Kent City Council rejects nonpartisan ballots for local races

Voters will likely continue to see whether candidates for council and mayor are Democrats or Republicans on their ballots following a decision from Kent City Council on July 9.

A majority of council members rejected the Charter Review Commission’s recommendation that mayoral and city council elections be nonpartisan. Council has until Aug. 6 to make its final determination as that is the deadline for submitting issues to the Portage County Board of Elections for inclusion on the November ballot.

Should council persist in its rejection of the commission’s recommendation, Kent will remain the sole community in Portage County that holds partisan mayoral and council elections.

Council could also postpone its decision for a year while it debates the Charter Review Commission’s recommendation, city law director Hope Jones said. And commission member Barbara Hipsman Springer later told The Portager that council members can initiate their own charter changes to place before voters and that citizens can launch initiatives to make specific charter changes.

According to the recommendation, primary elections would only be held when more than two people file for mayor or council. The two candidates who receive the most votes would advance to the general election.

Primaries would also be held when more than six people file for Kent’s three at-large council seats. Those elections would also be nonpartisan, and the six with the most votes would advance to the general election ballot.

If two or fewer people file for a single seat, or if six or fewer people file for Kent’s at-large seats, no primary election would be held, at least as far as candidates go. The candidates’ names would simply appear on a nonpartisan general election ballot.

The Charter Review Commission meets once a decade to review what is essentially Kent’s constitution. Council considers its recommendations, and places those it approves of before Kent voters to decide in an upcoming general election — in this case, the November balloting round.

The commission said its recommendation was rooted in a desire to give more people a voice as to who can be placed on the general, to center the community’s values and issues in each election, and to make running for office more accessible for city residents.

Fully 79% of Kent’s registered voters are unaffiliated, meaning they cannot vote for candidates in primary elections, commission members said, adding that 75% of the city’s registered voters do not turn out for primary elections.

“It’s not because they’re lazy or uniformed. It’s because our system discourages participation from independents, newcomers, and those who don’t want to affiliate with a party just to cast a ballot,” a commission spokesman said.

The commission also noted that Ohio law prohibits people designated as classified employees at the local and state level from running in partisan elections, even as independents. That, he said, bars some city employees, and many employees at Kent State University, from even considering an election bid.

The commission also cited stats that nonpartisan primaries boost voter turnout by six percentage points.

Nonpartisan candidates can still communicate their values, and can tell voters themselves what party they are affiliated with, the commission said. The only change would be that the letter R or D would not appear next to their name on the ballot.

Council Member Robin Turner objected, saying he wants people to see his political affiliation on the ballot.

“Being a Democrat means something to me. It has value. This is a political system. There’s no depoliticizing the system we’re in,” he said, adding his belief that it’s people not confronting what’s in front of them, not Ds and Rs, that keeps people from participating in elections.

Council Member Jack Amrhein said he would have supported the commission’s recommendation a decade ago, but not now. Party labels provide people with shortcuts to understanding what the candidates are about, revealing their values without further research, he said

Echoing Amrhein, Council Member Heidi Shaffer Bish said partisan elections allow voters to easily figure out who’s who, and that now is not the time to switch course.

Council Member Chris Hook said having a D next to his name helped him win his council seat, and suggested that without a D next to President Barack Hussein Obama’s name, his name alone may have prevented his winning the nation’s highest office.

“You also might get into a situation where the flashiest social media campaign wins out, the person who gets their name on the most lawn signs wins out. Then you start talking about equity, and who gets to win elections. It’ll be a race to see who can spend the most money on a local election,” he predicted.

That alone, he said, would keep low-income would-be candidates from running. Hook also expressed concern about local elections being increasingly influenced by “outside money.” He said three independents are running on Kent’s November ballot, and they can put up their lawn signs when they like.

Council Members Gwen Rosenberg and Melissa Celko were alone in supporting the commission’s recommendation to hold nonpartisan mayoral and council primaries. Though she acknowledged that a small percentage of city voters participate in the city’s primaries, Rosenberg said they, not council, should decide the issue.

Editor’s note: An earlier version of this story mistakenly attributed Jack Amrhein’s response to Roger Sidoti.