By Rev. Donald L. Perryman, Ph.D.
The Truth Contributor
The vote is the most powerful nonviolent tool we have. – John Lewis
I did my early voting after church on Sunday. The line at the Lucas County early vote center was brisk but not overly long — a mix of ages, mostly older folks — some in wheelchairs, others leaning on canes, moving steadily through, each one a quiet argument for showing up. Nothing dramatic. And yet, watching from my curbside voting perch, something caught within me.
Lucas County is known for not showing up. In fact, in 2024, we posted the second-lowest voter turnout of any of Ohio’s 88 counties. Maybe it means nothing. Or, maybe it means everything.
I do know the data says that: Ohio in November is a dead heat; and in a dead heat, Lucas County is exactly the kind of place that will decide who governs.
Bowling Green State University’s Democracy and Public Policy Network surveyed 1,000 registered Ohio voters in April — the most rigorous independent statewide polling Ohio has. Both the governor’s race and the U.S. Senate race are statistically tied in a state Donald Trump won by 11 points in 2024.
Both critical races are essentially a coin flip right now. BGSU’s own director called it plainly: the best opportunity for Democrats to win statewide offices in Ohio in 20 years.
Why? Because voters — including a significant slice of Trump’s own Ohio supporters — are experiencing the consequences of the choices they made and reconsidering. The economy. The war in Iran. The tariffs are hitting Ohio’s workers and farmers. The sense, shared by a majority of Ohioans in the poll, that checks and balances are no longer holding.
Those grievances are not limited to the Democrats. They are Ohio grievances. They belong to people of every party and no party.
However, what does belong specifically to our community is this: the enthusiasm gap.
Ohio Democrats, according to BGSU, say they are more motivated than usual to vote this November by nearly a two-to-one margin over Republicans. That kind of intensity is the structural edge that wins close elections — if it translates into ballots. Enthusiasm that stays home changes nothing.
And then, last week, the U.S. Supreme Court said plainly: they will no longer protect us.
In Louisiana v. Callais, the court’s conservative majority gutted the core enforcement provision of the Voting Rights Act — the one that for 60 years gave Black voters a mechanism to challenge maps drawn to erase our power. Justice Elena Kagan’s dissent called the court’s decision the “now-completed demolition” of the law. Within hours, Florida had already passed a new gerrymandered map.
That means November in Ohio is about whether our community retains enough political presence in this state to matter. Black voters in Ohio’s cities — Toledo, Cleveland, Columbus, Cincinnati, Dayton, Akron — have delivered this state’s Democratic margins when they existed. So, turnout in our precincts is not merely a footnote to Ohio’s statewide results. It is often the deciding chapter.
This is the part that requires something specific from our young people — who must not only receive the baton from previous generations but run the anchor leg.
The Harvard Kennedy School’s Youth Poll — the most comprehensive survey of 18-to-29-year-old Americans — was released just last week. It found that young voters lean Democratic by nearly two-to-one. It found that they are also angry about the economy, skeptical of the war in Iran, and deeply dissatisfied with where the country is headed. In other words, they feel exactly what the BGSU poll says Ohio feels.
But here is the thing that should trouble us: fewer than one in three youth believe the 2026 elections will be conducted fairly. And those who doubt the system are significantly less likely to say they will vote. The Harvard researchers named what they are seeing among this generation — not apathy, but a loss of perceived agency. A growing belief that what they do no longer shapes what happens next.
I understand that feeling. However, I don’t accept it.
Because the Sunday lines I witnessed — mostly older folks, people who came of age when the Voting Rights Act was not history but hard-won news — those people did not have the luxury of cynicism. They voted when the system was openly, legally designed to stop them. They voted when showing up meant risk, not inconvenience. AND, they are still showing up.
The elders know something our young people are still learning: the system does not have to feel fair for your vote to be real.
November will be decided by who turns out.
The BGSU data shows us the races are razor-thin. The Harvard data tells us young people have the motivation — and the doubt.
Our job, as a community, is to close that gap. In our congregations, our block clubs, our barbershops and beauty salons, our family group chats between now and the November election. Not as a civic abstraction. As a family obligation we do together, out loud, and for each other.
The elders are already in line. The question is whether our young people will join them.
Contact Rev. Donald Perryman, PhD, at drdlperryman@centerofhopebaptist.org