http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/presidential-races/272283-sanders-sues-to-allow-17-year-olds-to-vote-in-ohioMarch 08, 2016, 06:22 pm
Sanders sues to allow 17-year-olds to vote in Ohio
By Jonathan Easley
Bernie Sanders’s campaign has filed a lawsuit against Ohio’s secretary of state to allow 17-year olds to vote in the Democratic primary on March 15, according to a CNN report.
Sanders’s campaign manager told reporters in Michigan on Tuesday that Republican Jon Husted, who is Ohio’s secretary of State, has changed the rules to make it so that those who are currently 17, but will be 18 by the time of the November general election, cannot vote in the state’s primaries.
"The secretary of state has decided to disenfranchise people who are 17 but will be 18 by the day of the general election,” Weaver said, according to CNN. “Those people have been allowed to vote under the law of Ohio, but the secretary of state of the state of Ohio has decided to disenfranchise those people to forbid them from voting in the primary that is coming up on March 15.”
Sanders has galvanized the support of many young liberal voters, and routinely thumps Democratic rival Hillary Clinton among voters under the age of 40. Clinton generally dominates Sanders among older voters.
The issue came to light after a report in the Columbus Dispatch, in which a state Democratic lawmaker accused Husted of changing the rules to keep those who will be 18 by Nov. 4 from voting in the presidential primary.
Husted called those accusations and the Sanders lawsuit baseless in a statement released over Twitter, saying that Ohio is operating under the same set of rules it has used in past primaries.
Under current rules, those who are presently 17 but will be 18 by Nov. 4 can vote on a host of issues in the primaries, Husted said, but have never been allowed to “elect candidates, which is what voters are doing in a primary when they elect delegates to represent them at their political party’s national convention.”
Jon Husted
@JonHusted
