Give Voters More Choice and Make Representation Matter

Open the ballot, reward majority support, draw fair maps, and bring the People's House closer to the people.

Ohio's election system rewards candidates for winning low-turnout partisan primaries, protecting a party label, and treating the other side as an enemy. We should not be surprised when that system produces division, unstable policy, and government by permanent campaign.

Election reform is not a distraction from household issues. It is how we change the incentives that keep those issues from being solved. Voters deserve more choices, representatives who must earn broad support, and districts small enough for ordinary people to be heard.

Repeal Ohio's ranked-choice voting ban

Senate Bill 63 took effect on June 16, 2026. It generally prohibits ranked-choice voting in Ohio elections and threatens a local government's share of the Local Government Fund if that community uses its home-rule authority to adopt the method.

That is the wrong direction. The state should not punish a community merely for letting its own voters consider a different election system.

I will work to repeal both the statewide prohibition and the financial penalty. Communities that want to test ranked-choice voting should have to use clear ballots, conduct voter education, publish complete tabulation data, and protect recount and audit procedures. They should not have funding for police, fire, roads, or other local services held hostage over an election method.

Use an open primary and a ranked general election

My preferred statewide model is straightforward:

Every candidate for an office appears on the same primary ballot, regardless of party.
Every voter chooses one candidate in that primary.
The top four candidates advance to the general election.
In the general election, voters rank those candidates in order of preference.
If no candidate has a majority of first-choice votes, the last-place candidate is eliminated and each ballot transfers to that voter's next available choice. The process continues until one candidate has a majority of continuing ballots.

If a ballot has no remaining ranked candidate, it becomes inactive in later rounds. The winner is therefore the candidate with a majority of the ballots still active in the final round, not necessarily a majority of every ballot originally cast.

Parties would remain free to organize, endorse, raise money, and persuade voters. They would no longer control separate taxpayer-funded gateways that can determine an election before most voters participate.

Ballot labels should be descriptive, not a government or party endorsement. I favor allowing candidates to list a party preference or independent status while making clear that advancing from the open primary does not automatically make someone the official nominee of a party. Parties would remain free to endorse their preferred candidates separately.

This model would:

Preserve a simple, one-choice primary ballot.
Let every voter participate without forcing anyone to register with a party.
Give independent and third-party candidates a realistic route to the general election.
Reduce the incentive to cast a sabotage vote against another party's candidate.
Let voters support their favorite candidate without feeling that they are wasting a vote.
Require the eventual winner to build support beyond a narrow partisan base.

No voting system can manufacture good leadership. A better system can make bridge-building more useful and political isolation more costly.

Make ballot access fair

Ohio should use objective, reasonable signature and filing rules that protect election administration without protecting established parties from competition.

I support:

Comparable filing deadlines and practical signature requirements for candidates seeking the same office.
A reasonable opportunity to cure technical petition defects when there is no fraud.
Clear, public instructions and consistent review standards across counties.
Ballot labels that inform voters without giving government the power to endorse or discredit a candidate.
Strong post-election audits and publication of non-identifying election data that lets the public verify the count.

The ballot belongs to voters. Political parties are voluntary associations, not public utilities with a right to exclude competition.

Draw districts for voters, not officeholders

Ohioans have spent years watching politicians and courts fight over maps. The basic standard should not be controversial: voters should choose their representatives; representatives should not choose their voters.

Fair redistricting requires:

Public access to the population, election, and geographic data used to draw a map.
Meaningful hearings before a map is adopted, including hearings outside Columbus.
Enforceable limits on drawing districts primarily for partisan advantage.
Respect for counties, municipalities, townships, wards, and precincts whenever population equality allows.
Written explanations of how an adopted map satisfies each constitutional standard.
Enough time for public and judicial review before candidates must file.

Longer term, I support studying county-based, multi-member legislative districts elected proportionally through ranked ballots. That would require a change to Ohio's Constitution and a full public debate. It could make representation reflect Ohio voters more naturally while reducing the power of mapmakers to predetermine individual seats.

Bring the People's House back to the people

The U.S. House has been fixed at 435 voting members for generations while the country's population has grown by hundreds of millions. Congressional districts have become enormous. Representatives are farther from the communities they serve, campaigns cost more, and national parties and major donors have more power over who can compete.

I support a Wyoming Rule-style expansion of the House. After each census, the population of the smallest state would serve as the approximate size of a congressional district, and the House would grow accordingly. Congress could adopt that reform by law. It is clearer and faster than a constitutional amendment, and it would give every state smaller, more accountable districts.

More representatives would not guarantee better government. It would make personal access more realistic, lower the population threshold for viable community-based campaigns, and make it harder for a few national figures to dominate the entire institution.

Article the First: the escape hatch the founders left open

The founders worried that a House detached from the people would stop being truly representative. In 1789, the First Congress proposed twelve constitutional amendments. Ten became the Bill of Rights. The second proposed amendment was ratified more than two centuries later as the Twenty-seventh Amendment. The original Article the First addressed representation in the House.

It was the first amendment they put before the states. Eleven states ratified it, but not enough to add it to the Constitution. Congress included no ratification deadline.

That matters because the distance the founders feared is the condition we now live with: districts too large for close representation, campaigns too expensive for many ordinary citizens, and a House whose size Congress has little incentive to revisit. The founders may have left the states an escape hatch. We should not pretend the door is not there simply because opening it would inconvenience Washington.

On May 14, 2026, Representative Darrell Issa introduced House Joint Resolution 186. It would attempt to impose a December 31, 2026, deadline on Article the First and declare later ratifications invalid. After Washington ignored the amendment for 237 years, Congress would give the states months to act and then announce that the debate is permanently closed.

I oppose that maneuver. I am calling on Ohio's current General Assembly to hold a public hearing while the question remains live. If Congress has not expanded the House and Article the First has not been conclusively terminated when I take office, I will introduce a joint resolution asking Ohio to ratify it.

I will also be honest about the uncertainty. The amendment's final 1789 wording is ambiguous. Scholars and advocates disagree about how it would operate at today's population, whether it is still legally available for ratification, and what a late ratification would require Congress or the courts to do. Ohio's action would not instantly settle the size of the House.

The Wyoming Rule is the cleaner immediate reform. But legal uncertainty is a reason for a serious hearing, not a reason to let Congress quietly bury a question about its own power. We do not know exactly what will happen if another state opens the door. We do know that uncertainty is not powerlessness.

The standard

Election rules should not be judged by whether they help my party, your party, or an incumbent. They should be judged by whether voters have meaningful choices, ballots are counted accurately, winners earn broad support, and representatives remain answerable to real communities.

I am running as a Libertarian in a system built to keep alternatives out. My answer is not to ask for a special rule for my party. It is to build a fairer system for every voter and every candidate.