In a potentially big snafu for the Democratic Pary in Ohio and nationally in the 2024 presidential race, the Democratic National Convention has been scheduled for August 19, twelve days after the August 7 deadline in Ohio for submitting the name of the nominee. The Ohio House and Senate attempted to pass legislation to rectify the issue, but that effort failed on Wednesday, May 8, before of the Thursday deadline Ohio lawmakers were given by the Secretary of State to rectify the issue.
The issue for the ballot is that, under current Ohio law, the name appearing on the ballot must be certified 90 days before the November 5 election. That is, this year, August 7. However, the problem is that the Democrat convention is scheduled for 12 days after that, August 19. Legislators were given until May 9 to fix the issue by Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose.
However, they failed to do so, mainly because Republicans attempted to pair legislation that would push the deadline back to just 74 days before the election with legislation that would ban foreign contributions to ballot-issue campaigns and require the organizers of those campaigns to register as political action committees.
Secretary of State LaRose supported that legislation and hammered Democrats for not passing it, saying, “There’s one person at this point who’s responsible for keeping Joe Biden off the ballot in Ohio, and it’s a Swiss billionaire you’ve probably never heard of. Democrats would rather protect Hansjörg Wyss than get Joe Biden on the statewide ballot, and their motives are clear. They’ve become dependent on Wyss’s dark money to fund everything from their ballot campaigns to their fake news operations.”
Brian Stewart, a state Republican, also supported the rule change, arguing on X that anything that helps the Democrats should be paired with a Republican priority. He said, “Any legislative fix for Biden should be paired with a GOP policy priority. That’s compromise and it’s basic Legislation 101. For example, SB215 would bar foreign nationals from spending money in Ohio ballot initiative elections. Common sense policy. Pair the two. Done deal.”
Similarly, Senate President Matt Huffman, also a Republican, said that the Democrats should be willing to compromise on this matter, saying, “We use the word compromise a lot. I think this is a reasonable result. There’s some things for both sides to like and dislike. It gets these two issues resolved for the upcoming election.”
Gov. DeWine, however, said that Biden would appear on the ballot no matter what. He said, speaking about the matter on Wednesday, “I don’t want to minimize that this has to happen, but I do want to minimize anybody thinking that there’s a snowball’s chance in hell that this isn’t going to happen. The president’s name is going to be on the ballot.”
Additionally, attacking the idea that this was any sort of compromise, Senate Minority Leader Nickie Antonio said, “There wasn’t something for us to love and hate. It wasn’t a compromise. It was frankly a dirty trick and we didn’t take the bait.”
Secretary of State LaRose, for his part, said this is a problem the Democrats inflicted upon themselves. In his words, “The facts are still very clear on this. The Democrats scheduled their nominating convention too late to comply with Ohio law, and they’ve admitted that this unforced error creates a problem for their presidential candidate that needs to be fixed.”
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