State Sen. Theresa Gavarone (R., Bowling Green) has better things to do than try to pre-empt efforts by Ohio municipalities to conduct modest experiments in better ways to conduct local voting.
Ms. Gavarone seeks to block any local government from using “ranked-choice voting,” a process designed to promote candidates who have broad general support, rather than the most extreme candidates.
Ms. Gavarone plans to crush this legitimate venture into alternative election formats not only by banning it outright, which should be sufficient, but by cutting off the flow of dollars from the Ohio Local Government Fund to any municipality or county that uses “ranked-choice voting” instead of the current system.
Cutting off access to the Local Government Fund is a popular tactic of the Republican controlled General Assembly.
Toledo’s efforts to use red-light and speeding cameras to enforce compliance with traffic signals and speeding laws was stopped by a GOP law that cuts off Local Government Funds to communities that use those devices. It’s a misuse of the fund as leverage in an unrelated area of local government.
In ranked-choice voting, which is not used anywhere in Ohio but is being contemplated in the Cleveland suburb of University Heights, voters rank the candidates in order of preference.
If someone gets more than 50 percent as first choice in the first round, that candidate wins the election. If not, the ballots are counted in rounds with the last-place candidate eliminated and their votes redistributed to those voters’ second choices.
The process continues until a candidate reaches a 50 percent plus one majority.
The charter review commission in University Heights has recommended ranked-choice voting for their local elections.
What else might Ms. Gavarone work on than crushing home rule in University Heights?
How about acting on ethical reform?
Three years after a corruption scandal involving $61 million in bribes, the Ohio General Assembly refuses to act to inject transparency and accountability into lobbying disclosure in Columbus.
In the distant past, Toledo, Cincinnati, and Cleveland all have used ranked choice voting in city council elections as a reform effort to break the power of party bosses.
What’s old is new again, and breaking the power of party bosses is again on the minds of voters in Ohio.
Ohio Republicans used to celebrate the independence of local government.
Now it just scares them.
First Published August 1, 2023, 4:00 a.m.
