Ohio State Representative Beth Lear (R-Galena) said her bill that would modify the timeframe for voters and candidates to declare a political party is a “simple” piece of legislation that would work to make elections fairer in the Buckeye State.
House Bill 437, introduced by Lear and State Representative Brian Lorenz (R-Powell) earlier this month, would require a voter to declare their political party at least 90 days in advance to participate in their chosen party’s primary election.
The bill would also require a candidate to have voted within the same party they are on the ballot for in the last primary.
“It’s a pretty simple bill. All we’re saying is that if you’re a Republican and you’ve been voting in Republican primaries, you should not vote in a Democrat primary or run as a Democrat for a seat that is partisan,” Lear explained on Monday’s edition of The Michael Patrick Leahy Show. “We’ve had these kinds of shenanigans going on in Ohio for a while because, like Texas, when you have Republicans that are very moderate or very corrupt, it’s easy for them to get favors from the lobbying community and others and to make deals with Democrats – and the Democrats like that. So they vote for those kinds of Republicans and they interfere in our primary, but Republicans can do the same thing to them. It’s wrong no matter who does it, and representative Lorenz and I are trying to stop that.”
Lear, explaining how Democrats have branded her and Lorenz as “vote suppressors” for introducing the bill, noted how Democrat voters in recent elections have helped push moderate Republican candidates like Mike DeWine across the finish line.
“We don’t want to let Democrats vote in our elections to choose people like governor DeWine or Matt Dolan. Fortunately, we were able to stop the Matt Dolan candidacy for U.S. Senate. He’s the same Matt Dolan whose family renamed the Cleveland Indians the Guardians…So Ohio dodged the bullet there. We’re very fortunate to have Bernie Moreno as our candidate, but we don’t want Democrats making that decision for Republicans,” Lear said.
“We have a lot of unethical people that don’t care what they have to do to get power. We need to close down those options,” Lear added.
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Kaitlin Housler is a reporter at The Ohio Star and The Star News Network. Follow Kaitlin on X / Twitter.
Photo “State Rep Beth Lear” by Ohio General Assembly and “Election Day” is by Liz West CC2.0
