Mahoning Dems change constitution to avoid party sanctions

BOARDMAN

With only a handful of objections, Mahoning County Democratic Party precinct committee members voted in favor of significant changes to their constitution, including the elimination of secret ballots.

Local Democrats had no choice but to make the two changes, said Chairman David Betras.

If the changes weren’t made at Tuesday’s meeting, the local party would have lost access to the Ohio Democratic Party’s nonprofit discount on campaign mail and access to its computer-software voter information system, he said.

The other change was to have its chairperson’s successor be of the opposite sex, which required the party to change the title of its secretary position to secretary/vice chairperson.

If that person is elevated to head of the party, he/she can have it for only 30 days before precinct committee members would convene to elect a new chairperson to fill the unexpired term.

Joyce Kale-Pesta, county board of elections director, was elected secretary at the party’s June 7 meeting. She automatically was elevated to the new position.

Both the ODP and the Democratic National Committee require county parties to abide by the two rules.

While he had previously complained about the changes — saying last week that “secret ballots is going to be a huge problem. Why pick fights on these issues?” — Betras called them “small issues” at Tuesday’s meeting.

However, before the vote, Betras said about open voting, “Honestly, I fought as hard as I could for secret balloting, but it wasn’t in the cards for us.”

Read more about the issues in Wednesday's Vindicator or on Vindy.com.