Democrats have a history of believing that rules and laws don’t apply to them, and their flagrant flouting of Ohio law may cost them the U.S. Senate.
For whatever reason, the Democrat National Committee (DNC) blatantly disregarded Ohio state law when it scheduled the Democratic National Convention for August 22, when Ohio's deadline to file as a candidate for the general election ballot is August 7.
This means Joe Biden won't officially be the Democratic Party nominee in time to qualify for the Ohio ballot.
Naturally, there has been pressure on the Ohio state legislature to change state law in order to allow Biden on the ballot, and such a change would not be without precedent. Both Alabama and Washington have similar laws that would prevent Biden from appearing on their November ballots for the same reason, but both states have since resolved the matter to allow him to be listed on the ballots.
However, the Republican-led Ohio legislature isn’t about to change the law for Biden’s sake, and it’s an open question as to how Biden will ultimately end up on the state's ballot.
Ohio lawmakers are confident President Joe Biden will be on the November ballot, but how exactly that will happen remains the question. The fix won’t happen through the legislature, said Ohio House Speaker Jason Stephens, R-Kitts Hill, and Ohio House Minority Leader Allison Russo, D-Upper Arlington, during separate gaggles Tuesday morning.
“There’s just not the will to do that from the legislature,” Stephens said.
Russo said she was skeptical the fix was ever going to happen in the legislature.
“We’ve seen the dysfunction here in this place,” she said. “And I think we’ve seen that folks have not been able to put aside partisanship and hyper-partisanship and infighting. … I think at this point, you’re probably going to see either, you know, some sort of inner party effects or perhaps court action.”
Gov. Mike DeWine (R) remains confident it will get done.
“No one should worry, they’re going to be able to vote for the president or the former president, whoever they want to vote for,” he said in a statement. "You know, this is not going to be a situation where the president’s name is not on the ballot. So it’s either going to be done by the court, or it’s going to be done by the legislature.”
The problem, as PJ Media previously reported, is not that Republicans in the Ohio state legislature are trying to block Biden from appearing on the ballot. The problem is that Democrats opposed a legislative fix that would simultaneously ban foreign contributions for state ballot measure campaigns.
“Democrats are more interested in protecting foreign billionaires who want to bankroll Ohio’s election than getting their presidential candidate on the ballot,” Secretary of State Frank LaRose said in a statement earlier this month.
Of course, the real issue here isn’t Joe Biden. Ohio has been trending red for several cycles, and Trump is polling way ahead there. Biden’s presence (or lack thereof) on the ballot wouldn’t change the likely outcome of the presidential election there. It could, however, make things problematic for Sen. Sherrod Brown, the incumbent Democrat U.S. Senator in Ohio, who is facing a tight race for reelection. If Biden isn’t on the ballot, it could depress Democratic turnout for lower ballot races, including that for U.S. senator, and potentially help the GOP win control of the U.S. Senate.
It likely won’t come to that. But Ohio's Senate race is a bigger issue here than Biden, who has little reason to believe he’ll be competitive in Ohio this year.
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PJ Media has reached out to Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose's office for comment, but we did not get a response back in time for publication.
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