CLEVELAND — Ohio's March Primary could get more interesting if a couple of Ohio lawmakers get their way. Currently, there are two proposals in the House to change how voters can vote in a primary. As it now stands, if you want to vote in the Democrat or Republican Primary, you need only ask the poll worker who checks you in for a Democrat or Republican ballot.
"Ohio's considered a semi-open primary state where you walk in, you get a ballot based on your choice, and then you become part of that party for the next two election cycles," said News 5 Political Analyst Tom Sutton of Baldwin Wallace University. "So essentially, you will be a Democrat or Republican for the next two years; the only way you can change that is either if you don't vote in primaries again for two years, then you lose that designation, or you vote in the other party's primary."
The ease of that, though, could change with two bills in the House that would require voters to pick a party in advance of the primary or stay independent if they want, but there would be no more election day switches.
The thinking is that only declared members of a given party should have a say in choosing its candidates. Declaring at the polling place makes it too easy for people of one party to have a say in picking the other's nominees, especially if one party doesn't have a contested primary.
We saw it in 2008 when the late Radio Talk Show Host Rush Limbaugh promoted what he called "Operation Chaos," urging Ohio Republicans and Independents to vote in the Democratic primary to keep Hillary Clinton's battle going with Barack Obama. Clinton ended up winning Ohio. And in 2016, about 1.5 million unaffiliated voters ended up casting a ballot in the primary many in the Republican contest that saw John Kasich defeat the eventual nominee Donald Trump.
For all of the debate over Ohio's political leaning, by registration, it is overwhelmingly non-partisan, with 71 percent of voters not tied to any party. Many of them occasionally switch between party primaries, not necessarily for nefarious reasons, says Ron Jost of Willoughby, but because they are independent.
"Yeah, I think that there are some people who are devoted to their parties, but other people vote by the candidate rather than the party," Jost said.
The two bills differ in how far in advance you'd have to declare your party affiliation or switch, with one giving voters until 30 days before the election, the other would set the deadline at the end of the year prior, Dec. 31. That earlier deadline is similar to New York State. In 2016 two of Donald Trump's kids, Ivanka and Eric, failed to switch their registrations to Republican in time and, as a result, were unable to vote for their father in the primary that year.
Celeste Terry of Shaker Heights is a Democrat who has only ever voted in Democratic primaries. She sees the proposed changes as unnecessary and confusing.
"To me, it seems like another wrench that they're putting in to make it more difficult for people to vote," she said.
