Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine called a special session of the legislature to pass a law that will make sure Vice President Joe Biden is on the ballot in November. This comes after the mess caused a lot of trouble for a month.
The General Assembly has not done anything to fix a vague law that will keep Biden from being a choice for voters, DeWine said in a surprise press conference Thursday evening.
DeWine said, “Ohio is running out of time to get Joe Biden, who is currently president of the United States, on the ballot this fall.” “Failing to do so is not acceptable at all.” “This is silly; this is a crazy situation.”
In Ohio, parties have to officially name their presidential candidates 90 days before the election in November. That’s August 7. Nomination day for Biden is August 19, but he won’t be the official candidate until then.
This wasn’t known by Democratic leaders or many other lawmakers on both sides of the aisle. Not until April did Sec. of State Frank LaRose remind Democrats.
LaRose warned lawmakers to do this, and DeWine has been telling them to do it. But the GOP leaders have been arguing about how to do it.
The Senate has their own and the House has their own.
This bill passed the House without any changes. It pushed back the nomination limit to 74 days. This is expected to be a fix for good.
But a different bill was passed by the Senate. That date was moved from August 7 to August 23, but only for 2024. It wasn’t a permanent fix.
This was changed by the Senate, which added a bill to help pay for campaigns. Early in March, Republican senators passed a bill that was supposed to stop foreign funding to state ballot-issue campaigns. However, Democrats said the bill went too far because it has a part that could make it harder for grassroots movements to get on the ballot, even if they use U.S. dollars.
They didn’t care about this because the House didn’t seem to like it.
There may be more than one reason why nothing is moving: the heads of each chamber are fighting with each other.
DeWine said, “The goal of this session will be for the General Assembly to pass laws that make sure that both major presidential candidates will be on the Ohio ballot in November.”
DeWine pushed for the car to be the one the Senate had made.
DeWine said, “I think that if you asked most Ohioans, they would think it’s crazy that foreigners can come into the state of Ohio, or not even come into the state of Ohio, and spend a lot of money to change an Ohio ballot issue.” “They can’t do that for candidates,” we said. For a voting question, why in the world should we let them do that? This kind of law has already been passed by the Senate. It is very clear that this problem should be discussed and not decided one way or the other.
John Fortney, a spokesman for the Senate GOP, released a statement after the governor’s press conference:
This is what we agree with Mayor. It’s time to protect Ohio’s elections by making it illegal for foreigners to give money to campaigns. At the same time, the Democratic Party needs to fix the mistake that kept Joe Biden off the November vote. There should be a vote on House Bill 114, which does both of those things. We urge the Speaker and Minority Leader to do so.
Even though Stephens has a supermajority of Republicans in support of the bill, Fortney seems to be saying that Minority Leader Allison Russo is stopping it from going to the floor. People have said that Stephens is too close to the Democrats and lets Russo make choices. Both the speaker and Russo have said this is not true.
House Speaker Jason Stephens (R-Kitts Hill) spoke for a long time.
It has been weeks of trying to get Congress to pass a law that would put Vice President Biden on the ticket. In the end, the Republican party didn’t have the will to do it.
Everyone in Ohio thinks that foreign donations to ballot issue campaigns should be banned, and we have been working hard to find a way to do this.
There is language here that was helped write by experts in campaign finance and other important people who care about the problem. This language makes it clear that foreigners can’t have any effect on Ohio’s issue campaigns. It also makes sure that citizens can still have their opinions heard.
We’re looking forward to real answers that will get through both houses next week and get things fixed.
