A Word to my Readers in Ohio

I have a message for all of my readers in Ohio. And if you know someone who lives in Ohio, you’d better pass this along to them.

There are three essential things I want you to do right now, if you live in Ohio.

The first, is to go out to your vegetable patch and prune your tomato vines. Just go ahead and prune them ruthlessly. Get a good pair of kitchen shears, and snip off every branch of the vine that doesn’t have green fruit on it. If it’s just leaves and flowers, get rid of it. Mutter a Bible verse to yourself about trees that don’t bear fruit while you do it. It’s fun and cathartic, AND it will help your last tomatoes get ripe before frost. Tomatoes can’t survive even a bit of frost, so they’re going to die within about four to six weeks no matter what. It’s about to start getting so cool at night that they won’t make any more fruit anyway. Right now, the roots of the tomato are pumping water and nutrients to the whole plant to keep it alive as if it’s going to live forever. But if there are fewer branches, all of that water and those nutrients will go to the tomatoes themselves, and they’ll get ripe much faster. That means you can eat the tomatoes vine-ripened instead of having to ripen them on your windowsill after the plants die. I hope you canned enough for winter!

All right, once you come back from pruning your tomatoes, here’s another thing I want you to do: register to vote.

Or, if you are pretty sure you’re already registered, check your registration at least once, because names sometimes disappear from the rolls. Make sure they’ve got your right name and address on file and update it if they don’t.   Ohio’s deadline to register to vote is October 7th. After that, you absolutely can’t vote in the 2024 election even if you change your mind. Might as well register now and decide whether you want to vote later, just in case. You don’t even have to leave your house because Ohio has online voter registration right here. But you can  also print off a form and mail it with a postmark of October 7th or earlier, or register in person at your county Board of Elections if you like.

Early voting starts at your county Board of Elections the very next day on October 8th, and will be open any weekday from now until Election Day and also the two Saturdays and Sundays before Election Day, but NOT the Monday before. It’s closed on November 4th. The map to find your Board of Elections building is here. You may also request an absentee ballot here, and then mail it in before November 5th. The deadline to request an absentee ballot is 7 days before the election, so that would be October 29th this year. The deadline to postmark the ballot is the day before the election, November 4th, or earlier. And if you’re going to vote the old fashioned way on Election Day, here’s how to find your polling place.

All right, are you all set? Tomatoes pruned, and registered to vote? Great, now here’s one more thing to remember: Yes on Issue One.

I’ve already given you the details on what this year’s Issue One proposes to do for Ohio, and you can read my whole post on that again.  I told you that proponents of the bill have sued, because Frank LaRose and his cronies have decided that the official Ohio ballot will word the description of Issue One deceptively when it’s printed. Today, we found out that the lawsuit was unsuccessful and LaRose is getting his way, for the most part. Some of the description language is changing, but not enough (the wording of Issue One itself is not changing at all, just the way it will look on your ballot). When you vote in Ohio, the language on the ballot describing Issue One is going to try to trick you. It will try to make it sound like “yes” on Issue One will cause Ohio to become a gerrymandered and corrupt state. In fact, Ohio is already famous for gerrymandering and corruption. Our districts are divided up behind closed doors without our input right now. In order for the voice of Ohio citizens to be heard in Washington, we need to pass a law that puts redistricting into the hands of an impartial board with an equal number of Republican, Democratic and Independent members, and that’s what Issue One is trying to do.

Remember, the summary of the law on your ballot is just a description of the proposal written by someone who doesn’t like it; it’s not the proposal itself. You can read the entire wording of Ohio Issue One here. That’s the actual proposal which is going to be made into law or not. No matter what the ballot says, Issue One stays the same. If you get your ballot and it says “Issue One: which will require gerrymandering” it doesn’t matter. You know what the actual Issue One says and you won’t believe it.  If it says “Issue One: which will squeeze a big blob of toothpaste into your orange juice” it won’t put toothpaste in your orange juice. If it says “Issue One: which will bring back New Coke,” I promise it won’t bring back New Coke.  Ohio Issue One for 2024 remains a proposal to fix gerrymandering.

All you have to remember is “yes” on Issue One. Yes on Issue One lets the people vote. No on Issue One leaves things in the mess they’re in already.

Now, get out there and prune those tomatoes!