File. A “vote here” sign sits near the entrance to the Veterans Building at Bowling Green City Park early Tuesday morning.
J.D. Pooley | Sentinel-Tribune
A delayed May 3 primary election is possible, as the Wood County Board of Elections waits for direction from the state legislature on new redistricting maps, which were throw out on Wednesday by the Ohio Supreme Court.
“You would probably need to talk to the legislature, because now it is back in their court to tell us whether we are going with what we have and doing the rest later, or going to postpone it all. It is a legislative decision,” Terry Burton, Wood County Board of Elections director said on Thursday. “The legislature always has the ability to set the date, time and manner of elections.”
There currently is no map, because both the state House and Senate maps have been ruled invalid by the Ohio Supreme Court.
“In 1980 they held the election on June 3, so there is some precedent during redistricting to move the election primaries,” Burton said. “It was a different method, same fight.”
The first deadline for sending out ballots is today.
Friday is the 46th day before the May 3 election, which is the day that the eight Wood County overseas ballots are set to go out. That group includes service members and overseas civilians.
Burton said that it is federal code that those ballots are sent out 46 days ahead of the election.
He added that the Department of Defense has lengthened the counting date to 20 days after the election, for service members, which the legislature has worked into the service member mailing time.
“We had been advised that if we could meet the 46-day deadline, that it was probably just as well and we here at Wood County are able to do that, so we are prepared to mail tomorrow, if needed to,” Burton said on Thursday. “I expect that the secretary of state and the legislature may have some conversations today about what they intend to do and the secretary of state may send a directive.
“If we do not get any direction at this point, then my intention will be to mail those ballots and meet the deadline.”
He said that there could be races on the ballot that do not count, or will no longer be countable, in a fashion similar to a withdrawn candidate.
No printed ballots have been made yet.
“Overseas’ (voters) have an ability to do something that regular entity voters do not, and that’s to receive the ballot by email. They have to return a hard copy,” Burton said.
The supply of printed ballots are not received by the boards of elections until closer to Election Day.
Late Wednesday, the Ohio Supreme Court rejected a third set of Ohio Statehouse district maps that Republicans insisted reflect the state’s partisan breakdown — and sent them back for a fourth try even as final ballots were being prepared for the May 3 primary.
In yet another 4-3 ruling, the court found the Republican-dominated Ohio Redistricting Commission’s latest maps again failed to pass constitutional muster. No Democrats have supported any of the three plans, and commission member Republican Auditor Keith Faber joined Democrats in opposing the third plan.
It ordered the panel to reconvene and to submit a set of legal maps to Secretary of State Frank LaRose, the state’s elections chief and a member of the commission, by March 28. The plan must be filed with the court by March 29. The plan, outlining Ohio House and Ohio Senate districts, remains subject to objections and another court review.
As circumstances became more urgent, Chief Justice Maureen O’Connor, a moderate Republican who has repeatedly joined court Democrats to invalidate the maps, chose to write the majority opinion herself.
“Substantial and compelling evidence shows beyond a reasonable doubt that the main goal of the individuals who drafted the second revised plan was to favor the Republican Party and disfavor the Democratic Party,” she wrote.
Of particular concern was the fact that Republicans have all three times drafted the plan approved by the commission without input from Democratic members of the bipartisan commission.
“The commission has adopted three plans so far, but it still has not drafted one,” the court said. “Staff members of (Republican) Senate President (Matt) Huffman and House Speaker (Bob) Cupp have drafted all three of the plans adopted by the commission.”
Two dissenting justices — Republicans Sharon Kennedy and Pat DeWine, son of commission member and defendant Gov. Mike DeWine — sharply rebuked the majority for imposing “shifting whims” with “no grounding in the text of the Constitution.”
“The majority decrees electoral chaos,” they wrote. “It issues an order all but guaranteed to disrupt an impending election and bring Ohio to the brink of a constitutional crisis.”
It remains unclear what would change the fourth time around. The string of defeats for Ohio’s ruling Republicans comes amid the once-per-decade redistricting process that all states must undertake to reflect population changes recorded in the census.
Although primary election day nears, the GOP-led Legislature has resisted pushing back the date of the May 3 primary.
League Executive Director Jen Miller called on lawmakers to move the primary, as her organization has been urging for a year — beginning around the time U.S. Census results were delayed due to the coronavirus pandemic.
Ohio House Minority Leader Allison Russo, a Democratic member of the redistricting commission, said the court ruling shows “the majority party is not above the law.”
(The Associated Press contributed to this story.)
