Democratic governor candidate Amy Acton said Friday she supports Issue 3, the voter ID amendment that will appear on the November ballot, breaking with most elected officials in her party.
In response to an inquiry, Acton issued a statement to Signal Statewide on Friday describing her views.
“This amendment has overwhelming support from Ohioans across the state. As this doesn’t change what is already law, as governor, I will support it,” Acton said.
“At the same time, as both a candidate and governor, I will fight to ensure that all eligible Ohio voters, regardless of party, can access the required identification easily and at no cost, so they can exercise their fundamental right and have their voices heard.”
Acton’s support for Issue 3 puts her in the same camp as Vivek Ramaswamy, her Republican opponent in the November election. Ramaswamy wrote an op-ed in May backing a voter ID amendment shortly before Republicans first introduced legislative measures to place it on the ballot.
It also puts her at odds with most Democrats. Every Democrat in the state House and Senate who voted on Senate Joint Resolution 10, the official measure that placed Issue 3 on the ballot, voted against it. (A handful of Democrats who were present didn’t vote at all on SJR 10.)
And those who have criticized Issue 3 include Ohio Democratic Party Chair Kathleen Clyde, who described the measure as making it more difficult to vote in a July 21 op-ed. State Rep. Allison Russo, who’s the Democratic nominee for Ohio Secretary of State, voted against SJR 10 in June and delivered a floor speech opposing it.
“It is highly flawed. It lacks many of the key protections for Ohio’s eligible voters,” Russo said in her speech. “There is clear political motivation for this effort today. It was fast-tracked. It’s poorly written.”
Russo’s Republican opponent, state treasurer Robert Sprague, meanwhile has said he supports Issue 3, like the rest of the GOP.
Acton’s comment is the latest example of her selectively staking out a Republican-leaning political position as she runs to replace Republican Gov. Mike DeWine, for whom she previously worked as state health department director during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic.
She said in February that she supports work requirements for Medicaid recipients, while in June, she was sharply criticized by LGBTQ+ advocates and some Democrats for saying she supports an Ohio law that bans transgender athletes from girls’ and women’s sports.
In the case of Acton’s comments on the transgender sports ban, some Democrats defended her position as strategically sound and in line with most Americans.
More about Issue 3
If voters approve it, Issue 3 would add Ohio’s photo ID requirement for in-person voting to the state constitution. The amendment wouldn’t have any immediate effect, but it would make it harder for the voter ID requirement to be undone in the future.
Republican lawmakers voted in June to place the amendment on the November ballot. They said putting the requirement in the constitution would strengthen the state’s hypothetical legal defense of its existing law, if a group were to challenge it in court at some point in the future. They also say it would prevent Democrats from ignoring or repealing it in the future, although Democrats haven’t controlled the state legislature in nearly 50 years.
More generally, Republicans call voter ID requirements a common-sense measure that polling consistently shows has broad public support, including among most Democratic voters.
Democrats, meanwhile, call the amendment unnecessary and describe it as an attempt by Republicans to mobilize their voters in what’s expected to be a favorable national political climate for Democrats. Democrats previously voted against the voter ID law that Republicans passed in 2023, arguing it imposed an unnecessary barrier to voters who are less likely to have valid photo ID, including the poor, college students and the elderly.
