COLUMBUS, Ohio — Meryl Neiman understands her mission is probably a fruitless one, but she feels it is important just the same.
“Basically we want to remove insurrectionists from our ballot in Ohio,” she said.
Neiman is with the left-leaning group Ohio Progressive Action Leaders, or OPAL. On Friday morning, the group delivered a petition with roughly 620 signatures to Secretary of State Frank LaRose’s office.
The petition called for LaRose to investigate and remove 45 GOP candidates OPAL believes should be disqualified from seeking office.
“We shouldn’t be here,” Neiman said. “(LaRose) should have been doing his job. His party, which we’re also speaking to, should have been doing their job and discouraging people, like those candidates that we have, who are seeking office, and some of them will likely prevail because of the nature of our districts here, some of them were involved at pretty significant levels.”
OPAL is laying out four reasons the various candidates should be disqualified for seeking office:
The candidates are accused of doing at least one of the following:
- attended the January 6 insurrection or helped in its planning or funding;
- objected to the electoral college count in furtherance of the conspiracy to overturn the 2020 election;
- excused or minimized the conduct of those who illegally entered the Capitol and attacked our country;
- continue to further the criminal conspiracy and stoke potential future violence by spreading false claims about the 2020 election results and election integrity.
OPAL is citing the U.S. Constitution as reasoning for that disqualification, pointing specifically to Section 3 of the 14th Amendment.
No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.
OPAL also is calling on the Ohio Republican Party to withdraw support from the 45 candidates listed on the petition.
10TV reached out to the Ohio GOP for comment.
"This Democrat group claims ‘Ohioans value their freedom to vote’ while simultaneously trying to kick dozens of Republican candidates off the ballot,” said ORP spokesman Dan Lusheck. “The hypocrisy is almost as comical as it is absurd.”
Meanwhile, after a representative from LaRose’s office accepted the petition, a spokesman for the office declined to comment further.
Neiman acknowledges she does not expect much to come from Friday’s delivering, noting that some early ballots have been mailed out already. Instead she said it was about educating voters.
“It’s important that Ohioans understand who’s on their ballot and what these people may have done because, when you speak to people of both parties, they do not like the idea of folks that were there on Jan. 6 or who have tried to overturn the election in some fashion, being on their ballot,” she said.