On September 9, the Ohio Supreme Court unanimously expanded the ability of independent candidates to run for judicial office, including not only judgeship elections, but elections for Clerk of a Court. The decision is State ex rel Coughlin v Summit County Board of Elections, 2013-3867.
Ohio and Michigan have peculiar elections for judicial office. Candidates are either nominated in partisan primaries or in party conventions, or they can petition directly onto the general election ballot if they do not wish to be entangled with political parties. But, oddly, no party names ever appear on the ballot for these elections. Ambiguity in the English language makes it unclear whether to refer to such elections as “partisan” or “non-partisan.”
Kevin J. Coughlin petitioned to be on the November 5, 2013 ballot as an independent candidate for Clerk of the Municipal Court in Stow, a city in Summit County. County election officials kept him off the ballot on the grounds that he was associated with the Republican Party. Ohio voter registration forms do not ask voters to choose a party. But Ohio is very fussy about keeping independent candidates off the ballot if they have associated with a qualified political party, so if challengers can show that an independent candidate has associated closely with a party, he or she is generally removed from the ballot. However, the Ohio Supreme Court said that judicial elections are not covered by this restriction.
Another issue in the lawsuit was whether the candidate had filed his lawsuit too late. He was told he was off the ballot on July 15, and the day after, he asked for a transcript of the Board of Elections hearing that excluded him. The Board didn’t furnish the transcript until August 1. The candidate sued on August 8. The Board said he filed the case too late, but the Supreme Court disagreed and said if the case was filed late, that was mostly the fault of the Board for taking so long to furnish the transcript.
Michigan – the Donkey/Elephant convention nominees for MI SCt are TOTAL robot party hacks
— who when elected nonstop overrule all sorts of earlier robot party hack opinions – esp. in common law cases.
i.e. MI SCt is NOT cited for anything by most other jurisdictions — i.e. being a party hack laughing stock court.
—–
Nonpartisan App.V for executive/judicial offices/
And to be even more confusing, there are TWO “Clerk of Courts” offices in each county.
The non partisan office is mostly misdemeanors & traffic tickets while the partisan office deals with felony’s and civil cases.
The non partisan office elects in odd years and the partisan office elects in even years, presidential years in my county.
I ran for Clerk of Courts in 2000.
PEACE
Maryland has a very similar system for judicial elections, and the state’s Court of Appeals ruled that they are indeed partisan elections, even though no party labels appear on the general election ballot. Suessmann v. Lamone, 383 Md. 697 (2004).