Elections Board and County Seek to Increase Voter Registration and Participation

As part of National Voter Registration day, the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections set up registration site at libraries and community centers across the county.  

Near the corner of West 25th and Clark in Cleveland’s Clark-Fulton neighborhood, passersby are greeted in Spanish and asked if they’re registered to vote. 

“This is the most populated area for Latinos so we wanna make sure we provide access for the Spanish speaking population here in the neighborhood,” says Ivelisse Roig with the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections.  Roig stands under a white tent outside Hispanic Alliance, where the Board has set up a drive-up voter registration site.

“We want to make it very easy for people so if they just don’t want to get out of the car.   Can park right here in the parking lot, and we go up to their car and register them to vote, update the registration. So the easier the better sometimes,” says Roig.  “And it’s a very high traffic area so they can see.  We’re exposed to everybody so they can just stop by when they see us.”

In September, turnout for the primary in this Ward 14 precinct was five percent.  Roig says this drive-up voter registration effort could help improve voter turnout in November. 

In the parking lot behind Roig, a black truck pulls up.  Cesar Pineda is here to update his registration.

“We heard it on the radio and we just want to do our part and just coming down and registering so we can do something about what’s going on with the country nowadays.”

In a few minutes, Pineda is registered and leaves with a complimentary loaf of bread.  By the end of the day, the drive-up registration sites at Hispanic Alliance and at the Board of Elections have registered 50 people. 

County Initiative

At the Cuyahoga County Office of Child Services, a voter registration site manned by volunteers is the first of what County Executive Armond Budish hopes will be many around Northeast Ohio.  

“The county charter declares voting is a fundamental right and charges us to protect and promote that right for our citizens,” says Budish.  “Our initiative is designed to make voting easier and more accessible.”

The voter and civic engagement initiative also includes a summit on September 29, to encourage young people to vote, as well as a partnership with the county library system which will promote online voter registration on its website.

In January, Ohio began online registration.  Despite recent news that hackers attempted to access Ohio’s election system, the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections Director Pat McDonald says he’s “comfortable” that the online voter registration system cannot be hacked.

“As we’ve seen with big corporations, we’ve seen the conspiracy with the Russians, so I cannot stand up here especially not as an IT expert and tell you definitely that it cannot be hacked.  But I think that it is a sound system.  We have reasonable safeguards and mechanisms in place.  And we work with not only the state of Ohio, we work with our county IT security folks to ensure to the best of our capability that there cannot be any hacking here.”

McDonald adds the county’s vote tabulation system is safe.

“People confuse voter registration hacking as opposed to voting equipment hacking.  Our voting equipment is not hooked up to the internet.  There is no way that anybody could hack in to our tabulation system.  There’s no third party intrusion that is able to hack into our system.,” says McDonald.  

October 10 is the last day to register to vote in the November 7 general election.