Dem
51
GOP
49
The Ohio legislature keeps dithering around as it "tries" to address the fact that the Democratic National Convention is scheduled for a date after the state's ballot-access deadline. We put "tries" in quotations, because solving the problem should be a simple matter. The legislature could, for example, get out a copy of the last two deadline-waiver bills it passed, and just white out "2020" or "2012" and replace that with "2024." The fact is, they don't want to resolve the problem, for whatever reason. Gov. Mike DeWine (R-OH) has called a special session of the legislature so they can try again, but there's no particular reason to think that anything has changed from the three previous attempts to address the matter.
It would seem that the Democrats don't want to wait anymore, and they don't want to go the lawsuit route, so the Party has decided to hold a virtual roll call of delegates a couple of weeks before the actual Democratic National Convention. That means that by the time the DNC is held, Biden will already be the nominee. Maybe this will work to the Democrats' benefit by giving them two sets of headlines for the price of one, allowing them to dominate the month of August. Or, maybe it will work to their detriment by making the DNC even more pro forma and less interesting than it already was.
In any case, isn't there an obvious problem here? Wait until a year when one party's nominee is clear from the outset while the other party's is not, and the party with the clear nominee has the trifecta in a swing state. What's to stop them from passing a bill declaring that, lead times being what they are, they simply must have the name of the major-party nominees no later than July 1? Or June 1? Or May 1? This year, that's not a big problem for the Democrats, but it certainly would be in 2028. Clearly, either the courts or the Congress need to weigh in here, and make clear that states can't set these arbitrary and unreasonable deadlines, especially since August conventions are now par for the course. (Z)