Gov. Mike DeWine calls for special session to get President Biden on Ohio ballot

COLUMBUS, Ohio (WCMH) -- Gov. Mike DeWine called for a special Statehouse session on Thursday after state leaders failed to agree on a legislative solution to place President Joe Biden on the November ballot in Ohio.

DeWine, a Republican, instructed the legislature on Thursday to meet on May 28 and argued "Ohio is running out of time to get Joe Biden, the sitting president of the United States, on the ballot this fall." The news conference came after neither the Ohio House nor the Senate passed a proposal to remedy the deadline issue that will block Biden from appearing on Ohio's November ballot.

"The Senate has passed several bills that would remedy the situation, however, the House of Representatives has failed to do," DeWine said on Thursday, calling the situation "unacceptable," "ridiculous" and "absurd."

While current Ohio law requires elections officials to certify the November ballot 90 days before the election on Aug. 7, Biden will not be nominated until the Democratic National Convention on Aug. 19. Lawmakers then had until May 9 to pass a measure that could be signed into law to circumvent the issue, Secretary of State Frank LaRose said.

"“For weeks, we have been pushing to find a legislative solution to having President Biden on the ballot. Ultimately, the will to do so wasn’t there in the Republican caucus," said Speaker of the Ohio House Jason Stephens (R-Kitts Hill). "We look forward to real solutions that will actually pass both chambers next week and solve problems.”

Two bills were amended when the House and Senate were in session on May 8 to include a fix, like House Bill 114 which would have pushed back Ohio's filing deadline. However, the bill was further amended in the Senate, which led to all seven Senate Democrats voting against the measure.

Senate Minority Leader Nickie Antonio (D-Lakewood) said her caucus voted against the bill because it also included an election provision that they believe would disenfranchise Ohioans.

"They're playing games with this, and we had a clean option that everyone had agreed to," she said after the session in early May.

This is not the first time a presidential candidate has scrambled to get onto the Ohio ballot because a party's convention did not occur before the state's filing deadline. Senate Bill 92 was the other proposal, which would have created a permanent fix, not just one-time. The bill was stripped of other provisions, making it so it only addressed this issue. 

However, Senate President Matt Huffman said earlier this month it was a "nonstarter." He theorized the bill would be brought to the Senate with more Democratic support than Republican, and said, "there's no realistic way that I’m going to look at my caucus and say, 'Republicans didn't support it in the House, but we should pass it too.'"

Other states, like Alabama, have passed a bipartisan fix for the same issue, but Huffman said that's not likely in Ohio unless conservative measures are also in the bill.  

"Republicans in both the House and the Senate are not going to vote on a standalone Biden bill," he said.