Ohio Elections Off, On, Off Again

Andrew Donaldson

Born and raised in West Virginia, Andrew has since lived and traveled around the world several times over. Though frequently writing about politics out of a sense of duty and love of country, most of the time he would prefer discussions on history, culture, occasionally nerding on aviation, and his amateur foodie tendencies. He can usually be found misspelling/misusing words on Twitter @four4thefire and his food writing website Yonder and Home. Andrew is the host of Heard Tell podcast. Subscribe to Andrew's Heard Tell SubStack for free here:

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4 Responses

  1. Philip H says:

    There’s an activist judge whose head needs close examination. Talk about tin ear.Report

    • Michael Cain in reply to Philip H says:

      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

    • Brandon Berg in reply to Philip H says:

      Are you familiar enough with the relevant law to have an opinion on whether this is judicial activism or just enforcing the law?Report

      • George Turner in reply to Brandon Berg says:

        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