The John Glenn Institute for Public Service and Public Policy at The
Ohio State University has published a judicial voter guide for Tuesday’s election. The guide outlines non-partisan information about all of the candidates for judicial positions in Ohio.To help fight misleading, negative campaign ads and provide voters in
Ohio with nonpartisan information on the Supreme Court candidates, the League of Women Voters of Ohio Education Fund and Ohio State Bar Association have partnered with the Ray C. Bliss Institute of Applied Politics, the John Glenn Institute for Public Service and Public Policy, Ohio Common Cause Education Fund, and Ohio Citizen Action to create and distribute a statewide voter guide on this year’s Ohio Supreme Court Elections.
“A nonpartisan voter guide will ensure that citizens can make better
decisions about their government, and will help counter the nasty attack ads that have characterized recent campaigns for the courts,” said Linda Lalley, vice president of the League of Women Voters of Ohio.
The voter guide will appear on the web site for the Next Steps forum for judicial reform, (www.lwvohio.org/voterguide/voterguide.html) aswell as that of the League, Ohio Citizen Action, and elsewhere. A broad network of nonprofit organizations and print and broadcast media will be built to ensure the voter guide reaches as many citizens as possible.
“We’d like to see this project grow in the future,” added Catherine
Turcer of Ohio Citizen Action. “If voters are able to get good information
about candidates from a state-sponsored voter guide, then the candidates do not have to spend as much time and energy on the fund-raising and television ads that they feel are necessary to get their message out.”
The voter guide includes a wealth of information on each candidate to
help voters make more informed decisions on election day, including
campaign contact information, legal background and experience, a candidate statement, OSBA ratings, and candidate photographs. The voter guide is laid out in an easy-to-read format with candidates for each office matched up with their opponents.
“We feel that this sort of layout makes the information easy to absorb and compare, and this will combat voter fatigue on November 2,” said Lalley.
In 2002, more than $7 million was spent on the Supreme Court races in
Ohio, accounting for half the money spent on state Supreme Court races nationally. And as much as a seventy percent of that money was spent on campaign ads by candidates and special-interest groups.
“Over the course of the last two Supreme Court elections, Ohioans were
bombarded with advertising that made it difficult to separate fact from fiction,” said Heather Solwald, President of the OSBA. “We’re all for free speech, along with fair and impartial elections. Where we have a problem is when campaign materials impugn the integrity of the court – and mislead Ohio voters.”
A poll commissioned by the League of Women Voters of Ohio in October
2002 found that four out of five voters (83 percent) believe that campaign contributions influence judges and candidates more than any other factor.