Ohio must plow ahead on May 3, even with unconstitutional legislative districts and challenged congressional districts because, hey, someone – fair guess: safe-seat incumbents? – prefer it that way. (What? Run in competitive districts? Unheard of.)
Reason Two: Holding two elections (one primary for statewide offices – governor, U.S. senator, etc. – then a second primary for elections-by-districts) would supposedly be a recipe for “chaos” and might cost taxpayers $20 million to $25 million.
That’s hype. Split the cost estimate: Make it $22.5 million. Divide that by the Census’s count of Ohio’s population. The crushing, onerous, unbearable cost comes to $1.91 per Ohioan. That’s too much to pay for a fair election? Incidentally, Ohio’s current budget is expected to leave $2.75 billion in unspent cash sloshing around the Statehouse on June 30, end of the fiscal year. The purported extra cost for two elections would be less than 1% of that cash pile.
Reason Three: Holding two primary elections is a recipe for “chaos.” But Ohio has justly bragged it has one of the nation’s best election set-ups, with 88 bipartisan county Boards of Elections and an army of public-spirited poll workers.
So, how does Ohio – given the lack of constitutional General Assembly districts, and given court-challenged congressional districts – fairly nominate district candidates in one May 3 primary? Answer: It can’t.
The Redistricting Commission, run 5-2 by the GOP, is laboring – for the fourth time – to craft General Assembly districts. Meanwhile, the GOP has proposed congressional districts Democrats are challenging.
Republicans may be hoping for better news from a three-member panel of federal judges who may grab the reins from Ohio’s courts thanks to a GOP lawsuit. The federal panel (with biographical data gleaned from the web) is composed of:
One member of the trio is Judge Algenon Marbley, chief U.S. District judge for Southern Ohio, an African American who graduated from the University of North Carolina’s law school. President Clinton appointed Marbley.
A second member is 6th Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Amul Thapar, a Detroit native of Indian heritage who was reared in Toledo. He earned his law degree at the University of California, Berkeley. President George W. Bush appointed Thapar as a District judge for Eastern Kentucky. President Trump promoted Thapar to the 6th Circuit and later interviewed him for the Supreme Court vacancy eventually filled by Brett Kavanaugh. (In the 1990s, Thapar clerked for a time for the late Nathaniel R. Jones, a 6th Circuit judge, once the NAACP’s general counsel, who was on the federal court panel that reviewed Ohio’s 1991 apportionment by Statehouse Republicans.)
The third member of the federal panel is Judge Benjamin J. Beaton, a U.S. District judge for Western Kentucky, appointed by Trump. Beaton earned his law degree at Columbia. For a time, he clerked for the late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
Competitive districts are crucial. Rigged districts are filled in the primary election of the favored party. And there’s no such thing as being too conservative in a GOP primary or too liberal (whatever that means) in a Democratic primary. Result: Irrelevant November elections and a legislature where publicity stunts and political antics predominate.
Ohio already has some fine zoos. It doesn’t need a zoo at the Statehouse.
Thomas Suddes is an adjunct assistant professor at Ohio University.
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