By MARILOU JOHANEK
When Ohioans vote in the 2024 presidential primary next week, they’ll follow the same protocol that’s been in place for over a century. They’ll be asked whether they want a Republican or Democratic ballot and vote their conscience on the respective candidates and issues. For some 111 years, Ohio’s open primary has given all voters, regardless of party affiliation or independent status, the opportunity to be heard in partisan primaries.
It’s a system that empowers the electorate, especially in a state where an overwhelming majority of voters — nearly 78 percent — identify as independents. Their voice matters in Ohio primaries that have long encouraged the participation denied in closed or partially closed state primaries. Recognizing that independents are now the largest and fastest growing bloc of voters in the country, many states are moving away from their closed primary systems to make them more open. More democratic.
But not Ohio. Gerrymandered extremists in the General Assembly plot to ditch a hundred years of open primary voter power in the state and return Ohio to a closed, party-controlled primary with predetermined outcomes. State Republicans aim to exclude a vast swath of registered voters from deciding who gets on the November ballot and who doesn’t. To that end, several Republican bills to keep millions of unaffiliated Ohioans from voting in partisan primaries have popped up in the Ohio House.
The proposals would disenfranchise independent voters, require Ohioans to declare a party affiliation — anywhere from 30 days to a year — before being allowed to vote in a primary election and ban anyone from voting or (even running for office) in another party’s primary. How many more hoops and voting restrictions will Ohio Republicans make Ohio voters jump through just to exercise their fundamental right to vote?
MAGA Republicans have a lock on control in state government not through persuasion or popular policy but by constricting who can cast a ballot. They don’t want you voting or running in a party primary if you’re registered with a different party or no party. They want to keep a tight grip on power by reducing the freedom of Ohio voters to participate in partisan primaries without strings attached.
Party bosses liked the good ol’ days when they picked who won or who lost an election. They still think taxpayer-funded primary elections belong to them, not the people. Tellingly, the voter suppression measures to close Ohio’s primary elections are propelled by the same GOP hardliners who tried to rob you of your majority voting rights last August on the ruse of “protecting” the state constitution.
They have a new ruse to restrict your voting rights in Ohio primaries and make it more difficult for all registered voters to have equal access and equal say in who party candidates will be. This charade purports to “protect” political parties against open primary “gamesmanship” — which has presumably run amok in the state.
Three GOP measures — to take Ohio back to closed, party-run primaries that muzzle voters — are pitched as a necessary course correction to safeguard primary elections from participants “playing political games” to thwart the will of bona fide party voters. The MAGA legislators claim, without proof, that open primary crossover voting or party raiding is a real threat that must be contained in Ohio as it risks unfairly influencing partisan primaries.
But state Republicans offer no evidence that Ohio’s extended history of open primaries has definitively changed the results of any partisan primary or affected the politics of any party candidate. No polling indicates that unaffiliated or independent voters have decisively upended the primary selection process in the state.
If anything, research shows how uncommon crossover voting is and how seldom primary voters prefer another party’s candidates to those on their own party’s primary ballot. If anything, deliberate party raiding (which refers to members of a different party disingenuously casting ballots in another party’s primary) almost never sway races or matters in primary results.
So this newfound priority of MAGA extremists to shrink the primary electorate in Ohio by imposing political litmus tests on who can vote or run for office on another party’s ballot is about something more nefarious than “protecting” the “integrity” of Ohio’s primaries. It’s about rescinding years of constitutionally-protected voting rights to protect one-party rule.
Open or semi-open primaries strengthen democracy while broadening voter choice and improving outcomes through competition. But GOP legislators don’t want to compete for votes. They gerrymandered themselves out of competition and into super-sized Statehouse majorities.
They know primary elections decide who wins state or federal office in Ohio. The general election is mostly a formality.
Limiting partisan primaries to party zealots lessens any potential moderating effect on party extremism by mainstream voters. That works for fringy MAGA Republicans. They don’t speak for a majority of Ohioans (as evident by two statewide issues last year) and would rather silence that majority through political subterfuge. Like legislating closed primaries designed to discourage voter participation in the first round of state elections that dictates the second.
If the extremists trying to block our century-old right to participate freely in Ohio primary elections were confident in the appeal of their ideas, surely they would welcome, not fear, open primaries. But they’re running scared with sham legislation that should be shelved now.
