Ohio’s Republican election chief is still threatening to keep Biden off the ballot

Republicans and Democrats are fending off reports that Joe Biden will be left off the Ohio ballot, after Secretary of State Frank LaRose warned Democrats this week that he may be forced to prepare “ballots that do not include the Democratic Party’s nominees for president and vice president.”

LaRose first floated that possibility last month, as Republicans in Ohio and Alabama pointed out that their relatively early deadlines to finalize ballots would come after the Democratic National Convention, when the party will officially nominate the Biden-Harris ticket again.

Alabama’s Republican-led legislature quickly and unanimously passed a bill to resolve that problem. But Ohio’s Republican-led legislature passed nothing, after LaRose urged the fix to include a ban on foreign donors contributing to ballot initiatives — a factor in last year’s passage of an abortion rights Constitutional amendment, which LaRose campaigned against.

On Tuesday, when it was clear that the legislative session would finish without a fix, Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine told reporters that “no one should worry” about Biden being left off the ballot.

“This is not going to be a situation where the president’s name is not on the ballot,” he said. “So it’s either going to be done by the court, or it’s going to be done by the legislature.”

The end of the session, and LaRose’s judgment that a “provisional certification” from Democrats doesn’t meet the state’s legal standard, leaves Democrats with two options. One, as DeWine suggested, would be a lawsuit; the other, which couldn’t be done until the end of Democratic primaries next month, would be an early, pre-convention DNC vote to officially nominate the ticket.

“Joe Biden will be on the ballot in all 50 states, and we are assessing next steps accordingly,” said Biden campaign spokesman Charles Lutvak. “Election after election, states across the country have acted in line with the bipartisan consensus and taken the necessary steps to ensure the presidential nominees from both parties will be on the ballot.”

Almost every Democrat agrees with the Biden campaign here — Republicans have needlessly forced them to spend resources on the Ohio ballot, but they’ll get there. What I’ve seen this week is frustration that LaRose’s moves get national headlines (sorry about that!), couched as warnings that Ohio voters might not get to vote for Biden at all.

That response, in itself, is interesting. When liberal legal groups and two Democratic secretaries of state challenged Donald Trump’s presidential eligibility last year, Republicans rushed to defend Trump, and warned that small-D democracy was at risk. Tulsi Gabbard, the ex-Democrat who’s embraced Trump with the zeal of a convert, delivered some of the most memorable warnings: “The Biden/Harris Administration and the Democrat elite are abusing their power and actively undermining our Constitutional Republic by doing all they possibly can to unilaterally prevent President Trump from being on the ballot.”

Liberal-leaning media outlets have fretted about this, but Democrats haven’t tried to exploit it; the Biden campaign, for example, hasn’t raised money off of the Ohio threat. It hasn’t really slotted into a major Biden theme — that democracy is on the ballot — because they expect it to be resolved, and the resolution may steal the thunder of their Chicago convention by requiring them to start some proceedings early.

That’s a decent-sized risk. Earlier this month, after Politico’s Jonathan Martin reported that the DNC might hold a virtual roll call to avoid any protests or messiness, the Uncommitted Movement of Gaza activists who are protesting Biden demanded a meeting with the party chair. LaRose’s approach to this won’t keep Biden off the ballot, but it’s given the party two options for success — lawsuits or bureaucratic gymnastics.

• LaRose also ran for Senate this year in an especially nasty three-way fight that businessman Bernie Moreno ultimately won.