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Among the things that are crystal clear from your emails over the last week is that you are disgusted with our governments.

State. Local. Federal. You don’t think they represent you or even care about doing so. The sentiment is across the board. Republicans. Democrats. Liberals. Conservatives. Independents. You’re fed up and want to run the lot of them out on a rail. This is as close as I’ve seen to a unanimity.

I asked last week where our newsroom should focus its advocacy in 2024. The majority of responses favored a couple of suggestions I included – the end of partisan primaries so that everyone has a say on which candidates appear on November ballots and another overhaul of Cuyahoga County government, mainly to get rid of the myopic practices of the county council.

The overwhelming favorite was open primaries. With two thirds of us not being registered in political parties and not wanting to be, the majority of Ohioans have zero say on which candidates appear on the November ballot. How is that democracy?  Candidates need only appeal to the fringes of their parties. And we get fringe candidates. In an open primary, everyone has a say, and candidates seeking to prevail in a primary would have to moderate extreme views to have a broad appeal

I heard from a bunch who would either abolish our charter Cuyahoga County government, to return to the county commission form, or rewrite the charter to get rid of ward council members. Readers want a county government with a wider gaze. On the other side of that argument, though, were many readers who don’t live in Cuyahoga County and would not benefit from that focus. They told us our resources are limited should benefit all, which means attending to statewide issues, like open primaries.

Other themes emerged in the 200 or so emails and text messages I received. They were still coming in at week’s end, and many went deep. People put a good bit of thought into this, for which I am grateful.

A repeated request was we do everything we can to show voters how another presidency for Donald Trump would imperil democracy. Indeed, Trump’s statements of late reinforce his intention to be a strongman dictator, which flies in the face of what this nation stands for. I could not agree more about how dangerous he is. He tried to overthrow our government on Jan. 6.

But, we are a newsroom that covers the region and state. This country has many national news platforms, giving you nearly endless information sources on Trump. We’ll cover Trump as he relates to Ohio, but our advocacy focus is on areas not handled by others.

Some who support open primaries asked us to go deeper by pushing for ranked choice voting. I love ranked choice voting, but its complexity makes it vulnerable to specious arguments. We’ve seen Ohio elected leaders abandon any semblance of honesty and civility in their campaigns. I’m certain they would campaign against ranked choice voting as some sort of secret, sleazy mathematics scheme that corrupts the election process, and they likely could persuade enough voters of that falsehood to kill the idea. 

The open primary topic is simple and unassailable. Everyone gets a say. How can you honestly argue against that? I hope we get to ranked choice voting some day, but for now, if we could get open primaries and gerrymandering reform – likely to be on the ballot next November – we would take big steps to reclaiming our government from the despots who have stolen it through gerrymandering and partisan primaries.

Another repeated theme in the emails is gun control. The spate of gun violence this year has frightened people. We even saw a shooting at the downtown Cleveland Christmas tree lighting. People are afraid, and they want laws that will curb all the shooting.

It’s a worthy cause, but right now, it’s futile. The gerrymandered Ohio Legislature guarantees that reform won’t happen. Gov. Mike DeWine in 2019 proposed common sense rules – like stopping mentally ill people from getting guns – but the gerrymandered Legislature refused. Our lawmakers are okay with arming the mentally ill. 

If we could elect more moderate lawmakers – centrists, like most of us – we could inject common sense into the gun debate. An end to gerrymandering next November’s election, and a move to open primaries would oust the extremists from the Legislature and do things like stop the mentally ill from getting guns.

More than one reader asked for more focus on local government. They noted that local elected leaders misbehave in the absence of scrutiny. Indeed, they do. We have talked in our newsroom about ways we might do more of that, but nothing we do would be adequate. We have hundreds of governments in Northeast Ohio -- city, village and township councils and school boards. With our staffing, we can’t cover them. We do hear you, though, and we might be able to tackle a few.

Some of your comments were great fun. One writer said the campaign for open primaries could be about restoring Ohio’s role as a swing state.

“Maybe there;s a slogan in there somewhere. Make Ohio Swing Again. Just don’t put it on a red had,” he said. 

Love it. Thanks to everyone who wrote. I spent most of Monday reading.

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I’m at cquinn@cleveland.com.

Thanks for reading