Thomas Suddes: Legislators pound another non-issue with sledgehammer: noncitizen voting
Thomas Suddes is a former legislative reporter with The Plain Dealer in Cleveland and writes from Ohio University. tsuddes@gmail.com
Ohioans will see two proposed state constitutional amendments on November’s ballot, one of which drew some Democratic legislators’ votes, while the other is a Republican turnout special, handy for GOP candidates talking law ‘n’ order in this year’s Supreme Court elections.
The first proposed amendment would forbid noncitizens to vote in Ohio local elections. As it is, noncitizens may not vote in federal or state elections. But a while back, voters in the village of Yellow Springs, suburban Dayton’s counter-cultural mecca, amended their village’s charter to let noncitizens vote on local issues and contests. Legal route to reach that result: The state constitution’s home-rule guarantees to cities and villages.
Republican Secretary of State Frank LaRose nixed that. Besides, the Legislative Service Commission reports, “It seems that no noncitizen has registered to vote in the village.”
More: Ohio voters will weigh in on whether to block noncitizens from voting in local elections
Ah, but there’s no greater Statehouse pleasure than pounding a non-existent problem with a sledgehammer. Accordingly, the proposed constitutional amendment aims to nail the home-rule door shut, though FYI: Voting by noncitizens isn’t foreign to Ohio history.
For roughly the first half-century Ohio was a state, till 1851, (male) noncitizens could vote, as noncitizens could in some other states as late as the 1920s, according to a William & Mary thesis by Alan Kennedy-Shaffer.
And the home-rule guarantee was how women first gained to the right to vote in Ohio municipal elections. In 1917, the state Supreme Court, relying on the Constitution’s home-rule amendment, said East Cleveland’s charter could let women vote in that city’s elections — three years before women won the right to vote in all elections via 1920’s 19th Amendment.
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Five House Democrats and all Senate Democrats present joined Republicans in placing the noncitizen-voter ban on November’s ballot so voters can solve one of Ohio’s lesser challenges, if challenge it be.
More: Non-citizens are voting illegally in Ohio, but the number is tiny
The other November ballot issue, submitted to voters along party lines — Republican legislators for, Democrats against — would, the Legislative Service Commission says, require courts, when setting bail for criminal defendants, to consider public safety among the pertinent factors.
There are three strands to the backstory. The first strand is that the ballot issue, if voters OK it, would in effect chip away at the state Supreme Court’s rule-making power over how courts operate as to setting — or refusing — bail.
Another strand is a 4-3 decision the Supreme Court issued in January. That ruling agreed with a lower court that bail required of a Cincinnati defendant charged with homicide should be reduced from $1.5 million to $500,000.
The four Supreme Court members upholding the $500,000 amount were retiring Republican Chief Justice Maureen O’Connor, and Democratic Justices Melody Stewart, Jennifer Brunner and Michael Donnelly. The three justices opposing the bail reduction were Republicans Sharon Kennedy, Patrick Fischer and R. Patrick (Pat) DeWine, Gov. Mike DeWine’s son.
A third strand: Democrat Brunner and Republican Kennedy are running against each other to succeed O’Connor as chief justice. And seeking re-election are Pat DeWine (challenged by Democratic 1st District Court of Appeals Judge Marilyn Zayas of Cincinnati) and Republican Fischer (challenged by Democratic 10th District Court of Appeals Judge Terri Jamison of Columbus).
Continued GOP control of the court, which is now 4-3 Republican, is a critical goal of the Statehouse’s GOP hierarchy, because legislative districts for 2024 must be (re)drawn by then, and O’Connor, a redistricting maverick, is retiring.
It might or might not be Hoyle (according to plan or the rules) for Kennedy to criticize Brunner for her vote in the bail case, or for DeWine and Fischer to criticize the other Democrats in the bail case’s majority. Still, in his dissent, Justice DeWine described the January decision this way: “Make no mistake: what the majority does today will make Ohio communities less safe.”
And if that doesn’t invite Ohio voters and bystanders to ask the three Ohio Supreme Court Republican candidates on November’s ballot about the bail amendment, and its law ‘n’ order angle, and who voted how, then nothing can. After all, discussing “the-administration-of-justice” — not the nuts-and-bolts of wooing voters — is so much more … judicial.
Thomas Suddes is a former legislative reporter with The Plain Dealer in Cleveland and writes from Ohio University. tsuddes@gmail.com
This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: Suddes: Noncitizen voting, bail reform to be on November ballot
