- Ohio law sets an early August deadline for political parties to formally communicate their presidential candidates to the state.
- But this year, the Democratic National Convention will not meet and nominate Biden until after Ohio's vote notification deadline has passed.
Thomas Suddes is a former legislative reporter for The Plain Dealer in Cleveland and writes at Ohio University. tsuddes@gmail.com
In the latest example of dysfunction, the Ohio Legislature is at loggerheads over whether and how to ensure Democrat Joe Biden wins a spot on Ohio's presidential ballot this fall.
The problem is technical in nature. Ohio law sets an early August deadline for political parties to formally communicate their presidential candidates to the state.
But this year, the Democratic National Convention will not meet and nominate Biden until after Ohio's vote notification deadline has passed. The same timing problem has occurred in other presidential election years, and is common practice in both parties, including the Republican Party.
And when that happened, the General Assembly, forever controlled by Republicans, dutifully passed a temporary measure extending Ohio's vote notification deadline to avoid timing issues.
What happened now?Ohio lawmakers failed to pass a plan to get Biden on the ballot.
Ohio Republican infighting at work
But this year's efforts have stalled because of conflicts between the Legislature's Republican leaders, House Speaker Jason Stevens of Kitzhill in Lawrence County and Senate President Matt Huffman of Lima.
In short, Mr. Huffman is scheduled to be elected to the House in November and hopes to replace Mr. Stevens as speaker when he arrives in the House in January, an idea that Mr. Reluctant.
As Stevens' House prepared legislative amendments to Biden's calendar issue, Huffman's Senate sent the Senate's proposed amendments to the House. The problem is that the Senate amendment includes another provision that Democrats oppose: banning foreign contributions to Ohio's ballot-issuing campaign. This is something that is already prohibited in candidate campaigns in Ohio.
Battles related to issue 1
Why: Many Republicans believe that Ohio voters voted last year on two statewide ballot issues: guaranteeing abortion rights in Ohio and refusing to make it harder for voters to amend the Ohio Constitution. I'm angry that he sided with the Democratic Party.
The obvious question is, if Republicans control both chambers, what's wrong with the Senate amendment?
The answer is that Democrats oppose this amendment. Mr. Stevens was elected speaker and leads the House because 32 of the 54 House votes to elect him speaker were cast by House Democrats, while two-thirds of House Republicans It's only because I voted for suburban Toledo. Republican Rep. Derek Melin.
Our view:Biden should be on the ballot. Alabama gets it — why don't Ohio Republicans?
That means Mr. Stevens needs to maintain the support of House Democrats. And Democrats are objecting to a provision in President Biden's amended timeline that Senate Republicans would ban foreign campaign donations.
In January, cleveland.com cited an Associated Press report that reported that a Washington-based underground finance organization had received hundreds of millions of dollars in donations from a Swiss billionaire. The dark money group contributed to Ohio's 2023 statewide ballot issuance campaign to defeat a Republican proposal that would guarantee abortion rights and make it harder for voters to amend the Ohio Constitution.
For congressional Democrats, some kind of dark money is apparently OK in Ohio politics, but the other kind, namely the millions of dollars pumped into the FirstEnergy/House Bill 6 scandal, is tainted.
In other words, the root of the Biden/voting schedule debate appears to be essentially a proxy war over who will make the General Assembly's decisions, especially in 2025, rather than a matter of important principle.
It's true that things aren't always certain.
Given such high stakes, what if the Ohio bicker threatens to deny votes to Ohioans who support Joe Biden? will renominate Donald Trump well before the deadline).
Democrats are apparently confident the courts will intervene to ensure Biden appears on Ohio's presidential ballot in November.
Interestingly, Ohio Democrats' confident beliefs in other areas, such as Democrat Tim Ryan's foolproof chance of defeating Cincinnati Republican J.D. Vance for the Senate seat in 2022, are interesting. It is said that there is, but it doesn't always seem to work.
To be fair, it's hard to imagine that for the first time since statehood in 1803, Ohioans would be denied the right to vote for a major presidential candidate on grounds that amount to paperwork issues. But given today's crazy Congressional politics in Ohio, perhaps anything is possible.
On the other hand, rather than continue to make Ohio look like some kind of North American banana republic where political turmoil is the only constant, the General Assembly has decided to confine intra-baseball bickering to the Statehouse locker room. It couldn't be more wonderful if you did.
Thomas Suddes is a former legislative reporter for The Plain Dealer in Cleveland and writes at Ohio University. tsuddes@gmail.com
