Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine called off the primary election in his state, only to have a judge order it to go ahead, only to shut it down anyway via Health Department edict.
The election was thrust into chaos on Monday after Gov. Mike DeWine said the state would not open polls because of the coronavirus outbreak. His comments come after a judge declined to postpone the contest until June.
“During this time when we face an unprecedented public health crisis, to conduct an election tomorrow would force poll workers and voters to place themselves at an unacceptable health risk of contracting coronavirus,” DeWine said in a statement posted to Twitter.
DeWine said that state Health Department Director Amy Acton would “order the polls closed as a health emergency.”
Acton did just that late Monday night.
DeWine and Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose filed a joint lawsuit Monday afternoon in order to get the election postponed. But Judge Richard Frye declined their request later Monday, saying that to postpone the vote would set a “terrible precedent,” the Associated Press reported.
There’s an activist judge whose head needs close examination. Talk about tin ear.Report
It would be too much work to go run down all the details, but off the top of my head, I doubt the executive branch of my state government has authority to change an election date. Granted, some of the reason I think that are complications from vote-by-mail, same-day voter registration, etc.Report
Are you familiar enough with the relevant law to have an opinion on whether this is judicial activism or just enforcing the law?Report
The judge’s argument was rather sound, amounting to “You cannot drop this case in my lap 12 hours before an election.”
However, the legal arguments regarding who has the power to suspend or delay an election will all be rather weak. We really don’t give the government much power over that because we know that elected politicians would abuse the heck out of it for their own ends.
But the people have absolute power of elections, because we’ll do whatever we want. The trouble is that we act collectively through our elected representatives, who are the very people we don’t want to hand that power to.
So we shout really loud and force the people in the capitol to make up an excuse to do the necessary thing, legal or not, until it’s a fait accompli. Then they set a new election date that we all find satisfactory.
If they don’t, they’ll suddenly find that that they can’t go out in public and have no capacity to govern (we regard them as illegitimate) while undertakers on Boot Hill dig a fresh grave for their political career.Report