I’m usually not one to comment on judges being accused of becoming black-robed “legislators.” Must be my liberal bias.
An Ohio judge, though, just might fit the bill of a jurist who has taken a step or two too far.
Franklin County Common Pleas Court Judge Richard Frye has ruled that Ohio voters who are 17 years of age today can vote in the Tuesday primary if they’ll be of legal voting age — that’s 18 years of age — by November.
My first reaction is: huh?
Let me see if this adds up. Someone who’s not yet old enough to vote will be able to vote in the primary anyway. On what grounds does this make sense?
Frye’s ruling is seen as a potentially big win for U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, one of two Democrats running for president. Sanders has been getting a lot of young voters’ support and this could open up a large trove of votes; I guess pledges of free college tuition are resonating with the young voters.
“This is a huge victory for 17-year-olds across Ohio. Their votes for presidential nominees will now count when they vote on either Tuesday or over the weekend in early voting,” Sanders campaign counsel Brad Deutch said in a statement.
But, but … how does that compute? How does someone get to vote prior to being of legal voting age?
Ohio’s Republican secretary of state, Jon Husted, is incensed over the ruling. He vows to appeal it. I think he’s got a case for judicial overreach.
I’m a simple fellow. It just seems to me that pre-dating someone’s voting eligibility smacks of manipulation that the law shouldn’t allow.
To be honest, this kind of reminds me of something I witnessed in Jefferson County, Texas, many years when two judges whose courts had criminal jurisdiction were slapped hard by the Texas Commission on Judicial Conduct for back-dating prison sentences. The judges would sentence defendants to prison terms that began before the crimes actually took place. The state’s court watchdog organization took a dim view of it.
Judge Frye, by my way of thinking, is playing a similar game by giving Ohio teens the right to vote before they are actually legally entitled to do so.