On November 19, the Ohio Libertarian Party filed a notice of appeal to the Sixth Circuit, in Libertarian Party of Ohio v Husted, 14-3230. The issue in this part of the case is whether Ohio waived its Eleventh Amendment immunity. If Ohio did waive its Eleventh Amendment immunity, then the federal courts have a right to determine if the 2013 ballot access laws for new political parties violates the Ohio Constitution. The U.S. District Court had ruled that federal courts can’t decide whether the 2013 law violates the Ohio Constitution.
The 2013 law appears to violate the Ohio Constitution, because the 2013 law says new parties can’t nominate by primary, yet the State Constitution seems to say all parties must nominate by primary. The 2013 law sets a July petition deadline for new parties, and the Ohio primary is already over by then. The Ohio primary is in March in presidential years and May in other years.
In the meantime, the party is still waiting for the U.S. District Court to rule on whether the enforcement of another law in 2014 represented selective enforcement. That law required petitioners to fill in a blank to say who paid them to gather signatures. The law had never before been enforced. It was also ambiguous, because it wasn’t clear to the circulators that it applied to independent contractors.
If one assumes that the Ohio Constitution requires parties to nominate by primary, then one might misread it to say that. You are making the same mistake that Debra Bowen did in requiring candidates not affiliated with a “qualified” party to say that they had no party preference.
The General Assembly does not share your interpretation. Otherwise, they would not have extended the sore loser provisions to cover partisan nominees of new parties who are nominated by petition.