Posted to cleveland.com
Ohio legislature passes new ballot-access rules for minor political parties; Libertarians promise lawsuit
By Jeremy Pelzer
COLUMBUS, Ohio – State lawmakers on Wednesday passed new ballot-access requirements for Ohio’s minor political parties, overcoming bipartisan criticism that the changes would block third-party participation in next year’s elections.
While the new rules would lower existing thresholds for minor parties to get and stay on the ballot, opponents say the bill is designed to help Gov. John Kasich win re-election by blocking Libertarian Charlie Earl’s gubernatorial candidacy.
On Wednesday, Libertarians renewed their pledge to quickly file a lawsuit challenging the changes if they’re signed into law.
Under Senate Bill 193 , passed by the House and Senate on Wednesday afternoon, third parties would each need to collect about 28,000 signatures, including at least 500 signatures each from at least half of Ohio’s 16 congressional districts, to regain recognition as a party by the state.
Minor parties wouldn’t be allowed to hold primaries next spring under the proposal. Instead, parties that meet the initial signature requirements by next July would submit to the state a list of candidates to appear on the November ballot.
My wife and I already changed our summer vacation plans from Kings Island in Ohio to Mt. Olympus in Wisconsin Dells, WI because of this. I say again that everyone should boycott the state of Ohio.
I know what you mean.
Kasich signed it into law earlier today.
This is yet another example of Republicans screwing over minor parties, not that Democrats are any better, it is just that on this occasion, the screw job is coming from the Republican Party.
There are several flaws with the Ohio law that could be vulnerable in court: (1) the bill takes away primaries from minor parties, yet gives them no authority to choose nominees in convention. The bill just says the party submits a party petition and then its nominees submit small candidate petitions. But the bill doesn’t say what to do if two individuals from the same minor party both file candidate petitions for the same office; (2) the old law, as well as the new law, has language on the party petition that has been held unconstitutional in 8 other states, that the signers of the petition are “organizing” the party whose petition they are signing; (3) the due process problem of taking away the primary so close in time to that primary means that some candidates had already been circulating their primary petitions and now those petitions are wasted effort.
We also have a problem with our scheduled convention for the LP next year in Ohio. We have to figure out a way to make a huge statement about it.
I am of the belief of continuing to hold the convention as planed and get as many libertarians to attend as possible so that the community sees a large national party. It would be good to have the local merchants thanking the Ohio LP for hosting the convention.
How about inviting Senator Bill Seitz to give a speech and then answer delegate questions?
I was thinking of making him a subsriber to “LP News”. LOL
Seriously, we should send a press release to every major news outlet in the state and say how sorry we are that we scheduled our convention in a state that doesn’t want us. Hopefully we can turn it into a way to educate the citizens of Ohio, who probalby have no idea of what happened.
The LP sued today. We are lucky to have Law Professor Mark Brown of Columbus, Ohio on our side.
Great! We didn’t waste any time. I hope the local media covers it.
The Columbus paper did cover it. I have a link to the newspaper story at http://www.ballot-access.org.
seriously…. I just stopped by https://www.lpo.org/donate and put some cash into the Libertarian Party of Ohio Hat. Come on and join me there.
Kevin you absolutely should put Senator Bill Seitz and his staffers to the LP Ohio news letter distribution list.
Please include the following comment
“I would like to thank Senator Seitz for bringing it to my attention how effective the Ohio Libertarian party has become.”
Sign my name “Stephen Meier of Fremont CA” and all others that wish may ask you to add their names.
Add Jeremy Siple of Reynoldsville, PA to that list.
Paul Frankel, Tuscaloosa, Alabama
Mark Axinn, New York, New York
http://www.ballot-access.org/2013/11/cleveland-plain-dealer-again-condemns-new-ohio-ballot-access-law/
Debra Dedmon Las Vegas Nevada
http://www.cleveland.com/open/index.ssf/2013/11/ohio_libertarians_likely_to_ma.html