In Ohio, 17-year-olds who will be 18 by the time of the general election are permitted to vote in primary elections. But, according to a directive from Secretary of State Jon Husted, that option won't be available for those who want to vote for president in this year's primary on March 15.

In Ohio, 17-year-olds who will be 18 by the time of the general election are permitted to vote in primary elections.

But, according to a directive from Secretary of State Jon Husted, that option won�t be available for those who want to vote for president in this year�s primary on March 15.

According to the 2015 election manual, released by Husted, the crux of the issue lies in the difference between �electing� and �nominating.� Seventeen-year-old voters are allowed to nominate candidates for office � meaning they can vote in other primary races such as the U.S. Senate race and the Ohio legislative races. But they are not allowed to directly elect an official. In the case of a presidential primary, voters don�t nominate candidates � they elect delegates to do the nominating for them.

State Rep. Kathleen Clyde, D-Kent, has come out in opposition to this policy, saying it has no precedence in previous elections. Seventeen-year-olds have had the vote since 1981, she said.

�I was astonished to learn that 17-year-old Ohioans who will legally become adults before the November election are now being prohibited from having a say in the direction of their country at the presidential ballot box during the primary,� she said in a release.

The Ohio Revised Code states �every qualified elector� who will be 18 years old by the time of the general election has a right to vote in the primary. That specific line of code makes no exception for presidential primaries.

But Josh Eck, spokesman for Husted, said Clyde's claims are a "piece of fiction." He said the policy barring 17-year-olds from presidential primaries predates Husted.

"This statute and its interpretation have been used for years," he said.

Former Secretaries of State Jennifer Brunner, a Democrat, and Ken Blackwell, a Republican, both issued directives stating that 17-year-olds can only nominate officials, not elect them.

Blackwell, in a 2002 directive, cited a 1908 Ohio Supreme Court case which stated that 17-year-olds could vote in nominating primaries because they were not technically "elections" as defined by the Ohio Constitution. But, he, like Husted, argued that 17-year-olds could not elect members of party-controlling committees.

In 2008, Brunner issued a directive that confirmed 17-year-olds could only nominate candidates, but it did not specify whether presidential primaries fell under that category.

William T. Perkins is a fellow in the E.W. Scripps Statehouse News Bureau.

wperkins@dispatch.com

@wtperkins