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Maude Porter Wright dot com and from the Ohio Education Association representing 124,000 members who work to inspire their students to think creatively and experience the joy of learning online at OHEA.org.

No truths for House Republicans who show their division in a raucous vote.

The trial of Republican former House Speaker Larry Householder gets underway in federal court.

And what's the problem with requiring voters to show photo ID?

Two of the groups that are suing Ohio over a new law explain how it hits their communities.

All this week in the state of Ohio, welcome to the state of Ohio.

I'm Karen Kasler.

The first session for the Ohio House since the contested vote for speaker on January 2nd showed that the rift among Republicans is far from over.

It was supposed to be a routine vote for the forum, meaning House leadership positions and the House rules.

But uproar broke out on the floor Tuesday after Speaker Jason Stevens refused to hear a motion from a member of his own Republican caucus.

Stevens got fewer Republican votes for speaker than Representative Derek Barron, but won after bringing in votes from all 32 Democrats.

Stevens had nominated two Maron supporters to his leadership team and put Maron supporters in 55% of the chairs of standing committees.

Maron backers had wanted 66% of all committee chairs and seats on committees, and they wanted rules changes that they said would decentralize the speaker's power, including replacing a member of Stevens leadership team with a key mayor and supporter, lowering the number of members needed to force a bill to a floor vote, allowing guns on the House floor, and requiring each session to start with a Christian prayer.

They reached out to minority Democrats to bring them on board.

But Democrats would all voted for Stevens for speaker, along with a third of Republicans backed him again.

Stevens went immediately to a vote without considering the changes.

Representative Josh Williams was the mayor and supporter who moved to change the House rules and was gaveled down by Stevens as he went on to the vote.

With the sole idea of creating unity within our party.

Being the first black Republican in this House in 50 years, I thought I would have the opportunity to provide insight into a caucus that didn't represent me or individuals that look like me for 50 years.

And today, once again, black people weren't recognized by a Republican caucus.

So it was unfortunate.

I thought we were going to do better.

Hopefully, moving forward, we will do better.

And I intend to object to violations like this moving forward.

Can you talk about some of the other things that you wanted to see in rules like allowing guns on the House floor?

Yeah.

So those were some of the amendments that were going that were that that were submitted.

Many of the rules that I cared about personally were were procedural.

I'm a former constitutional law professor.

I'm a procedural guy.

And a lot of our rules just tried to clarify the procedures of the House how committees could be conducted.

While not all Marion backers supported the Christian prayer proposal, Democrats were furious, releasing a statement calling it, quote, nothing but divisive and contemptuous to the communities we serve and saying, quote, Diversity of any kind must always be respected.

Earlier that day, Marin announced that in a meeting he'd said he'd invited all House Republicans to attend.

He had been elected chair of the Ohio House Republican Caucus, a title that's usually reserved for the speaker or minority leader.

And he said Representative Phil Plummer had been elected chair of the Ohio House Republican Alliance Campaign Committee, which raises and spends money on behalf of Republican candidates for the House.

Stevens disagreed.

There are all kinds of you know, there's the business first caucus.

There's all kinds of caucuses that our members go to right.

They call the caucuses.

The First Amendment allows people to administer or to assemble.

But in the Ohio House of Representatives, when the speaker is a Republican and he is the leader of the Republican caucus, and that's where we are today.

So who is going to run?

They took a vote today about running the campaign.

Is that still going to run through you or is that run through the rest of the speaker and rest of the speaker?

Yes.

But Plummer was adamant the campaign committee is run by him and the mayor and group because he says they represent House Republicans.

And he also said Stevens should resign.

He's in the middle of this mess.

He can figure it out.

But that disrespect, it's uncalled for.

That should never happen.

He ought to resign for behaving like that.

We're all elected.

We've all been elected by 120 or so constituent thousand constituents to do our job.

And he just blocked us for doing our job.

He needs he needs to resign.

He's not fit to be a leader.

He's not fit to be speaker acting that way.

When it comes to doling out money, like are you going to consider that as you guys go forward?

Absolutely.

We are conservatives.

We got elected by conservative people.

Now, if he wants to cross the aisle and make deals with the Democrats, that's his prerogative.

But, you know, we still have plenty of conservatives around stand up and fight for our values.

Governor Mike DeWine will give his annual State of the State speech to a joint session of the House and Senate next week and is likely to highlight his upcoming budget and ask for the split among members of his own party in the House.

DeWine says he's not concerned that it will work out.

But he says while he intends to deal with everybody, the speaker is the leader of the House.

Meanwhile, more than 100 miles away, it was the first week of the trial of Republican former Ohio House Speaker Larry Householder and former Ohio Republican Party chair and first energy lobbyist Matt Burgess.

They're facing racketeering charges for their alleged roles in a bribery scheme that saw $61 million flow to dark money groups to help householder become speaker.

In exchange, prosecutors say he was expected to pass and protect a $1 billion nuclear power plant bailout for First Energy's plants.

My State House News Bureau colleague Andy Chow was following the trial and was there for opening statements.

So, Andy, what were some of the big moments in the opening statements that you saw?

Well, it started with the U.S. prosecutor, Emily Glatfelter, and the very first things that she said was that Larry Householder sold the state house.

Now, you have to remember the members on the jury, they're coming in here with fresh eyes so they don't really have the perspective that we have been following this case for two and a half years.

And so they really have to lay out all the details of the case.

And she did so throughout an hour of opening statements with a slideshow, with pictures, really trying to detail the money that was flowing from first energy into Larry householders alleged 501c for the third generation now and then by doing so, using that money to gain power as House Speaker and in exchange passing the nuclear power plant bailout bill.

HB six.

And then on the other side of things, for the mat Burgess side of things, some of the more interesting things that the prosecution laid out was showing the actual check that Matt Borges paid to Tyler Furman, the person who was working on the referendum campaign for Inside Information.

So you we're seeing a little bit more of the curtain pulled back and connecting the dots of everything that we've known for the past two and a half years.

Now we're seeing more of that evidence being rolled out and the connecting of the dots and more of the people who were involved in this alleged scheme.

Now, householder and gorgeous have separate attorneys.

They had separate opening statement presentations, correct?

Yeah, they had they had separate presentations.

And first you saw the lawyer for householder go up there.

He talked he gave a little biography about householder, how he grew to power the bank, trying to paint him as a political outsider who's constantly winning, constantly being so successful.

And then when Matt Burgess, his attorney, went up, he pointed over to the House Holder table and said, there is a universe of difference between Larry Householder and Matt Borges and there's a universal of difference between all the players in this bribery scheme case.

And Matt Burgess really trying to create separation between Burgess and everybody else and even us.

When we first heard that Burgess was arrested, we were even surprised that he was involved in all of this.

But the case that the prosecution's making is that there's there's the bill making side the and the referendum side.

And Burgess was involved in the referendum side.

And I think the claim was also made that they didn't even like each other, which is not the point of this.

Right.

And and that that Larry and Matt don't like each other, but also that Matt Burgess has never really been a big fan of.

First Energy's to saying that one of the one of the first energy executives once called Matt Burgess a boob.

So there's all sorts of like trying to create this separation and trying to like create somewhat of an animosity between them.

So what else happened this week?

We obviously had some weather.

We had an illness.

Yeah.

So Special Agent Blaine Wetzel is the one who is now taking the stand, and he is the one who wrote the affidavit, who put the charges forward.

And he is once again connecting a lot of these dots.

And he started off by talking about this infamous trip to D.C. with Larry Householder and first energy executives.

And this is really trying to set the scene for the prosecution to say this is where a deal was struck.

This is where the deal was made.

The prosecution has said over and over again, when you're talking about a bribery case, you never hear two parties say, I'm giving you this money and this is for a bribe.

They're saying that's not what we're going to hear.

But instead, what we're going to hear is this detailed plan that they came up with, that first energy and Larry Householder came up with in D.C. sitting at dinners and on the plane to allow him to rise to power and pass HB six.

And I think what we're going to continue to see those dots being connected throughout the years.

And I think one of the more interesting things that we're going to see coming up here soon is hearing these secret recordings that we've heard about for two years now where undercover agents were talking to people like lobbyist Neil Clark about something about sports betting.

And these agents were playing this role of people who wanted to get sports betting pass in Ohio.

And allegedly there is a recording there where Neal Clark says, if you want to get something passed in Ohio, you put money into this five or once before.

Larry Householder will see it and he'll get your legislation through.

And we won't be able to hear from Neil Clark, the lobbyist.

He took his life in March of 2021.

But who might we hear from?

I mean, there are a couple other people who have admitted guilt.

For instance, a former first energy lobbyist once that's but as and householder strategist Jeff Longstreth first energy also admitted to guilt generation now did as well who else might we hear from?

So we're going to hear from those two co-defendants.

We're expecting to hear from legislators, former legislators, most likely Dave Greenspan, who has said that he went to the FBI because he and other legislators were feeling the pressure from this group at the time called Generation.

Now that nobody knew about it, feeling pressure from that group through dark money to vote for H.B.

Six at the time.

And so we're expecting to hear from them.

And really something that was interesting that came out was that we're going to hear from former householder associates.

Some of these people are people that we in the press knew about because if we if we wanted to get into contact with the householder, we had to reach out to these people in order to talk to him before he became speaker.

These are associates that the prosecution said took in tens of thousands of dollars as salary through generation, now checks that they showed on their PowerPoint through generation.

Now they will be testifying as well.

It'll be interesting once again, connecting all those dots.

And again, there are no recordings in federal court.

There are no photographs in federal court.

But you get a chance to see Householder and Borgias when they arrive and kind of their demeanor throughout this whole trial.

How is this how are they handling this?

It's how is it going for them?

It's pretty extraordinary.

When when we walked into the courtroom.

Well, first of all, when Larry Householder walked into the building, I was taking pictures of him.

Usually people keep their heads down or ignore you.

He came up to me, started talking to me, asking me how I was.

Then in the courtroom, he started having a conversation with a couple of us, a couple of state house reporters who were there to cover him.

We talked about how things were going and he talked about how he believes this trial will play out.

And he says that he's feeling very confident, he's very relieved that this day has come.

He says he's not nervous and he believes that the truth will be provided by his defense attorneys throughout this trial.

Matt Burgess was the same way.

He said that he's also feeling relieved and optimistic about the trial.

And Larry Householder showing up one day to court wearing a Bengals wool hat.

Yeah, he's really taking on the theme of being in Cincinnati right now.

When Governor Mike DeWine signed a bill making major changes in voting laws in Ohio earlier this month, he didn't do a press conference or a public event.

That's often the case with legislation that's controversial like this one.

House Bill 458 requires voters to show photo ID permits.

Only one ballot drop box per county and curbside voting only for people with disabilities requires early mail in ballot requests to be made a week before Election Day, not three days before, as in current law, and requires those ballots to be returned.

So they arrive no later than four days after Election Day, down from ten days.

The bill also gives those who voted by provisional ballot four days to provide information needed for their ballot to count down from a week and eliminates special elections in August.

Except when there is a fiscal emergency.

Almost immediately, a lawsuit was filed by a coalition representing unhoused Ohioans, teachers, the elderly and retired people, unions and veterans.

They represented by Marc Elias, a Democratic lawyer involved in lawsuits over redistricting in Ohio and the court challenges filed and lost by former President Trump in 2020.

This week, Republican Secretary of State Frank LaRosa defended and promoted the new law in comments to legislators in Pennsylvania.

We have seen overwhelming approval for the recent new photo photo ID requirements that Ohio put in place.

The previous witness was talking about how voter ID is popular across both sides of the aisle and across a broad swath of Americans.

In fact, Pew Research shows that 76% support it.

Nationally, that number is 80%, according to Monmouth University.

And NPR showed that 79% want photo ID requirements.

So Americans want this, Ohioans want this.

I believe Pennsylvanians want that as well.

With my support, Ohio leaders in our General Assembly took action last month.

They passed legislation requiring ID to vote just a couple of weeks ago.

It was signed into law by our governor and they did it the right way in order to ensure that no one is left out there making state issued ID available for free.

Anybody that wants one can get one, so no one has any excuse for not having a state ID.

Additionally, for those that have maybe religious concerns and obviously Ohio has a large Amish population, I know Pennsylvania does as well.

And for some of them there are religious reasons why they may not want to have their photo taken or maintain a state issued photo ID.

So we have religious exemptions in place for them so that they can still cast their ballot if they choose to do so.

Because of the way the law is structured, it won't prevent individuals from voting instead.

Instead, it simply ensures that only eligible citizens and registered voters are able to do so.

This is a fair and reasonable measure to maintain the integrity of our elections and to build confidence in the elections process, which is, for me, really the bottom line.

Will this change impact the voting experience for a lot of Ohioans, really?

No.

I mean, because what we found when we've sampled our boards of elections is that really 98% of Ohioans already show a state I.D.

or driver's license when they come to vote.

That number is from both 2022 and in the 2020 election and previous election.

Government works best when we work together on common sense solutions with strong support from the people that happened here in Ohio.

And it can happen for you all in Pennsylvania as well.

Thank you so much.

And I look forward to any questions that you all may have for me.

Thank you, Mr. Secretary, real briefly, you mentioned a recent vote on voter ID laws in Ohio, and you mentioned the broad consensus.

Out of curiosity, what was the breakdown in the state house and state Senate?

Was it a bipartisan vote as well, or was it less consensus in the legislative bodies?

Yeah, less consensus.

And that's concerning because I think that as you've seen, Ohioans, Americans support photo ID, but the political rhetoric around this has been so heated and so divisive that too many of our friends and colleagues on the Democratic side have come to believe this this lie that somehow requiring a state issued photo ID disenfranchizes voters as a result of believing that false idea of far too many of them have voted against provisions like this.

And so, yeah, it broke down basically on party lines.

And that's unfortunate because there's a misalignment there then between the representatives and the people, because as I showed you, the polling shows very clearly people don't think that it's a burden to have to show an ID to vote.

Critics of the law allege it's a solution in search of a problem because, as LaRosa said, Ohio's elections are secure and that Republicans timed it to shut down the participation of certain groups that are more likely to vote Democrat.

To some, the lawsuit may appear political, but two groups involved say there are real concerns for the people they represent.

Chris Strick is the executive director of the Northeast Ohio Coalition for the Homeless, one of the groups involved in the lawsuit.

You know, we know firsthand the difficulty for individuals to get versus tickets, which is part of the process of needing to get a state ID, but then to get a Social Security card also and then to finally be able to get a state ID.

It's a long process for individuals and oftentimes a very difficult process.

And so to make that process kind of coupled with people's fundamental right to cast a ballot in our community is really going to deeply impact the people that we are continuing to work with to get motivated and to get to the polls.

Because, you know, the crisis of homelessness is a crisis of survival and people are oftentimes just simply trying to survive and to still lay on top of that, all these other processes to be able to participate in our democracy feels, you know, fundamentally unconstitutional to us.

Secretary of State Frank LaRosa and others who backed this bill will say that there are free photo IDs available for people who need them.

Anybody over 17 can apply for a free state ID so they can vote.

What's the problem with that?

Yeah, in my mind, like you know, they there's also like the whole process of getting birth certificates and Social Security cards that, you know, we hire staff to to walk through that process with individuals.

You have to wait weeks to be able to get access to your birth certificate, you know, and, you know, to get your Social Security cards.

Even a longer wait.

And so, you know, that all costs you know, those processes cost money to say you could simply a private apply for a free ID.

Feels you know it doesn't take into account the full process of what people need to be able to do to be able to access, you know, identification.

And, you know, our mission and our cause us to make sure that people, just because they don't have a home, still have the right to vote in our community.

And so, you know, the amount of extra labor and the amount of work and the difficulty that it will cause on us will be a lot, you know, coming towards the elections.

We spent a lot of resources, a lot of times like educating people about their right to vote, telling them where to vote, helping them access the polls.

Right.

We run shuttles and all of these things during election season.

And and now on top of that, we're just going to have to figure out how do we get people, you know, that don't have a birth certificate or a state I.D.?

How do we get them a birth certificate?

How do we get them a state ID in a timely fashion so they're able to participate in, you know, our democracy?

It's a lot.

So in your experience, how unhoused people do vote?

I think that there is a perception that if you're unhoused, you have so many more things that you're dealing with that voting is down the list.

But you're saying unhoused people vote?

Yeah, absolutely.

Unhoused people vote all the time.

And, you know, there's and they you know, just because someone doesn't have a house doesn't mean that they don't understand and believe.

And in the process of democracy and and participating in that democracy, to equate that to makes no sense.

And, you know, I think in the same way, like, just because you're experiencing a crisis in your life doesn't mean that you still don't value fundamental values that that define, you know, who we are and what we do, such as, you know, voting for our elected officials and participating in our democracy.

That, you know, so much of this our state and our country have been founded on.

Right.

And those values don't go away.

Because you don't have a house.

Another plaintiff in the suit is the Ohio Alliance for Retired Americans, part of a national organization of retired union members.

Norm Moore Knecht is the president of the Ohio Group.

But I'm old enough to remember when 22 counties in the state of Ohio did not require any kind of form of identification or voter registration up until 1977.

So this is another change that seems rather restrictive.

Just let me put it this way.

So I'm old enough.

I'm 76 and in a couple of years, it may be the case that I lose my driver's license because of my eyes or because of some other health condition.

So what do I do to get an idea if I'm disabled enough, how much is it going to cost me?

I'm thinking of my Uncle Louis.

My wife's uncle, who had ALS perfectly, had his mind perfectly in order to continue to vote up until just shortly before he died.

But it would have required an ambulance to get him to a get a new voter I.D..

I that that kind of thing is going to happen.

We know that that from some statistics I've been supplied that what, 90% of a 12% of voters from 75 to 79 don't have a driver's license.

And it goes up from there to like 19% for those over 80 to 85 and those over 85, it's about 31% don't have a driver's license or a state ID.

When you go into a an assisted living or you give up your driver's license, you don't really think about getting a state form of identification because you have been and continue to be the person who you are.

We are the faithful voters of the state of Ohio.

We are the most as a constituency, as a as a demographic.

The older voters vote the most and vote in pretty much all the elections to create those barriers like this.

So my wife is immunocompromised, putting her in polling booths in it during COVID.

It would have been very tragic.

So being able to vote, for instance, at curbside was an option that has been taken away from us.

That's that's that just presents more and more difficulties for us and barriers.

And we ought to be encouraging people to to vote.

We ought to be encouraging people to have access.

House Bill 458 is set to take effect April 7th, which means those changes, including required photo ID for voters, will be in effect for the May primary.

And that's it for this week for my colleagues at the Statehouse News Bureau of Ohio Public Radio and Television.

Thanks for watching.

Please check out our Web site at state news dot org and follow us and the show on Facebook and Twitter.

And please join us again next time for the state of Ohio.

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