Democrats to nominate Joe Biden in virtual session to ensure he's on Ohio ballot
USA TodayMAY 16 2024
Ohio: Democrats, GOP Take on Biden's Ballot Eligibility
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The Facts
With the US Democratic Party's presidential nomination convention set for August, a political problem has developed in Ohio, as the national convention is after the state's legal deadline for registering a nominee. Accordingly, the party will hold an earlier virtual event to nominate Pres. Joe Biden to try and keep him on Ohio's ballot.
Republican Gov. Mike DeWine, whose party currently controls the state House and Senate, called a special legislative session to pass a law to fix the issue.
The state legislature has dealt with this dilemma twice before — in 2012 and 2020 — and passed exemption laws when political parties couldn't make the August 7 deadline. However, this year, the GOP is divided over whether to pass a new exemption.
The Spin
Democratic narrative
In a state where 500K people just voted to nominate Biden as their party's candidate, extremist Republicans, led by pseudo-moderate Gov. DeWine, are threatening to strip them of their right to vote in the presidential election. Instead of following historical precedent and passing a simple law to put Biden on the ballot, the GOP supermajority is tacking on an amendment to prevent grassroots organizers from running future campaigns.
Republican narrative
Democrats voted to change the deadline 10 years ago, and then, for whatever reason, proceeded to schedule their party's convention for after that date. After complaining that their opponents were not enforcing election rules, they've now decided to claim that enforcing them threatens Democracy. The Ohio GOP has offered a deal to fix this, so now it's up to the other side to decide whether they want to clean up the mess they made.