Below the Statewide Noise: Cincinnati's City and County Ballot

The statewide races will take the headlines Tuesday, but the most consequential marks on many Cincinnati ballots sit lower: the judges, county officials and levies that govern daily life in Hamilton County.

Start with the courts. Ohio elects its judges, and Hamilton County's ballot carries races for the Court of Common Pleas, Domestic Relations and Juvenile courts and the municipal court — the benches that handle everything from felony trials to evictions. Judicial races are the most skipped lines on Ohio ballots and, for the people who appear before those courts, among the most important; the Cincinnati Bar Association's evaluations and the League of Women Voters' guides exist precisely to inform them.

County offices form the second layer: the commissioners who set the county budget — funding the sheriff, the jail, indigent care and the stadium and arena obligations that are Cincinnati's peculiar civic inheritance — plus the prosecutor, sheriff, auditor, treasurer, engineer, recorder and clerk of courts across Ohio's election cycles.

Then the levies: school districts, libraries, parks, transit, human services and developmental disabilities boards across Hamilton County fund themselves substantially through voted property tax levies, and November ballots across the county's suburbs and the city carry renewals and replacements whose ballot language rewards a sample-ballot review before Election Day.

Cincinnati city government itself elects its mayor and council in odd-year cycles, so city voters' Tuesday work is county, state and federal — plus the city charter questions that occasionally appear.

Turnout in midterms is set by the top of the ticket. Outcomes at the bottom are set by whoever bothers to finish the ballot. Hamilton County's election officials publish sample ballots for every precinct — the homework is short, and the grades are permanent.