Ohio holds its primary this year on May 4. The race for the Democratic nomination for U.S. Senate is between Ohio’s Lieutenant Governor, Lee Fisher, and Ohio’s Secretary of State, Jennifer Brunner.
The State Column, which covers Ohio politics, has this April 12 story about Fisher’s attempt to score points against Brunner, over an election law issue. As the article says, Ohio is an open primary state, meaning that voters do not register into parties on the voter registration form. But Ohio has a law that says elections officials should make a record of which party’s primary a voter chooses. Then, at the next primary, if the voter has not filled out a form switching parties, the voter is expected to choose the same party’s primary ballot that he or she had chosen last time. But, this law has long been ignored in Ohio.
Recently Secretary of State Brunner said the law ought to be obeyed, and provided a form that voters who are switching parties should fill out at the polls on primary day. It asks the voter to express loyalty to the party whose primary ballot the voter desires. Brunner recently said she would like not to do this, but that she must enforce the law. However she also said she wants to repeal the law. Notwithstanding her statement, Fisher has just attacked her for enforcing the law and for producing the loyalty oath form.
And here is the comment I left at The State Column:
If you’re going to write a column, then at least do it with integrity – which means at least check your facts, before echoing what other non-researching, non-fact checking publications sling, while they echo partisan and other opponents’ brouhaha-inciting biases.
Ohio is NOT an open primary state. Though OH voters don’t register with a party at registration, we confirm party affiliation when selecting which ballot we want at our bi-annual primaries, which then stays on the books for at least 2 years. Read the law! – Ohio Revised Code, Chapter 3513, to see for yourselves. Brunner has no authority to make election law, (the legislature’s,) or to choose which among all to uphold. Her directive upholds the part of 3513 made to best assure both major parties’ 1rst Amendment “right of assembly” in OH’s mandated primary system, which includes the right to not have voters who don’t truly adhere to a party’s ideologies, NOT choose their November candidates (CA v Jones, 2000.)
And I add here:
An SoS cannot repeal laws either, that too is the legislature’s. And certainly just because predecessors, or unruly OH boards, have chosen for years to do lots of things “their own way” is no excuse for continuing to break the law. For those who have a beef with any part of ORC Chapter 3513, they need to take those objections to the OH legislature.
The book “Voting at the Political Fault Line: California’s Experiment with the Blanket Primary” is written by many political scientists. The book defines the various types of primary. The book defines “Open Primary” to be a primary in which “participation is open to all registered voters, but each party has a separate ballot, and voters are restricted to participating in a single party’s nominations in a given election.”
The U.S. Supreme Court similar defines “open primary” in several of its decisions. Footnote 6 of Cal. Dem. Party v Jones defines “open primary” to be one in which “any person, regardless of party affiliation, may vote for a party’s nominee, but his choice is limited to that party’s nominees for all offices.”
So, Ohio does have an open primary. There is a law saying that any voter may be challenged if he or she chooses the primary ballot of a party that the voter is not a member of, but in Maschari v Tone, 816 NE 2d 579 (2004), the Ohio Supreme Court acknowledged that the Erie County Board of Elections told its precinct officials not to entertain any challenge of a voter on that basis, and the Supreme Court also said there was nothing a complaining candidate could do about it. This tells me that in reality, Ohio (until this year) didn’t enforce the challenge law for party-switchers.
Brunner’s directive was targeted at absentee voters who requested a different party ballot than they had voted two years ago.
Since they won’t be showing up at the polls, they will be challenged by mail. Brunner’s directive dictated a form that be included with the ballot and that the voter must also complete. It includes a prominent statement that a voter can be subject to felony prosecution if they make a false statement.
WHOEVER COMMITS ELECTION FALSIFICATION IS GUILTY OF A FELONY OF THE FIFTH DEGREE
Brunner herself admitted that it would be impossible to prosecute someone for making a false claim that they “support the principles of the political party whose primary they seek to vote in”. The form, which Brunner required to be printed on a different color paper will serve no purpose other than caging by a political party. No voter who was willfully party raiding, will be stopped.
But a voter who reads the felony warning may be. If you get a form with your ballot, that includes a series of legal references that says you are being challenged because you are attempting to vote in a different primary, and includes a warning about a felony, you might well simply not vote at all.
A voter who actually supports a party because he believes that one of its principles is freedom of thought may refuse to complete the form simply because it is anathema to both he and the party’s principles.
The law does nothing to enforce ideological orthodoxy on new voters, voters who have moved, or who skipped the last election. Perhaps it satisfies those in Ohio who go into a bug-eye frenzy over the dotting of an ‘i’.
If elected candidates can’t be bound to any party loyalty oath, then why should voters?
If a party and it’s candidates can con the voters, why can’t the voters con the candidates?
Legislators are free to make any deal in violation of their own party’s stated principles. Voters need not meet any higher standard. The Ohio situation does appear to be a caging scheme to suppress absentee primary voting. No angry voters who feel betrayed allowed only blind sheeple. It indicates incumbents in a panic.
Frank, the LP candidates in Ohio ARE bound by signing the “non initiation of force” pledge with the LP. We have that for many years. Any citizen could choose to run with our LP brand-label, but if they have not signed the LP pledge which is our most basic foundation, we could have them removed from the ballot in primary.
Ohio LPO