Found on the Libertarian Party of Ohio’s website

Up-to-the-minute SB 193 news will appear here until further notice, so check back often

Latest SB 193 UPDATE:

COLUMBUS (Tue., Oct, 7 at 1 p.m.)

The Ohio Senate has passed SB 193, just a couple of hours after it made it out of committee.

A temporary setback signaling just how terrified they are of us Libertarians, and any other challenger party.

Next steps to be announced soon. Keep petitioning, keep moving forward.



What is SB 193?

SB 193 was introduced on Sep. 19 by Republican State Sentor Bill Seitz, ostensibly to provide election law for so-called “minor” parties in Ohio. The state has not had such a law since 2006, when a then-existing law was declared unconstituional in LPO v. Blackwell.

Since that time, the LPO, other challenger parties, and voting rights groups have offered soutions to Ohio lawmakers on how to craft a law that would be consitutional and fair for everyone.

Those entreaties have been consistently ingnored, and neither Sen. Seitz nor any other lawmaker or state elections official consulted the LPO or any other stakeholders in this issue before we got wind of SB 193’s introduction.

What’s actually in SB 193, and why Libertarians oppose it

First, and perhaps most important, it would change Ohio election rules for Libertarians and other challenger parties nine months into a two-year election cycle—but rules for Republicans and Democrats would remain the same.

SB 193 would remove our party’s access to the 2014 ballot immediately, erasing the months of work our candidates have already put in organizing the campaigns and collecting signatures to get on the ballot.

SB 193 would erase the party registrations of thousands of Ohioans who voted Libertarian in 2010 and 2012 and severely restrict any chances we or any other challenger party would have to participate in future elections. The LPO would have to collect more than 100,000 signtaures in a very short amount of time with more restrictive petitioning rules—that are, by the way, enforced and interpreted by Republican Secretary of State John Husted, who is running for re-election—to satisfy the requirement of about 60,000 signatures to qualify for ballot access. (Signatures and petitions for challenger parties are typically invalidated in technicalities at a rate far greater than the parties in power, making it practical to get two to three times as many signatures as required by law.)

The bottom line is that the John Kasich Re-election Protection Act would disenfranchise every Ohio voter by taking away their right to vote for a candidate for governor other than a) John Kasich, a governor who has miserably failed the state of Ohio and betrayed millions of fiscal conservatives who expected him to follow Ohio law and oppose Obamacare, or b) the nominee of the other big-government party who is promising to double down on most of Kasich’s failing policies.

SB 193 would also invalidate and halt campaigns for all candidates EXCEPT Republicnas and Democrats, including the dozens of Libertarian campaigns already underway for 2014, for Congress, the Ohio Statehouse, and our LPO Central committee, the board that governs our party based on the choices of voters at the ballot box (just like Republicans and Democrats pick their central committees).

Please read here for the rest of the article.