Republican Ohio Governor Mike DeWine on Thursday called for a special session of the Ohio State Assembly to get Democratic President Joe Biden on the 2024 presidential election ballot.
The Democratic National Convention this year is being held (August 19 to 22, 2024) after the Ohio deadline (August 7) for getting a candidate on the ballot. This has happened in the past but as DeWine points out, the Ohio General Assembly has passed bills that remedied the situation. This time, the state’s Senate has passed several bills to remedy the situation, but the House has not.
DeWine said of the situation: “This is simply unacceptable. Ohio is running out of time to get Joe Biden, the sitting president of United States, on the ballot this fall. Failing to do so is simply not acceptable.”
Former chairman of the Ohio Democratic Party David Pepper announced yesterday that the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and its chairman, Jaime Harrison “just called the OH Senate & Gov DeWine’s bluff by moving up Biden’s nomination so no extension is needed to make the OH ballot. This will expose that DeWine and the Senate’s goal was never about Biden at all!”
BREAKING!
The DNC & @harrisonjaime just called the OH Senate & Gov DeWine’s bluff by moving up Biden’s nomination so no extension is needed to make the OH ballot.
This will expose that DeWjne and the Senate’s goal was never about Biden at all!
WATCH/RT/TAKE ACTION
— David Pepper (@DavidPepper) May 28, 2024
As seen in the video above, Pepper said: “The Republicans in the Senate and Mike DeWine were trying to sneak one pass all of America by making it seem like this was all about putting Biden on the ballot.”
Pepper explained that after Ohio citizens voted for reproductive rights last year on a special ballot initiative, “This year there’s a push to end gerrymandering, signatures are being collected as we speak. They [Republicans] want to change the rules of how we run and enforce ballot campaigns to end the gerrymandering initiative, essentially before it starts and end future initiatives.”
I’ll make it clear: @JoeBiden and @KamalaHarris will be on the ballot in Ohio and all 50 states. Through a virtual roll call, we will ensure that Republicans — despite their best efforts — can’t chip away at our democracy and that Ohioans can freely exercise their right to vote.…
— Jaime Harrison (@harrisonjaime) May 28, 2024
According to Pepper, the DNC said “this isn’t worth trading for” and decided to get Biden on the ballot before the state’s deadline. “That’s what they’re doing, and Mike DeWine — pretend to be moderate — signed up to do, when he embraced this plan.”
“Now that it’s exposed, we can see how dirty it is. It had nothing to do with Biden on the ballot,” said Pepper.
Note: Pepper is the author of the 2016 book The People’s House, a political thriller about a Russian scheme to help elect Republican candidates in the U.S.