Ohioans get to vote on new statue for U.S. Capitol

TOLEDO, Ohio (AP) — The people of Ohio will get a chance to tell their lawmakers whose graven image should represent their state in the U.S. Capitol’s Statuary Hall.

After years of talking about which notable Ohioan’s statue should replace the one of William Allen — a 19th century congressman and governor who supported Southern slave owners and portrayed blacks as savages — officials are putting the question to an informal plebiscite. The voting begins Saturday.

With the help of some advisers, a bipartisan legislative committee has sorted through about 90 possibilities and settled on a few finalists.

Among them: inventor Thomas Edison, athlete Jesse Owens and writer Harriet Beecher Stowe. Others are James Ashley, Ulysses S. Grant, William McCulloch, Judith Resnik, Albert Sabin, Harriet Taylor Upton of Warren and Wilbur and Orville Wright.

Voting runs through June 12 at the Statehouse and 35 other sites affiliated with the Ohio Historical Society, the Cincinnati Museum Center and the Cleveland-based Western Reserve Historical Society. The vote is open to Ohioans of all ages.