So the Republican Secretary of State plans to exclude President Biden from the November ballot because the nominating convention falls after the state deadline for certifying nominees on the ballot. This is a gift link to the NYT article.
Frank LaRose, the Republican secretary of state, has said that he plans to exclude Mr. Biden from the ballot because he will be officially nominated after a deadline for certifying presidential nominees on the ballot. This is usually a minor procedural issue, and states have almost always offered a quick solution to ensure that major presidential candidates remain on the ballot.
The Ohio legislature has previously passed legislation to allow Obama and Romney on the ballot in 2012 and for DJT in 2020. But not this time.
The Biden campaign plans to sue to get on the ballot. I don’t think it likely the Alito/Thomas Supreme Court will be doing much to overrule this decision.
Maybe you are correct. But as the article linked mentions, it took six months of legal process before SCOTUS said states couldn’t remove DJT from the ballot. Unless they get a fire lit under them and act quickly, six months puts us after Election Day.
Not clear what you mean here - a stay normally maintains the status quo pending a ruling, right? Currently the status quo is that Biden won’t be on the ballot. I’m not as confident as you that SCOTUS will act quickly on this issue.
And they could argue it in the next few weeks but still drag their feet about making a decision.
This isn’t he state party, it’s the DNC, the national party. It isn’t the first time this has come up but in the past states have made an exception. In fact, Alabama just did that so Biden can be on the ballot. It looks like Ohio has a different agenda in play here. They are playing games for political advantage. From the gift link in the OP -
A legislative fix, which would have pushed back the certification deadline to accommodate the late date of the Democratic National Convention, stalled out this month as Republicans in the Ohio Senate tacked on a partisan measure that would ban foreign donations to state ballot initiatives. Mr. LaRose has previously said that passing the ban is the price that Democrats must pay to ensure that Mr. Biden is on the ballot, and that he would otherwise enforce the law as written.
Ohio has gradually become redder and redder since 2012, like how Florida used to be a genuine middling state but now is light red.
But back to the topic, I’m guessing that banning Biden from the ballot is one of those things that is technically doable but for courtesy’s sake was never done before.
In other words, LaRose is doing the legally correct thing, but in an obviously partisan way - kind of like a sports referee that never before called an obscure-penalty until it was the Super Bowl, against a team the ref doesn’t like.
But hasn’t SCOTUS already unanimously ruled on this – that individual states cannot ban a presidential candidate from the ballot? Or is that only good for DJT, not Biden?
I say go ahead and let them. If Biden is popular enough to carry Ohio, he’ll be popular enough to win without it. But, the value in saying that despite what they say, the GOP is obviously not interested in free and fair elections. Nothing speaks louder than actions.
Ohioan here. I won’t be voting for Biden (can’t stand him), nor Trump (can’t stand him). But I think it’s B.S. … the Repubs are playing games, and Biden should certainly be on the ballot.
The way this backfires is that Trump gets the lion’s share of Ohio’s counted votes on election night and the spends weeks watching his margin shrink as officials slowly count the write-in votes. By the time all the votes have been counted, Trump will have died of apoplexy.