Husted spokesman Matt McClellan said the office has had no complaints about the decision to include designs with the state motto. He said if people feel strongly about it they should go to ElectYourSticker.com and vote for a different sticker.
“It’s certainly not trying to push anything on anyone,” said McClellan.
Voting rights advocate Ellis Jacobs questions the decision to use the word “God” on the popular voting stickers.
“The ones that have the state motto on it would kind of put atheists in a bind, wouldn’t it?” said Jacobs, senior attorney for Advocates for Basic Legal Equality, based in Dayton. “There are a heck of a lot of atheists out there. They shouldn’t be made uncomfortable when they go to vote.”
Dan Andriacco, spokesman for the Archdiocese of Cincinnati, and Rob Scott, an area Tea Party leader, said they doesn’t see a problem with Husted’s sticker proposals.
“The Catholic Church doesn’t believe in a theocracy, but we do believe that ‘With God All Things are Possible.’ That’s Ohio’s state motto as upheld by federal courts as Constitutional and it’s a good one,” said Andriacco.
The Tea Party movement is generally opposed to government involvement in people’s lives, including their religious lives, said Scott, head of the Dayton Tea Party, so the use of the God on the sticker might “raise eyebrows” if it were not the state motto.
“I can see the arguments on both sides, but overall I think the Tea Party movement would not have a problem with it,” Scott said.
Ohioans of all religious persuasions — and those with none — should feel welcome in polling places, said Catherine Turcer, director of the money in politics project at Ohio Citizen Action, a nonpartisan government watchdog group in Columbus.
“People love their stickers,” she said. “It’s like a badge of honor. So the badge of honor shouldn’t be contentious.”
The ACLU sued the state over the constitutionality of the motto — which quotes the Bible — in the late 1990s, and lost at the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals in 2001.
Mike Brickner, spokesman for ACLU of Ohio, said given that court ruling, the issue of the motto on the voting sticker is of less concern for the group than proposals now in the Ohio Legislature that the group believes could make it harder for people to vote.
“There’s lots of legislation right now that would seriously curtail absentee voting,” he said. “And there is also legislation that would require people to produce a photo ID.”
Legislators supporting those changes say it would reduce the chance of voter fraud.
Husted took office in January, and as is traditional for the incoming secretary of state, he launched a redesign of the voting sticker. The work was done in-house and the campaign has cost less than $1,000, said McClellan. The state provides the stickers free of charge to county boards of elections. In 2010, the state paid $29,000 for 4.2 million stickers, most of which McClellan anticipates will have been used up by the time Husted switches to the replacement stickers in November.
McClellan said about 2,000 people have voted in the sticker contest so far, and Husted is hoping the campaign will energize young people to participate in voting.
Online voters can see how their choices are faring. As of Saturday evening, one of the stickers with the word “God” had 28 percent of the vote and was running second to a sticker that uses the state’s shape heart shape to signify “love.”
Aaron Ockerman, executive director of the Ohio Association of Elections Officials, offered a partly tongue-in-cheek reaction to the use of the word “God” on the voting stickers.
“The United States Constitution says that our rights are given to us by God, and in our country we consider voting to be a right. Therefore it seems to me that God wants everybody to vote,” Ockerman said. “I will leave it to our elected officials to determine whether or not the taxpayers should fund that message.”
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