Trumbull Democrats revise bylaws, outlaw secret balloting

By Ed Runyan

runyan@vindy.com

WARREN

The Trumbull County Democratic Party Central Committee approved new bylaws Thursday night that outlaw secret balloting as a method of making candidate endorsements or filling vacancies for public office.

It puts in place a caucus style of selection process that attorney Gil Blair says is “kind of modeled after” the system used by the Cuyahoga County Democratic Party.

The new bylaws also have the blessing of Tim Burke, Hamilton County Democratic Party chairman, one of the three people the Ohio Democratic Party appointed to work with the Trumbull County Democrats as they rewrote their bylaws.

Blair said he expects the new bylaws will be acceptable to the Ohio Democratic Party, which said the secret balloting used this summer to select Enzo Cantalamessa to fill the unexpired term of Trumbull County Commissioner Paul Heltzel violated Democratic National Committee and Ohio Democratic Party bylaws.

Ohio Democratic Party Chairman Chris Redfern initially demanded that Trumbull Democrats re-vote in public for Heltzel’s replacement. Burke later said the vote would be allowed to stand as long as the county party revised its bylaws.

Trumbull’s new bylaws divide the county’s Democratic Central Committee into eight geographical groups, each headed by a vice chairperson, who convenes his or her caucus at the same time as the other seven groups.

The chairperson will have a 10-minute caucus session to be followed by a verbal vote from each caucus member, which will be placed on a uniform tally sheet and then relayed to the full central committee.

The new bylaws say all meetings are open to the public, “but only central committee members shall be permitted on the voting floor.”

When asked whether that system records each voter’s choice in a way that can be reported to the public afterward, Dan Polivka, county party chairman, said “probably not.”

Blair agreed that the procedure will “probably not” produce a permanent record of how each person voted. Polivka said he thinks the new bylaws “stay with the spirit of the [former] bylaws” but are acceptable to the state party.

Polivka has said that a large percentage of central committee members oppose a voting method that identifies how a person voted because it could lead to retaliation by party leaders against those who vote against the wishes of those leaders.

The party has voted in private for decades, party leaders say.