Testimony in Opposition to Sub. Bill HB472

Chair Roegner, Vice Chair Gavarone, Ranking Member Blackshear, and Members of the Senate General Government Committee,

Thank you for the opportunity to testify today. My name is the Rev. Dr. Benjamin Huelskamp. I'm the Executive Director of LOVEboldly, an Ohio, faith-based nonprofit serving LGBTQIA+ Ohioans, and the Pastor of Blue Ocean Faith Columbus. In my work, I walk alongside people who are routinely pushed to the margins of civic life including people experiencing homelessness, people without stable housing, people lacking ID documents, and people for whom participation in democracy is already harder than it should be.

I want to be clear from the outset: I thoroughly support the original House Bill 472. This bipartisan legislation would eliminate fees for state IDs and birth certificates for Ohioans experiencing homelessness, removing a significant barrier that traps people in cycles of poverty and invisibility. As one of the bill’s sponsors put it, without those documents, people can’t move forward, no matter how hard they try. In the past I’ve been involved in ministries which assisted unhoused and other people seeking identity and I witnessed the transformative power acquiring these documents can have in a person’s journey out of homelessness and poverty. The original HB472 deserves to pass.

What does not deserve to pass is what’s been attached to it.

This substitute bill is a gut job. A piece of clean, compassionate, bipartisan legislation has been hijacked and turned into a vehicle for voter suppression. The new language would require copies of photo ID for mail-in voting and this committee knows exactly what that means in practice.

Twenty-five percent of Black voters, eighteen percent of seniors, sixteen percent of Latino voters, and fifteen percent of low-income Americans lack acceptable photo ID. These aren’t abstractions. These are Ohioans. These are our neighbors. Voting by mail is a long-standing option practiced in all fifty states. It expans access to those with health concerns, family or work responsibilities, or who lack easy access to transportation. Attaching a photo ID requirement to that process doesn’t protect elections. It protects incumbency.

In my work with vulnerable communities, I’ve talked with homeless individuals who have just started getting back on their feet, people the original bill was meant to help, who vote by mail because getting to a polling location on a Tuesday isn’t possible. Requiring any Ohioan, particularly Ohioans already suffering marginalization, to produce and photocopy a government-issued photo ID isn’t a minor inconvenience. It’s a deliberate obstacle.

And let’s be honest about why this is happening. Voter fraud is extremely rare in Ohio and across the United States, a fact confirmed repeatedly by Republican Secretary of State Frank LaRose himself. There is no documented crisis this language is solving. There is a pattern: take a popular bill that almost no one opposes and use it as a Trojan horse for restrictions that couldn’t pass on their own merits. That’s not legislating. That’s maneuvering and it’s maneuvering behind the backs of Ohioans.

The people I serve have enough barriers. They don’t need the Ohio General Assembly manufacturing more.

I ask you to respect Ohio voters and the integrity of the legislative process. Do not let HB 472 pass this committee in its current form and without the proper and extensive debate it deserves.

Strip the voter suppression language and pass the original bill.

Thank you for your time and consideration.

Sincerely,

Rev. Dr. Ben Huelskamp

Executive Director, LOVEboldly

Pastor, Blue Ocean Faith Columbus.