State To 17-Year-Old Voters: You Can't Choose Presidential Nominee

Until recently, 17-year-olds who turn 18 before the November elections would be able to vote in the Presidential primary election. New rules put in place by Secretary of State Jon Husted changed that this year, making these would-be legal voters unable to have a say in the presidential primaries.

The 2015 Ohio election manual, which is published by Husted’s office, is the first to prohibit voters in this category from casting votes for presidential nominees. According to The Columbus Dispatch, the issue lies in the difference between election and nomination. A 17-year-old can vote to nominate a public official for his or her party, say for Congress --but they are not allowed to vote directly to elect an official.

And since the presidential primary technically elects delegates, the ruling goes, 17-year-old voters can't vote for president.

As would be expected, not everyone is pleased about these new developments. Democratic presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders (D-Vermont) and Ohio State Representative Kathleen Clyde (D-Kent) have publicly announced their opposition of Husted’s new rules.

Sanders said that he believes the new rules unfairly target young minorities within the state and has vowed to do everything in his power to restore the rights of the state’s youngest voters.

“It is an outrage that the secretary of state in Ohio is going out of his way to keep young people--significantly African-American people, Latino young people--from participating,” he said in a press release.

Sanders’ team filed a lawsuit against the chief elections administrator on Tuesday and vowed to do everything possible to restore voting rights to the affected individuals.

Representative Clyde agreed, saying she was “astonished” at the recent developments and that these voters have been allowed to cast their primary ballots since 1981. Clyde's team has also filed an injunction against Husted in order to restore voting rights to the youngest voters.

But Husted’s team said the new rule didn’t derive from them and that the legislation has existed for years as a topic of debate due to the fact that it is open for interpretation. However, the fact remains that 17-year old voters are indeed being barred from Ohio’s primary, which takes place in less than a week.

Clyde was set to announce a bill that would restore voting rights to eligible 17-year olds this morning, but the media announcement on that bill has since been delayed. Patch will update this story as more information becomes available.