DeWine signed a letter this week to the U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services.

The letter urges that an exemption to the coverage mandate for certain nonprofit religious groups be broadened to include private employers who object to contraception for religious reasons.

DeWine said Friday that some private employers are “being forced to provide insurance coverage that violates their religious beliefs.”

He pointed to the morning-after pill, for example, which critics say are abortive.

The move drew criticism from pro-abortion groups who say DeWine is misusing his position to interfere with women’s private medical decisions.

In his 12th trip to the Buckeye State this year, President Obama told about 4,500 people at Schiller that he’d raise taxes on upper income Americans and would use money saved from fighting wars to reduce the national debt. He said Republicans want to go back to the same economic plan that he said plunged the nation into a recession.

“They were happy to talk about all of the things that are wrong with America but they don’t want to talk about how they’d make it right. They want your vote but they don’t want you to know their plan,” President Obama said.

Obama said he’s already cut taxes, saving the average American family about $3,600 a year. And he said it’s time that some Americans pay a little more right now.

I want to make sure we are asking the wealthiest households to pay slightly higher tax on incomes over 250,000 dollars, the same rate that we had when Bill Clinton was President, when our economy was creating 23 million new jobs, when we had the biggest surplus in history and we had a bunch of millionaires to boot.

Obama said the Republican plan promises lower taxes, increased defense spending, and deficit reduction, but he said it doesn’t add up.

“I’m telling you, you cannot make it work. You cannot cross the T’s and dot the I’s on this plan. And Columbus is a town where you’ve got to dot the I.”

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney wasn’t in Ohio to counter President Obama’s back-to-back visits to Cincinnati and Columbus. Instead, the Romney campaign sent a surrogate – a US Senator who’d been reportedly at the top of Romney’s vice presidential list and a Tea Party favorite.

About three hundred people gathered on the Statehouse lawn to hear Florida’s Marco Rubio.

“The President will be here in a few minutes – not here, a few blocks away I guess. And he’s finally getting around to doing something about currency manipulation in China. Elections are funny like that. They get people to do stuff they should have done three and a half years ago.”

And Rubio said another thing Obama should have done years ago is deal with the national debt. Rubio said he’s not only not dealt with the debt as he promised, but that he’s made it worse. And he countered Mr. Obama’s message of building on what his administration has done by saying what the president has built is a huge mountain of debt.

If we stay on the track he’s placed us on – these are his numbers, not mine. These are his ideas, not the ideas I’m making up for him. The president has no – if we stay on the raod he’s outlined for us now, the debt will grow to levels no people have ever seen. And the debt is just part of the problem. You know what’s just as bad as the debt – the interest on the debt.

Rubio talked up the concerns of college graduates having trouble finding work and workers nearing retirement watching their savings dwindle – and noted that things may never be the same again – but said – quoting here “they can actually be better than they’ve ever been.”

But Rubio said that’s only possible by returning to what he called the principles that made Americans prosperous and different – limited government and free enterprise, which he said Obama doesn’t understand and Romney would embrace.

Mr. Obama will rally supporters in Schiller Park in German Village. Gates open at 2 p.m. Admission is free, but attendants need a ticket. Tickets can be picked up on a first-come, first-serve basis beginning this afternoon at 5 p.m. at the following campaign offices:

• OFA-OH 161 Field Office: 1973 E Dublin Granville Rd., Columbus, OH 43229
• OFA-OH Long Street Field Office: 1005 E Long St., Columbus, OH 43203
• OFA-OH German Village Field Office: 1247 S High St., Columbus, OH 43206
• OFA-OH Grove City Field Office: 3965 Stringtown Rd., Grove City, OH 43123
• OFA-OH Pickerington Field Office: 1256 Hill Rd. N. Pickerington, OH 43147

There have been two common call and response chants among the Ohio delegation in Charlotte. The first one of course is OH IO. And the second one, used by delegates from all the states, is “Fired Up – Ready To Go.” And that’s what Ohio Democrats were feeling after four or five very long days wrapped up with the final acceptance speech by their flag bearer Barack Obama. The President had one reference to the Buckeye state last night and got the Ohio section on their feet.

Like Governor Kasich in Tampa, Strickland also said things are getting better in the Buckeye state. But he offered different reasons than his Republican successor.

In Charlotte, everyone knows Ohio could be a make-or-break state for the presidential election. So delegates cheered ecstatically when Ted Strickland told them Mr. Obama’s investment in GM and Chrysler brought back thousands of Ohio manufacturing jobs.

Just last month, GM announced a plan to invest 200 million dollars in Lordstown, keeping 5,000 jobs in Ohio and building the next generation of the Chevy Cruze — a car we are proud to say is made entirely in Ohio.

Strickland has also been campaigning for the president this summer by going on the attack against Mitt Romney.

“Mitt Romney has so little economic patriotism that even his money needs a passport. It summers on the beaches of the Cayman Islands and winters on the slopes of the Swiss Alps,” Strickland said to rounds of applause.

The former Ohio governor is an Obama campaign co-chairman in Ohio. But so many Ohio delegates are wearing TED buttons that the 71-year-old may well be setting up his own next political race.

As Strickland and other Ohio Democrats were gathering in Charlotte, Republican vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan was campaigning in northeast Ohio. He told supporters at a breakfast in Westlake that “President Obama makes the Jimmy Carter years seem like good old days.”

First there’s the Quinnipiac University poll of likely Ohio voters which says the President is ahead of Romney 50% to 44%….the exact same margin from a poll 3 weeks ago.

In other words, Romney’s pick of Congressman Paul Ryan as his running mate has given the GOP ticket no bounce here, even though it apparently has helped just a bit in Florida and Wisconsin.

In Ohio, the Quinnipiac poll credits a 13 point edge for the President among women as a key strength for him while Independent voters favor Romney by 5.

Pollsters at the University of Cincinnati also find an overall edge for the President among likely Ohio voters, but it’s a 3 point edge and that’s just  below the poll’s margin of error.

More than a hundred of them from across the country have flocked to the Ohio State University campus this week in Columbus for a national conference. Ohio Public Radio’s Bill Cohen attended the group’s march and rally Monday, and found that political rhetoric may be one thing, but people’s actions in the voting booth are quite another. Click the play button above to hear his report.

In his message to the Plumbers and Pipefitters union in Columbus Thursday afternoon, the vice president told union members that Ohio’s manufacturing industry is a successful comeback story.

But Republicans supporting former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney say Biden isn’t telling the whole story.

About 600 backers of the President gathered at a union hall in downtown Columbus to hear Vice President Joe Biden explain Ohio is adding manufacturing jobs now because of President Obama’s bold decision to bail out the American auto industry.

“We are betting on Ohio. We are betting on the United States of America,” Biden told a raucous crowd of supporters.

Biden said the President and Democrats in Congress want to pass legislation to give incentives to companies that move jobs overseas back to the United States, but he says Republicans won’t even allow the issue to come up for a vote.

And when it comes to betting on America, Biden said it’s fair to question Republican Presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s record at his financial firm, Bain Capital.

“So this guy is saying ‘look at my experience.’ He’s not running on his experience as Governor, where he had a couple of good ideas in health care and some things that he did. He’s running as the chairman of the board and the founder of Bain so I honestly think it’s totally appropriate to judge whether he was a job creator and if he did create them, where did he create the jobs?”

“I have to admit, after going into detail, he did create jobs. But they were in Singapore, China, India. They weren’t in Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania.”

And Biden said President Obama believes in growing the economy from the middle class out, instead of from the top down. Biden said Mr. Obama understands the problems of middle class Ohioans.

“Romney said the president is out of touch. Out of touch? A guy who has a Swiss bank account? A guy who has apparently millions of bucks invested in the Cayman Islands? And my guy’s out of touch? Guys, think about it.”

After the event, Al Caldwell of Columbus, a member of the United Steelworkers union, said he liked what Biden had to say.

“Well it means to me that you have someone who is trying to keep the jobs here and brings the ones that are gone back which, to someone in my shoes with little kids and a family to provide for, that means a lot to me.”

But Republican Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal said Biden is not telling the whole story.

“Obviously, both candidates and Governor Romney, especially, wants a strong domestic auto industry,” Jindel told reporters in Columbus. “But look, it’s still too early to declare success. You still have tens of thousands fewer jobs. The federal government is still tens of billions of dollars in debt in terms of money we have not recovered.”

Jindal said Romney would take a hard line with China, would have an energy policy that uses coal to make energy more affordable and available, and lower the corporate tax rate.

Jindal said there’s one thing that would make Ohio’s manufacturing base stronger: create more jobs.

“If we want our automotive companies to really be successful though, we need a growing economy. When you have 23 million underemployed or unemployed Americans, they are not going to be able to buy enough new cars, trucks and vehicles to power the automotive industry so if you want a stronger automotive industry, we need Governor Romney in the White House.”

Ohio remains presidential battleground. Within the past week, President Obama, Presidential candidate Romney, Vice President Biden and several surrogates for each have appeared in various parts of the state to try to sway voters.

And it’s not even Labor Day yet.

But Ohio lawmakers, during the past couple of years, have passed new laws eliminating that three day window. There was an attempt to allow Ohio voters to vote in a referendum to repeal that law. But Ohio lawmakers took matters in their own hands and repealed the controversial bill but didn’t repeal other new laws related to voting. Backers of a new lawsuit say the way Ohio laws are written now treats voters unfairly and unequally. Ohio Democratic Party Chairman Chris Redfern says a new lawsuit, filed in federal court, seeks to remedy that.

“All Ohioans, all voters deserve so much more and better. Our country deserves so much more and better and that’s what this case is all about….insuring all voters, every voter, has the same access to the polls,” said Redfern.

The new federal lawsuit, filed by President Obama’s campaign, the Ohio Democratic party and the Democratic National Committee contends the laws that are currently on the books in Ohio treat military voters and their families differently than ordinary Ohioans. Don McTigue, an attorney working on behalf of the Democratic groups, explains treating the two groups differently violates federal election laws.

“The general assembly has established a deadline for one group of voters that allows them to vote three extra voters in person at the board of elections. All other voters, the general assembly has cut off on the Friday before. Whether or not this was done deliberately or whether it was a happenstance result of a tortured legislative history from all of these bills, it does not make a difference from a legal or constitutional standpoint. You have two groups of voters that do not have the same rights to vote and should,” said McTigue.

The new lawsuit seeks to bring back that three day, in person early voting period at the board of elections for every Ohio voter. Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted says it’s important to remember that Ohio voters haven’t had those three days recently anyway, “This is the third election that we’ve had under these rules so there’s nothing new happening here in Ohio.”

As far as the inequity between ordinary Ohioans and military families, Husted says federal law is responsible for that.

One of the Republican lawmakers who pushed to wipe out the three day window before election day, Lou Blessing, says no voter is being disenfranchised under the current law.

“As far as preventing people from voting….my comment is you’ve got to be voting…you’ve got 30 days before the election. I’m not quite sure how that prevents anybody from voting,” maintained Blessing.

In 2008, 93,000 votes were cast in the three days before Election Day.

The Democratic president made a bus tour across northern Ohio over two days earlier this month, and has had rallies in Cleveland and Columbus since officially kicking off his re-election bid in May.

Republican challenger Mitt Romney has also made recent Ohio visits, including a stop in Cincinnati last month.

The swing state figures to be pivotal in the November election.

Obama carried Ohio in 2008.