Tuesday was Election Day across the country and voters in several states cast ballots on issues with national dimensions. Ohio voters struck down a law that restricts the collective bargaining rights of public workers. The landslide 62-38 result was setback for Republican Governor John Kasich, who implemented the law as a budget-cutting measure and campaigned across the state to prevent its defeat. Mississippi voters rejected the so-called "Personhood Amendment," which sought to outlaw abortions. In Arizona, voters defeated the main architect of that state's controversial immigration law.

It's a bizarre scene in Zanesville, Ohio this morning as police are on the hunt for 48 exotic animals that escaped from the Mushkingum County Animal Farm, a wildlife preserve. The owner of the preserve was found dead, and the animals' cages were left open. Lions, tigers, bears, zebras, giraffes, cheetahs, and camels were among the animals that were found roaming free. Police have shot around 30 of the animals. The town remains on lock down, and residents have been advised to stay indoors. Danielle White, a resident of Zanesville, lives on the property next to the animal preserve, and reports on what she's witnessed.

The Occupy Wall Street movement is now in its fourth week, and has spread to cities and towns across the country. Boston, Washington, DC, Chicago, Los Angeles, Denver, and even Cleveland, Ohio have seen their own protests. Mark Whitaker, correspondent for the BBC, sat down with one Cleveland protester, Kyle DeForest, a songwriter, to explore the motivations of one man confronting corporate greed in America.

President Obama continues his jobs tour today, in an attempt to gain public support for the Jobs Act. Tuesday, he visited Ohio, and today he will appear in Raleigh, North Carolina to continue spreading the message and meet with small business owners. Despite President Obama's claims not to be campaigning early for the 2012 election, the White House hopes to persuade voters he has the right strategy on the economy, and put pressure on Republicans to pass the package of spending initiatives and tax cuts.

In Wisconsin, demonstrators are camped out for a seventh day over a state bill that would cut state workers’ ability to bargain collectively. But Wisconsin isn’t the only state where union battles are blazing. In Ohio, state Republicans are promoting measures to cut collective bargaining as an eventual cost-cutting measure as well. Ohio faces an estimated $8 billion budget deficit. Ohio Public Radio State House Reporter Bill Cohen explains the latest.

We continue our series about incoming governors across the country and the challenges they face. This morning Republican John Kasich will be sworn in as the new governor of Ohio, replacing Democrat Ted Strickland. Ohio is a critical state in national elections. Ohio's population is shifting as local companies move out of the state, and Republican leadership continues to gain control.

With the 112th Congress starting this week, Ohio's Rep. John Boehner is set to take his seat as the new Speaker of the House. What kind of Speaker he'll be remains to be seen. Will he follow in the steps of Newt Gingrich, who became Speaker when Republicans took control of the House back in 1994?

In 2008, the Obama wave swept across the country, bringing Democrats to districts that had been Republican strongholds for decades. Democrats acquired a 75 vote majority in the House of Representatives; they currently hold the majority of Representatives' seats in 33 states, compared to Republicans' 16 states.

This year, the electoral tide is shifting and all signs point to Republicans taking back the House during today's election. The first districts likely to go Republican will be those former stronghold "swing seats," such as Ohio's 6th and 18th Districts and Colorado's 3rd, 4th, and 7th Districts.

We have just a few weeks left until voters head to the polls for the midterms. Takeaway political correspondent Andrea Bernstein has been searching out districts across the country that are hotly contested. She is just back from Stark County, Ohio, where the 16th Congressional district is turning into a political battleground. In 2008, the district went for Sen. John McCain, but elected Democrat John Boccieri to its Congressional seat.

 

(Canton, Ohio) Alice Prestier has lived in these parts all her life, raising her children and grandchildren here. For 30 years, she worked for Hoover's vacuum company. “If they would have told me that Hoover's was going to go out of business I would have never believed it.  Not a company that big. You got too many big companies that just left Canton, Ohio. And this was a nice booming town.”

She ticks off the employers that have left Canton in recent years. “Ford Company. Bliss Company.  Hercules. Canton Stamping. Canton Provisions. There was a lot of companies around here. We lost them all. Everything’s gone.” (READ MORE)

President Obama gave a sweeping economic address to a handpicked crowd of 800 people near Cleveland, Ohio yesterday… partly to announce several new economic proposals, partly to try to set a new tone for the midterm election campaigns. 

It was his second speech on the economy this week; in it, he proposed $180 billion dollars in new business tax breaks and infrastructure spending, to get businesses spending and hiring again. 

But even if Congress passes the proposals, would they be enough to turn the economy around in a substantial way? And will it do anything to improve fortunes for the Democrats heading into the November 2nd elections?

On Sept. 15, Ohio death row inmate Kevin Keith is scheduled to be executed, unless his defense team can get clemency granted to their client before then. Keith was convicted of murdering three people in February of 1994. He maintains he is innocent, has alibis who confirm his story, and some question the testimony delivered by the key eyewitness. His execution, plus another scheduled to take place today in Ohio, would put that state on track for having the second most executions this year, after Texas. 

But cases like Keith's have prompted several high-level officials to call for a comprehensive review of Ohio's death row cases.

For most Americans, human trafficking is a horrific practice that nearly always seems to happen overseas and far away. However, a recent report by the Ohio Trafficking in Persons Study Commission says about 1,000 American-born children are forced into the sex trade every year in Ohio alone.

Over the weekend, President Obama visited Lorain County, Ohio as part of his continuing Main Street tour. How are people in Ohio feeling about Obama's first year in office and on the eve of his first State of the Union address?

Cities across the U.S. are facing devastating rates of foreclosure. As the numbers of vacant houses increase, another problem has cropped up: banks don't want to keep all those foreclosed properties. In Ohio, Cleveland's Cuyahoga County expects at least 13,000 new foreclosures this year, but state Treasurer Jim Rokakis has a plan – he wants to buy up bad mortgages and sell them back to homeowners in order to keep people in their homes. We ask Rokakis about his plan and speak to Dan Moulthroup, reporter with WCPN in Cleveland, and the host of Sound of Ideas.

It has been over sixty years since the end of the Third Reich’s reign of terror over Europe and the Nuremberg Trials that followed. Yet the hunt still continues for the long-lost Nazi war criminals. So when alleged Nazi prison guard John Demjanjuk was found in a small American town, there was a thrill of victory for some and shivers for others. But despite what Mr. Demjanjuk may be guilty of, he is a sickly 89-year-old man. And for that he was given a stay of deportation Tuesday, just hours after immigration agents physically carried him in his wheelchair out of his house. Demjanjuk awaits a war crime trial in Germany. His family and lawyer said that he is so sick, a trip could kill him.

For more on this story The Takeaway is joined by David Marwell, Director of the Museum of Jewish Heritage. David followed Demjanjuk’s deportation and trial in Israel over twenty years ago. We are also joined by Jonathan Silvers who is finishing up his new documentary, Elusive Justice, about the search for and prosecution of Nazi war criminals.