Sunday, October 2, 2016, the Columbus Dispatch reported that Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted refused to mail absentee ballot applications to over one million Ohio voters.

Husted refused to mail to 1,035,795 registered voters. Those left off Husted’s mailing list include 650,730 registered voters who had changed their address. Of these, 568,456 moved within the Buckeye State and are still eligible to vote. The other 82,274 moved out of state and are presumably ineligible to vote.

The key target of Husted’s deregulation scheme are the remaining 385,065 voters who are registered at their current residence but simply failed to vote in the 2012 or 2014 federal elections.

Husted has had these voters harassed by their local Boards of Elections sending them letters demanding they verify their address. Failure to do so could lead to the voters’ deregistration and has led to them not being offered an absentee ballot. Social science data shows that the crux of Democratic Party voters move more often and vote less often than Republicans. Husted’s strategy is to purge poor and minority voters from Ohio rolls.

Over the last five years, the Youngstown, Ohio region has suffered over 700 man-made earthquakes, an illegal dumping of fracking waste into our river, accidental spills that destroyed private ponds and a small wetland, the trucking of radioactive solid fracking-waste into a low-income neighborhood and shale-gas fracking in the Safe Drinking Water Source Protection Area of our water supply, the Meander Reservoir. Because our elected officials have refused to prevent these ongoing harms to public health and safety, Frackfree Mahoning Valley and the Youngstown Community Bill of Rights Committee are using the ballot box to codify into law our rights as citizens to clean air, clean water and a sustainable future. This battle to codify the unalienable rights of citizens over the privileges of corporations and the self-interests of some elected officials, political parties, and community leaders, began in 2013. In 2015, the Community Bill of Rights (CBR) charter amendment only lost by 299 votes out of over 12,000 votes cast.

Over the last five years, the Youngstown, Ohio region has suffered over 700 man-made earthquakes, an illegal dumping of fracking waste into our river, accidental spills that destroyed private ponds and a small wetland, the trucking of radioactive solid fracking-waste into a low-income neighborhood and shale-gas fracking in the Safe Drinking Water Source Protection Area of our water supply, the Meander Reservoir.  Because our elected officials have refused to prevent these ongoing harms to public health and safety, Frackfree Mahoning Valley and the Youngstown Community Bill of Rights Committee are using the ballot box to codify into law our rights as citizens to clean air, clean water and a sustainable future.  This battle to codify the unalienable rights of citizens over the privileges of corporations and the self-interests of some elected officials, political parties, and community leaders, began in 2013.  In 2015, the Community Bill of Rights (CBR) charter amendment only lost by 299 votes out of over 12,000 votes cast.

Prejudice and bigotry are grievous personality flaws, but I must admit that I applied both to Ages and Ages prior to seeing them live on September 18th. Over the years I’ve made something of a cottage industry of sneering at hipsters, musically anyway. I think it might run back to scary stories my mother told me of proto-hipsters in the early1960’s demanding source purity in folk music, as opposed to that hated sellout Judy Collins. Or maybe I’m terrified that someone knows more about Waylon Jennings than I do. Probably I’m just frightened of the double decker bike people. In any event, an evening in the Short North makes me go fight or flight, and I find Pitchfork magazine marginally useful for wiping off oil leaks on old Piaggio engines.