department's current collective bargaining agreement.

And then they also, they've stated in a meeting in June that if the board gave themself the power to subpoena witnesses, they would go to court to try to block that.

Clearly the board disagrees and says that they do have the power to subpoena witnesses.

And the issue is that the union, you know, doesn't want to, they say they don't want to have a bad relationship with the board.

They say they want this to work, but that these are like gonna be roadblocks for that.

And so it's gonna be interesting to see how Council, if Council approves this, what kind of discussion Council has with this.

Because I think there is a want in the city for this to work, for all of these different actors to get along.

But these were big sticking points with the union and the board is going on ahead with them.

So it'll be interesting to watch how that unfolds.

(dramatic music) - A campaign to create a Cleveland People's Budget where citizens control some of the spending of public dollars may be on the November ballot if signatures turned in by People's Budget Cleveland are certified.

Matt, the charter amendment seeks to put 2% of the city's budget into this People's Budget.

It would amount to about $14 million if it was this year.

And they'd be able to decide how it's spent.

- Yeah, it creates an interesting process where people can submit ideas and pitches basically, and then the public votes on 'em.

And, you know, $14 million is, as the organizers said, more than anybody has put towards this anywhere.

But there are a lot of cities that do sort of a smaller scale version of this.

- So the City Council members who are opposed to this, and there are many, say, "That's what we were elected to do.

The citizens voted for us, we decide what the budget is with your input."

PB CLE says, "Let's cut out the middleman."

Why just 2% then?

Why shouldn't just citizens decide how we spend all the money?

- (chuckles) That's an interesting question.

- [Mike McIntyre] Gotta show up at the meeting, I guess.

- It's, you know, this happened with the CPC too, with the Community, sorry, with the Community Police Commission too, where organizers of that went to City Council and said, "Can we set up something where the Community Police Commission created under the consent decree continues to exist?"

And City Council said, "Nah, we're not interested in that."

So they went to the ballot and created something that I think City Council may have some regrets that they didn't try to get in a little earlier and help to shape it.

You know, with this, the organizers went to City Council to try to put some American Rescue Plan Act money towards a pilot project, and City Council said, "No, not interested."

And so now they're trying to make something permanent.

So maybe City Council will kinda learn that people have Plan Bs for these things now.

- Yeah, we'll see how that vote turns out.

And again, this is another one of those things that I think we're gonna see all the kind of messiness in terms of enacting, if it's to come to pass.

- Yeah, yeah here, there are models that they'll be following.

But yes, it'll be interesting to see the first time how they get through this.

(dramatic music) - Cleveland Police and U.S.

Marshals arrested a Lorain man this week in connection with the mass shooting in the warehouse entertainment district last weekend that injured nine people.

He had his first court hearing.

Mayor Justin Bibb says state legislators need to give cities the power to regulate guns.

City Council says Bibb isn't doing enough to promote safety.

Bibb and his staff boycotted this week's Council meeting in protest after Councilman Mike Polensek announced he planned to use his comments time to blast the city's response to increasing violence.

Matt, it's the first time we've heard about tensions between City Hall and Council boiling over, particularly boycotting a meeting.

It's getting pretty contentious.

- Yeah, I guess, you know, I think a lot of people saw this coming.

There is usually in Cleveland in the summer, there's rising violence.

A lot of Mayor Bibb's plans have kind of been more long-term ideas, expanding the network of surveillance cameras, you know, raises for officers to try to retain police, and some investment in violence prevention efforts that kind of would go on for years.

And so, you kind of felt the frustration about City Council approving all those ideas, saying, "Let's go ahead with that," and then as soon as, you know, you get the summer spike in violence, they start pounding the table, saying, "You need to do something now."

- In order to find the person that is alleged to have done this, one of the bar owners at Barley House, Bobby George, put up $50,000.

And so now we got a point where people are trying to run businesses downtown, they're trying to attract people here, and now they've gotta basically pay to catch shooters?

- Yeah.

And you know, I'm not a frequenter of the warehouse district and I don't know if they've really recovered, but there has been a lot of effort being put in to get more people to be downtown, you know, to kind of revive downtown, and warehouse district would be a key part of that.

- [Mike McIntyre] This doesn't help.

- No.

- Karen, the mayor in Cleveland, on the day after, had a press conference standing at the site of where the shooting was.

And Mayor Bibb took a swing at Ohio lawmakers.

He said Columbus is preventing cities from taking steps to improve safety.

Essentially, local control doesn't exist as it comes to regulating guns, or any kind of gun safety.

- Yeah, there's a lawsuit over that continuing on right now.

The argument being that cities want to pass legislation that would allow them to restrict gun purchases and all sorts of things related to guns, and the legislature won't let 'em.

So there are a lot of mayors of, well, the mayors of Ohio's three largest cities are really saying this exact, the same thing.

(dramatic music) - The annual running of the bulls comes to a close in Pamplona, Spain, today.

This week, Cleveland police had a bull run of their own, just one bull.

Officers received a call that a bull was running loose near East 123rd Street and Superior Avenue.

Police get a lot of weird calls.

This must have been a first.

Cops were able to wrangle the bull using a farmhand know-how from one of the police officers, who apparently grew up that way.

The bull, who has an ear tag with the name Punch, is at the stables of the mounted unit while police try to locate the owner.

Wow, Matt.

- [Abigail Bottar] They still haven't located its owner?

- No, they don't know where this bull belongs.

- That's so sad.

This just hearkens, this is where, I grew up in farm country, and I would be at work on the corn farm that I worked on and we'd look outside and there'd be a cow in the middle of the road.

So this is familiar.

This is, yeah.

- That's another thing.

I don't think city folks know the difference between a bull and a cow, because most of the coverage that I saw was, you know, "Have a cow!"

"A cow was found in Cleveland."

That's not a cow; that's a bull.

Interesting stuff.

Matt, there's all kinds of calls by police, but are we gonna now have some sort of like a bull division?

(group laughs) - I hope so, yeah.

(dramatic music) - Monday on the "Sound of Ideas" on WKSU, a new drug that's been shown to slow the progression of Alzheimer's disease has been fully approved by the Food and Drug Administration.

We'll hear from a local patient who was part of the drug's trial.

And if you want to learn more about State Issue 1, the Sound of Ideas Community Tour will convene a forum on Thursday, July 20th, at 6:30 p.m. at the Parma-Snow branch of the Cuyahoga County Public Library.

We'll learn about the yes and no sides, get some context from Karen Kasler and constitutional law expert Jonathan Entin, and take audience questions and comments.

It's free and you're invited, but you must RSVP and tickets are going quickly.

Log on to ideastream.org/SOI to register now.

I'm Mike McIntyre.

Thanks so much for watching, and stay safe.

(gentle music) (theme music)