Early voting for March primary is now under way

DUSTIN ENSINGER

Staff Writer

Early vot­ing for Ohio’s March 6 pri­mary elec­tion kicked off yesterday.

But for many of Delaware County’s approx­i­mately 93,000 unaf­fil­i­ated vot­ers, they could show up at the polls with noth­ing to vote on. That is unless they are will­ing to sac­ri­fice their polit­i­cal independence.

The county’s roughly 20,000 Repub­li­cans and 7,000 Democ­rats will not have the same prob­lem. Nor will the 45 mem­bers of the Con­sti­tu­tion Party, the 23 Green Party mem­bers, the 152 Lib­er­tar­i­ans or the county’s two Socialists.

Due to a com­bi­na­tion of a lack of non-partisan local issues to vote on and Ohio’s semi-closed par­ti­san pri­mary sys­tem, vot­ers that are not mem­bers of a polit­i­cal party may have to reg­is­ter with a party if they want to cast a ballot.

Of the county’s 143 vot­ing precincts, 112 will have no issues to vote on, accord­ing to Delaware County Board of Elec­tions Deputy Direc­tor Karla Herron.

Res­i­dents of the Berk­shire, Tren­ton, Sun­bury and Galena fire dis­trict will be pre­sented with a renewal of a five-year, 2-mill levy and a 1-mill increase. Galena res­i­dents will decide a liquor issue for the Mud­flats Bar and Grill. A small por­tion of Berk­shire Town­ship res­i­dents will vote on a liquor option for True North 607. And some West­er­ville City School res­i­dents that reside in Delaware County will deter­mine the fate of a 6.71-mill emer­gency oper­at­ing levy.

Vot­ers will also be asked to select a Repub­li­can pres­i­den­tial can­di­date, both a Demo­c­rat and Repub­li­can can­di­date for Ohio’s 12th Con­gres­sional Dis­trict and a Repub­li­can nom­i­nee to take on incum­bent Demo­c­ra­tic Sen. Sher­rod Brown. Voter will also select two Repub­li­can nom­i­nees for county com­mis­sioner seats, a Repub­li­can nom­i­nee for the 67th District’s seat in the Ohio Gen­eral Assem­bly and both a Demo­c­rat and Repub­li­can nom­i­nee for the seat in the 68th District.

The catch is, in Ohio, only reg­is­tered mem­bers of a polit­i­cal party can vote in that party’s pri­mary election.

But becom­ing a reg­is­tered mem­ber of a polit­i­cal party is as sim­ple as ask­ing for a pri­mary bal­lot for a polit­i­cal party when show­ing up to vote.

“You can show up that day and just request the bal­lot for that party,” said Herron.

There are some exten­u­at­ing cir­cum­stances, how­ever. For instance, were Ed Helvey, chair­man of the county’s Demo­c­ra­tic Party, to show up and request a Repub­li­can bal­lot, his eli­gi­bil­ity to vote in the pri­mary could be chal­lenged by poll work­ers. In this hypo­thet­i­cal sce­nario, before being allowed to vote, he would then be required to sign, under penalty of elec­tion fal­si­fi­ca­tion, a pledge stat­ing that he agrees with the val­ues of the Repub­li­can Party.

“If (poll work­ers) knows a voter is linked to the party they might have to sign some­thing if they were indeed chal­lenged,” Her­ron said.

But elec­tion fal­si­fi­ca­tion charges are rare. Dur­ing the 2008 Demo­c­ra­tic pri­mary, con­ser­v­a­tive talk show host Rush Lim­baugh encour­aged Repub­li­cans to vote for cur­rent Sec­re­tary of State Hillary Clin­ton in an effort to pro­long the con­test in an strat­egy that he dubbed “Oper­a­tion Chaos.” Then Demo­c­ra­tic Attor­ney Gen­eral Marc Dann’s office declined to pros­e­cute any party switch­ers, say­ing it would be dif­fi­cult to prove voter intent.

To Her­ron, Ohio’s semi-closed par­ti­san pri­mary sys­tem serves the state well because it allows polit­i­cal party mem­bers to choose their own nominees.

“It doesn’t meet all the needs and wants of some of our vot­ers, but it works well for us,” she said.

“You should be able to say that you uphold those val­ues if you want a deci­sion within a party choice. I feel like it’s fair because really it is the party that’s mak­ing the decision.”

Craig Ram­say, a pro­fes­sor of pol­i­tics and gov­ern­ment at Ohio Wes­leyan Uni­ver­sity, believes that Ohio’s pri­mary sys­tem should be even more restrictive.

“This is a party elec­tion. The party is choos­ing it’s nom­i­nee,” he said. “I per­son­ally think you ought to be will­ing to show you’re some kind of par­ti­san to vote in a party election.”

He would like to see Ohio move toward a closed pri­mary sys­tem, in which vot­ers would be required to reg­is­ter with a party up to a month in advance of an election.

“That’s such an incred­i­bly super­fi­cial ver­sion of being a Repub­li­can or Demo­c­rat,” he said of vot­ers’ abil­ity to declare them­selves a mem­ber of one of the two major polit­i­cal par­ties on pri­mary elec­tion day.

“I say unless they are really com­mit­ted to the party, maybe they ought not to be able to vote until the gen­eral election.”

So far, requests for absen­tee bal­lots are down com­pared to past elec­tions years. Nor­mally, Her­ron said, about 2,000 vot­ers request absen­tee bal­lots. This year, under 600 have requested absen­tee bal­lots. Mon­day morn­ing, just five vot­ers showed up at the polls to cast early ballots.

Her­ron believes con­fu­sion over the fact that last year’s two pri­maries were sched­uled before state law­mak­ers came together and agreed on a sin­gle date has played a role in the depressed turnout thus far.

“There was some con­fu­sion about two pri­maries and I think that’s why it’s start­ing out slowly,” she said.

Vot­ers can cast their bal­lots early from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. Mon­day through Fri­day at 149 E. Orange Road, Lewis Cen­ter, until March 2. The vot­ing cen­ter will also be open until noon on Feb. 25.

Absen­tee bal­lot requests, reg­is­tra­tion and polling loca­tion infor­ma­tion and a sam­ple bal­lot can be obtained by vis­it­ing The Delaware County Board of Elec­tions web­site at co.delaware.oh.us/boe/index.html.

Posted by Dustin Ensinger on Feb 1 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.