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Election confusion remains as the Ohio Supreme Court refuses Nelsonville’s request to remove candidates from the ballot
By: David Forster
Posted on:
ATHENS, Ohio (WOUB) — The Ohio Supreme Court has denied the city of Nelsonville’s request that certain candidates for office be removed from the ballot.
It’s unclear at this point who will decide which candidates actually take office after the election.
The situation stems from the City Council’s decision last month to repeal Issue 23, an initiative passed last November by Nelsonville voters that abolishes the city’s charter and returns the city to the form of government it had before the charter was adopted.
Following the repeal, the council asked the Supreme Court to order that all candidates running under Issue 23 be removed from the ballot.
Given the court’s decision, the city now finds itself in a position where the council believes the charter remains in force, but at the same time there are candidates on the ballot running for a post-charter government under Issue 23.
This is because the court made its decision without addressing the underlying question of whether the city’s repeal of Issue 23 was valid.
Instead, the court simply said there is no law that requires the Athens County Board of Elections to remove the candidates from the ballot, and therefore the court could not order the board to do so.
The court notes the city was moving forward under Issue 23 for several months before the council decided to change course and repeal the initiative. During that time, a primary election was held for partisan candidates running under Issue 23, and several other candidates running as independents were certified by the elections board.
“Now, over six months after the first certification deadline, after the primary-election date has passed, and less than three months before the election, Nelsonville seeks to cancel elections for approximately 12 races,” the court said in its decision.
These races include council seats as well as the offices of mayor, council president and auditor.
“Nelsonville does not point to a statute or legal precedent requiring, or even authorizing, a board of elections to remove races from the ballot when some of the candidates for those races were certified to the ballot over six months earlier,” the court said.
There is still a chance a lawsuit could be filed challenging the validity of the council’s repeal of Issue 23. But even so, it’s unclear whether such a lawsuit could move through a court quickly enough to resolve the ballot conflict in time for the election. Military and overseas absentee voting begins Friday and early in-person voting and regular absentee voting by mail begins Oct. 7.
Dan Klos, an attorney who represented one of the Issue 23 candidates in the Supreme Court case, said earlier that he might file such a challenge to the repeal. He could not be reached for comment before this story was published.
WOUB also reached out to Nelsonville City Attorney Jonathan Robe and elections board Director Tony Brooks for more clarification on what happens next, but could not reach either before publication.