A second primary election is expected in August, after the Ohio Supreme Court shot down a fourth set of Statehouse district maps on Thursday.
“The only thing I don’t want to do is plant doubt in the voters’ minds about May 3. I will stand behind that August election as a hope date,” Terry Burton, Wood County Board of Elections director, said. “My biggest concern is that voters understand that May 3 is happening and that there are a lot of primary elections. In fact, 98% of our ballot is going to happen on May 3. It’s only going to be Ohio (Statehouse) seats and the state central committee races on the ballot in August.”
No date has yet been assigned for the August primary, but the Republican-controlled redistricting panel has been given May 6 as a deadline for creating the new redistricting plan.
“That’s an unknown date, and we are hoping and rooting for Aug. 2, but we will see,” Burton said.
He pointed out that there are two cases.
“There’s both the Ohio Supreme Court case and then there’s also the federal court case, one, or both of which will determine when we will get lines and when we can have a second election,” Burton said. “All the races that are on for May 3, we know the districts for those. So the U.S. Congress is on the ballot for May 3. We know what the districts are. The U.S. Senate is the whole county and almost all of the state races are the whole county, state appeals court, things like that.”
Ohio state Senate districts are also unknown, but Wood County is mid-term and doesn’t have a race this election.
Burton explained that the secretary of state did keep the boards of elections in a holding pattern for printing ballots until they knew exactly which races were to be run, allowing them to print ballots only once.
The Wood County Board of Elections also needs volunteers for both the May 3 and August primaries.
“The Aug. 2 date is a hope date, not a firm date,” Burton said. “Once we hit the beginning of early voting, there was going to be a second primary. They held us for so long that eventually they had to say they couldn’t get the races on the ballot.”
He added that it was only a week and a half before that the ballots were going to show.
“Really up until that date I didn’t know if the legislature would step in and move the entire primary, or just run the races that we could, but once we started voting, it pretty much locked everything in, and that there had to be two primaries,” Burton said. “The court can do anything it wants. That’s why I say that Aug. 2 is a hope date, because I know that we may not still have court issues coming into that election.”
Because the August date is an unknown, Burton is checking out volunteers’ schedules.
“In the cities, particularly in Bowling Green, Perrysburg and Rossford, we’re still looking for some people,” Burton said.
Burton said that they are in particular need of Democrats to work the May 3 primary.
“It’s a Noah’s ark situation. We need to have equal numbers of Republican and Democratic party members and, in this election, we are in particular need of Democratic party workers,” Burton said. “We’ll take anybody, and we will train them, but for this election that’s what we are most in need of right now.”
