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Ohio Secretary of state speaks to local GOP
BOARDMAN
Secretary of State Jon Husted told fellow Republicans at a local dinner that the GOP must keep working to make positive social and political changes.
Husted was the keynote speaker at the Mahoning County Republican Party’s Lincoln Day Dinner on Thursday evening at The Georgetown Banquet Center.
“It’s election year, and things in Ohio are turning for the better,” he said. “We have a great story to tell, and we’re relying on you to tell it.”
Husted said that he has worked to make the state more business-friendly and to make voting more accessible and secure, which are the two focuses of his office.
He said he told his businesses services team that “we need to see ourselves as customer servants, not bureaucrats,” and it now takes a day and a half instead of four days to start a new business in the state.
“We improved customer service and made it more convenient, and we created a record number of new business starts in 2012, and we’re on record pace for 2014,” he said.
“Then,” he continued, “when you start new businesses, new jobs follow. Then, you’re changing lives.”
He also has made changes in the elections process in “the most important swing state in the country,” he said, by “making it easy to vote and hard to cheat.”
The names of 300,000 deceased voters and 340,000 duplicate names have been removed from the voter registration rolls, he said.
He also noted he has tried to make it easier for members of the military to get their ballots and ensure they are returned and counted by including tracking numbers on them.