Ohio’s 2020 primary to be postponed, in defiance of state court ruling

In a last-minute deci­sion on Mon­day night, Ohio’s Repub­li­can Gov­er­nor Mike DeWine post­poned his state’s pri­ma­ry elec­tions, in response to the threat of COVID-19 infec­tions at polling sites. DeWine’s deci­sion came in direct defi­ance of a judge’s order issued just a few hours earlier.

While the inter­fer­ence of a Repub­li­can gov­er­nor in the Demo­c­ra­t­ic nom­i­na­tion process appears sus­pect on its face, Gov­er­nor DeWine’s deci­sion was in fact cor­rect and coura­geous. He put his case in sim­ple terms:

“We can’t tell peo­ple it’s in their best inter­ests to stay home and at the same time tell peo­ple to go vote.” The con­tra­dic­tion is glar­ing – states hold­ing a pri­ma­ry on Tues­day are effec­tive­ly ask­ing their cit­i­zens to weigh their civic duty of polit­i­cal par­tic­i­pa­tion against their civic duty to main­tain pub­lic health.

Nev­er­the­less, Judge Richard Frye decid­ed on Mon­day evening that it was too late to push back the elec­tion, as the case had not come “in a time­ly manner.”

In spite of the obvi­ous dan­gers of let­ting mass­es of peo­ple go to the polls with only a few hours to pre­pare for the poten­tial infec­tion risk, the judge argued that “there is no med­ical evi­dence to sug­gest here today that it would be safer to vote in June.” He went on to argue that as the pan­dem­ic may still be hap­pen­ing in the sum­mer, mov­ing the vote would not make any dif­fer­ence to pub­lic health.

In fact, it could make a lot of difference.

The pan­dem­ic is wors­en­ing at a stag­ger­ing­ly quick pace, and Ohio’s lead­ers need more time to effec­tive­ly imple­ment the Cen­ter for Dis­ease Control’s rec­om­men­da­tions, which include social dis­tanc­ing at poll sites, empha­sis on mail-in bal­lots, and dis­in­fect­ing vot­ing machines. Going ahead with the pri­ma­ry on Tues­day would guar­an­tee con­fu­sion at polling sites across the state. Hold­ing the pri­ma­ry in June instead would give every­one a bet­ter chance to participate.

Ohio was not the only state set to vote on Tuesday.

Offi­cials in Illi­nois, Ari­zona and Flori­da have com­mit­ted to mov­ing ahead with nom­i­nat­ing events  – despite the fact that Flori­da already has over one hun­dred and fifty con­firmed cas­es (with five fatal­i­ties), and Illi­nois over one hundred.

Some states, how­ev­er, have already moved to post­pone. Louisiana and Geor­gia have pushed their pri­maries back months, with Ken­tucky fol­low­ing suit on Mon­day evening. Hope­ful­ly, oth­er upcom­ing states will take the respon­si­ble deci­sions that ensure that their cit­i­zens are not unnec­es­sar­i­ly exposed to health risks.