Voting Guide: 2024 Dem Primary Cuyahoga County Ohio Congressional District 11

I voted early in person two weeks ago but I thought I’d do one of these last minute in case it might be of help to someone figuring out what to today, particularly about the essentially uncontested Presidential Primary. This is not a particularly interesting one to do or talk about since there’s essentially only one meaningful contested race on the entire Democratic Primary ballot, the one for County Prosecutor between incumbent Michael O’Malley and challenger Matthew Ahn.

The first thing on the ballot is Democratic nominee for US President. It’s worded in this insanely confusing way as “delegates at large …to the national convention” because of the bizarre Primary system used to choose the nominee but this is what it means. For those of us who are anti-genocide anti-intentionally starving children to death as a weapon of war etc. it’s impossible to vote for ultra-Zionist lunatic Joe Biden. But there is no meaningful other choice on the ballot. Dean Phillips is just a random centrist Congressman who has zero chance at winning the nomination. And unlike in Michigan and a few other states there is no “Uncommitted” option or anything similar. So how to communicate some sort of anti-Biden vote. I’m very happy to see that CPAC (the Cleveland Palestine Advocacy Community) has come to the same conclusion I did: the best thing to do is “leave it blank” that is take a ballot and vote for whatever other offices you want to but don’t vote for President. This is called an “undervote” in campaign terminology and it is something that campaigns track. It’s not typically something that the media picks up on so we won’t get the satisfaction of all the media coverage that Michigan got but it is something that Biden’s campaign will notice.

Next is incumbent US Senator Sherrod Brown running unopposed (of course) for the Dem nomination. Despite some vague reputation as being more progressive than the next Senator Brown has long been a dead bang average Democrat and has been absolutely horrible on Palestine. I undervoted this too.

I would never in a million years vote for my US Rep, Shontel Brown, in any Primary or general election and this is no exception. She is one of the least accomplished and least intelligent Representatives in the House and AIPAC and DMFI intervened heavily to buy her the seat she has now.

Then the next part of the ballot has approximately two million judges to vote for. I’m going to suggest something radical here: Do not vote for any judges! That’s right, free yourself! Ohio is one of only 6 states where all judges are elected all the way down to lowest level. In normal states you might vote for State Supreme Court Judges and stuff like that but this thing of having to choose between two people for every one of 500 “Common Pleas” (whatever that means) Judges is nonsense. These should be appointed positions. Superficially it might seem like electing them all is some triumph of democracy but in practice all it does overload the system and the bandwidth of voters and activists. Until this is changed I’m opting out of the system and I couldn’t be happier.

The next thing after the judges and arguably the only thing on this ballot that really matters is “Prosecuting Attorney” aka “County Prosecutor” aka “D.A.” etc. This person has far more ability than any judge to broadly affect peoples’ lives countywide through setting policies of how Assistant Prosecutors will charge for certain types of offenses what sentences will be sought etc. on a countywide level. Enthusiastically I voted for Matthew Ahn. I would’ve voted for him either way but to be honest I was a little overwhelmed with his campaign challenging incumbent Michael O’Malley finding it a little tame and speaking more technocratic language than the language of justice. However, I’m really happy with how Ahn performed in the last couple months, becoming much more aggressive in his attacks on O’Malley and am very happy to support his campaign.

My member of County Council, Dale Miller, as also on there unopposed. I undervoted him as well.

There’s some kind of Heath and Human Services levy on there as the last thing. I voted yes. I always vote for these things