Ohio Senate General Government Committee - 6-8-2026

Vice Chair Abra. Here.

Senator Timkin.

Senator DeMora. Here.

Good afternoon. How are you all doing?

Chair Rogner, Vice Chair Gaviron, Ranking Member Blackshear, and members of the Senate General Government Committee, thank you for the opportunity to provide sponsor testimony on House Bill 472. House Bill 472 is a bipartisan measure focused on removing practical barriers that prevent Ohioans experiencing homelessness from returning to work, obtaining housing, and moving towards self-sufficiency. One of the greatest challenges individuals experiencing homelessness face is the loss or lack of essential identity documents. Without these documents, many Ohioans find themselves trapped in a cycle that becomes increasingly difficult to escape. House Bill 472 addresses that challenge by helping individuals obtain the documentation necessary to move forward. These documents are often necessary to establish identity, obtain employment, and secure stable housing. They are foundational tools for self-sufficiency. For many individuals, obtaining a birth certificate is the first step in rebuilding their identity. That document can be used to attain a state ID card, which may be necessary to obtain or replace other records and complete employment paperwork. Each missing document creates another delay, and each delay prolongs the path toward stability. Employers require proof of identity. Housing providers often require documentation to execute lease agreements. Without employment, individuals cannot save for security deposits, rent, or other expenses associated with permanent housing. Because the cost of replacing these documents is relatively small compared with the public cost of extended shelter days, helping individuals obtain them more quickly can help shorten the path toward employment and permanent housing. Even avoiding a single additional day in the emergency shelter can offset the public cost associated with replacing these documents. House Bill 472 is about removing barriers that stand between individuals and self-sufficiency. Sometimes the smallest barriers create the biggest obstacles. Before someone can return to work, sign a lease, or rebuild a life, they first have to prove who they are. At this time, I'd like to turn it over to my joint sponsor, Representative Cochley.

Salvo. And thank you, Chair, for keeping the windows open in the hearing room. That's so rare on the Senate side, or on the House side. It's very refreshing. Chair Rogner, Vice Chair Gaviron, and Ranking Member Blackshear, thank you for the opportunity to provide sponsor testimony on House Bill 472. I appreciate that House Bill 472 both addresses immediate challenges and presents a practical solution as described by my joint sponsor. In addition to helping individuals obtain replacement documents, the bill allows homeless shelters and non-profit agencies that provide case management services with the individual's consent to securely maintain physical or digital copies of certain documents. Participation is entirely voluntary. Individuals retain access to those records and they may request their return or destruction at any time. House Bill 472 also requires safeguards to protect privacy and ensure appropriate access. Many individuals experiencing homelessness are actively working towards stability, but after losing housing, they may also lose their documents necessary to move forward. Sometimes barriers that seem so small to many are instead overwhelming when someone has lost nearly everything. I also want to highlight and uplift that this legislation includes annual reporting requirements so the General Assembly can monitor utilization and better understand the impact of the program over time. These are modest tools, but they can make a meaningful difference for someone trying to regain stability. This is a bipartisan, common-sense bill focused on removing barriers and helping people move towards greater independence and self-sufficiency. I appreciate the opportunity to partner with Representative Solvo on this legislation, and we respectfully ask for the committee's favorable consideration of House Bill 472. Thank you, and we would be happy to answer any questions.

However before we get to testimony there was a substitute bill distributed to members of the committee and I will call on Vice Chair Gaviron for a motion Thank you Madam Chair I move we adopt Substitute Bill 2479

I can explain that, Madam Chair. That's okay. Oh, sorry.

Unless you want to.

Yeah, thank you. This is actually a pretty simple sub-bill, even though you look at it as quite lengthy. One of the things that I did when I introduced this bill, like Senate Bill 382 on the open primaries, was include local and judicial races. However, consensus voting was only ever meant to be a single winner race system. And there's a lot of local races like school boards that have, you know, a field, if you will. and it just doesn't really apply well for that. I still hold out hope one day to maybe have it for Hamilton County and some of these large commission races and whatnot, but that is for another day. But that's really all this does is removes the local and judicial races from this.

Thank you, Madam Chairwoman, and I'm sure all the questions were saved for me, so I look forward to that when that time comes. Chairman Rogner, Vice Chair Gaviron, Ranking Member Blackshear, and members of the Senate General Government Committee, thank you for the opportunity to present sponsored testimony on Substitute Senate Bill 395. SB 395 proposes a modernization of Ohio's election laws by establishing a top-three election system for Congress in certain state offices. Under this system, all candidates for an office, regardless of party, would run in an all-voter primary election. Voters would choose one candidate in the primary, and the three candidates with the most votes would advance to the general election. In the general election, voters select the candidate they prefer in each of the three one-on-one matchups. The purpose of this bill is straightforward. Ohio's elected leaders should be accountable to the full electorate, not only to the narrowest slice of voters who participate in low turnout primary elections. This is not a partisan reform. It does not guarantee victory to any party ideology, faction, or candidate. It is a voter-centered reform designed to ensure that the winning candidate has earned broad support and will be representative of and accountable to the electorate. SB 395 strengthens the voice of all voters at the primary stage, preserves meaningful choice in the general election, reduces the risk of spoilers, avoids the premature narrowing of a two-candidate final, and avoids the elimination round complexity of instant runoff voting. In many districts across our state, particularly legislative districts, the decisive election is not the November general election. It is the partisan primary. In practical terms, a relatively small percentage of highly motivated primary voters effectively determine the outcome in most legislative and congressional races. This creates a system in which a narrow slice of the electorate chooses the overwhelming majority of officeholders, while unaffiliated and independent voters are often denied meaningful participation altogether. This system creates a disconnect between Ohioans and the institutions that are supposed to represent them. According to an April 2026 poll of 1,000 registered Ohio voters, Bowling Green State University found only 14 percent of Ohioans reported that they trust the state government to do the right thing most of the time, and notably zero percent reported trusting the state government to do the right thing all the time. SB 395 responds to that problem by giving Ohioans more voice at the beginning of the process and provides a mechanism to most fairly determine the winner among three candidates in the general election. It also gives independent, unaffiliated, minor party voters a more meaningful opportunity to participate in deciding which candidates move forward. The general election works like a round-robin tournament. Each finalist is compared directly against each other finalist. Voters are asked to choose between candidate A and candidate B, candidate A and candidate C, and candidate... ...principle in voting research that the candidate closest to being the head-to-head majority winner should be elected. For a three-candidate final, where each candidate has one win and one loss, the candidate with the smallest loss has the weakest majority opposition and is closest to defeating both opponents directly. So SB 395 addresses the shortcomings of a two-candidate final. A top-two system has an important strength. It opens the primary to all voters, but it can still narrow the November choice too early. Because only two candidates advance on the basis of first-choice primary totals, a broadly acceptable candidate can be excluded before the full electorate has a chance to compare that candidate directly against the other leading candidates. It can also magnify vote splitting in a crowded primary field and create incentives for strategic actors to shape which opponent reaches the general election. Ohio has already seen why spoiler dynamics and field shaping incentives deserve attention. In the 2024 election for Ohio's ninth congressional district, Official results showed Rep. Marcy Captur with 181,098 votes, Derek Maron with 178,716 votes, and Libertarian Tom Pruss with 15,381 votes. The final margin was outside the automatic recount threshold, and the Associated Press reported that Pruss won more than 4% of the vote after his campaign was boosted by more than 400,000 from the pro-Democrat Voter Protection Project. Whatever one's view of that race, it illustrates the structural problem. Voters should not have to calculate whether a sincere vote for their preferred candidate might accidentally help the candidate they like least. By advancing three candidates to the general election, SB 395 reduces the risks of vote splitting and strategic voting while offering voters more choice in November. By deciding the winner through head-to-head comparisons, it prevents a candidate from winning merely because that candidate is the largest faction if most voters prefer another finalist in a direct comparison. SB 395 is a practical approach that combines simplicity and fairness while providing greater transparency. It does not use either ranking nor elimination rounds to determine a winner. Instead the ballot presents direct candidate pairings and each pairing is counted as a straightforward head contest Votes can be tallied in public view and results for each matchup can be reported in a simple table Voters, candidates, journalists, and local election officials can see who won each comparison and by what margin. That transparency is central to public confidence. Throughout our nation's history, our electoral systems have changed as our society and democratic expectations have changed. We have expanded suffrage, modernized ballot access, improved transparency, and adapted our institutions to meet new public expectations. SB 395 should be viewed in that same spirit as a measured practical improvement designed to better align Ohio's election system with the needs and expectations of today's voters. No electoral system is a final answer to every problem in our politics, but this bill offers Ohio a serious, administrable, and transparent reform grounded in a basic principle of Republican self-government. Elections should make public officials accountable to the people for those reasons. I respectfully ask for the committee's favorable consideration of SB 395. Thank you, and I would be happy to answer the many questions that I'm sure will follow. Thank you, Madam Chairwoman.

Hi, thank you for your testimony. Do any other states utilize this system? And if so, which states?

Senator DeMora. Thank you, Madam Chair. Senator, unfortunately, we agreed on everything on a panel on Thursday, but this is not going to be that panel, and I very recognized you without a bow tie on this morning. So, I mean, this is, I mean, I'm just, first of all, there's no way I'm supporting this. There's just no way in my life that I'm not going to give up being a Democrat and have other people pick my primary voters other than the Democrats. But you say that if A versus, if A beats B, but A loses to C and B beats C, if they all lose by, well, we're going to say hypothetically, they all lose within less than 10 votes. So you're telling me that one, that no one actually likes anybody two out of three, but we're going to have something that one vote of somebody who lost by less than somebody, but they beat the other person, is going to determine the winner? I mean, how is that somehow fair?

Very good. Do you have a follow-up? Go ahead.

Through the chairwoman to the senator, no, they would all have to file for, there would be a single primary, everybody would run in that primary, and really I view it as sort of a thinning of the field, the same way that 382 did with the open primary, only instead of top two, it would be top three, irrespective of party. Now you do bring up a good point with respect to independence that is not in this bill that I do want to address at some point with respect to collecting signatures and what that threshold is. I mean, we, as Republicans and Democrats, I want to say for us, the Statehouse is 50, but it's like five for minor political parties, and then independents, it's like a percentage of the gubernatorial vote. You know, it's going to be in the hundreds. But if you're going to have a system like this, they should all be the same. But, you know, I could see the minor political party folks coming out and saying, well, wait a minute, now we suddenly have to have more, even though independents would be like, this is great, we need less. What that number would be, I don't know. But, yeah, it would be, the timing of that would all have to change because you couldn't have that top three primary leading into consensus voting in the general if you had independents filing and then hopping in in, like, say, July and August.

Thank you so much, Madam Chair, and thank you for your testimony. Just a quick question. What is the estimated cost to counties to implement the new tabulation and valid image reporting requirements?

All right, Senator Blessing, you were correct. You are igniting all the questions.

Through the chairwoman to the senator, it's more nuanced than that, actually. But yeah, let's say that you are in a deeply blue Senate seat, for example, for something like this. Everybody, independents, Republicans, Democrats, Libertarians, Greens, maybe somebody throws in and says, I'm a member of the Whig Party at this point, and they're all running in the top three, make it to the general. It could very easily be three Democrats that advance to the general in that situation. Let's suppose that that is the case. but now they have to beat each other in these head-to-head matchups, like I said, the same way the first round of the NCAA tournament would occur, and I need to clarify that because NCAA tournament has rounds, and I don't want this to be confused with ranked choice voting, which has rounds. But in any case, it'll have that poll to the center because now in the general, even though it's three Democrats, any one of them that wants to win and able to beat their head-to-head matchups, they're going to have to pull from not just the Democrat base, they're going to have to pull from independents and even Republicans to win. So I think they're going to be reaching out to capture that vote. But they're not, when I say they, if there is a tie, and so what you're talking about when you mention, oh, what if somebody just like squeaks in, this is only in the event that somebody doesn't win two head-to-head matchups. If you win both of your head-to-head matchups, you win, period. But of the three candidates, if each candidate only wins one head-to-head matchup, that's when that least bad loss kicks in. So it's like you were able to demonstrate, look, you lost by the least, you gained as much support as you could in that loss, you are there for the winner. But that's, again, only if somebody was not able to win two

urban district like this one. Through the chairwoman to the senator, you know, my flippant response would be, you sound like you're in the Republican caucus here, where we're finding really, really, you know, extreme counterexamples where, well, we're talking about a bill, what if the phase of the moon was this, and this was this, and then maybe this could happen. I mean, I think it would be highly unlikely for something like that to occur. You know, even then, when you get to the general, if it really is a 90-10 minority majority district, it's highly likely going to have, you know, a minority member of the Democrat Party win that seat. I would be stunned if there was a spoiler, you know, of the Republican Party to win like a 90-10 district like that. But again, I don't know how you would really know without knowing who's actually filed and to what degree. I just don't think there would be any more likelihood for something like that under this system than there already is in the current system with potential independent spoilers and Green Party candidates and folks like that.

Thank you for indulging us, Madam Chairwoman. Thank you for your testimony.