Want political change? Steps 1 and 2: register and vote

Americans are perennially disgusted with politics and it’s no wonder; the party-above-all philosophy that currently prevails in Washington is profoundly discouraging. In Ohio, people of both parties are

incensed at the near-billiondollar, consumer-funded bailout the General Assembly just handed to a badly managed utility whose political action committee donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to lawmakers.

Meanwhile, untold thousands of Ohioans are close to letting their right to vote lapse.

To be precise, the Ohio secretary of state’s office is about to cancel the voter registrations of thousands of people who have neither voted nor responded to notices from the office for six years. Many of those people likely have moved or died and aren’t actually being disenfranchised.

Still, feeble voter-turnout numbers attest to the fact that millions of Americans ignore the right and civic duty to exercise the single most important political power ordinary people possess.

With that in mind, we appreciate Ohio Secretary of State Frank Larose’s seemingly sincere efforts to get more Ohioans to vote. We say “seemingly sincere” because Republicans typically are more reliable voters than Democrats, so Republicans traditionally haven’t supported measures to increase overall registration.

While Larose is continuing the longtime practice (of predecessors both Republican and Democratic) of canceling registrations of those who have skipped two federal elections and not responded to a mailed warning notice, he is making unprecedented efforts to reopen the door to them.

First, after outgoing Secretary of State Jon Husted sent more than 276,000 notices in January to registration addresses of inactive voters in danger of being canceled, Larose opted in February to send a second notice. Just 540 responded.

Then in June, Larose asked all 88 county boards of election to compile lists of inactive voters in danger of having their registrations

canceled and announced he’ll combine the county lists into a “Registration Reset List.” He’ll make that list available to any group who wants to contact voters and remind them to renew their registrations.

Registrations of those who don’t respond will be canceled on Sept. 6. Those who are canceled still can vote in November if they register anew by the Oct. 7 deadline.

So far, 20 groups have said they want a copy of the list. They include the League of Women Voters, the Ohio Republican Party, the NAACP, eight clergy members and two people from a nonpartisan political-reform group called Ohio United 4 America.

Hooray for them, and we hope many more will take up Larose’s call to make sure Ohioans remain eligible to vote.

For that matter, we hope voter-registration drives will be as ubiquitous as Starbucks between now and Oct. 5, 2020 — the day registration closes for the next presidential election.

In a nation with as much political discontent as the U.S. has at present, the willingness of so many people to skip voting is confounding.

Yes, the nonsense in Washington and in the Statehouse breeds cynicism that can turn into apathy. But money, in the form of political advertising, wouldn’t have so much power in politics if voters would learn about candidates from actual journalism rather than ads and then show up at the polls.

Malevolent propaganda is a serious problem — as former special counsel Robert Mueller reminded the nation in testimony to Congress on Wednesday. He repeated the warning of the nation’s intelligence experts that Russia is working to interfere with 2020 elections “as we sit here.”

Given the intelligence agencies’ certainty, combined with a new report from the Republican-controlled Senate Intelligence Committee confirming Russia interfered in the 2016 elections, it is beyond belief that Majority Leader Mitch Mcconnell, a Kentucky Republican, last week blocked Senate consideration of election-security bills.

Even so, when it comes to casting and counting votes, American elections remain trustworthy. In America, no amount of old-network cronyism or corruption by those in

office can prevail if enough voters show up to demand change.

Whether voters want to oust President Donald Trump or see him retained, nothing they can do is more powerful than registering voters and ensuring that they vote.

Statistically, those who oppose Trump have more to gain through get-out-the-vote efforts because the Trumpfriendliest demographics — conservatives, whites and older voters — traditionally are more likely to vote than their opposites.

The disparities are greatest by age. In 2016, about 42% of those 18 to 29 voted, compared with 70% for those 60 and up and more than 65% for those 45 to 59.

Ohio’s young voters are especially unreliable. In the 2018 midterm election, when the nationwide voting turnout for those 18 to 24 was 30%, Ohioans in that bracket mustered only 22%. In Pennsylvania it was 32%, with 33% in Michigan and 47% in Wisconsin.

Meanwhile, surveys show support for Trump is lowest among people of that age, and they make up the largest bloc of potential voters in the nation. Imagine the impact they could have by registering and voting.

Americans who are worried about our democracy can do a lot to improve it — by reading more, listening to others more and learning more about candidates and issues. But ultimately, nothing will make more difference than getting out the vote.