The Republicans who run Ohio’s Legislature have resurrected one of their worst ideas from last year, a measure that would make it harder for Ohio voters to amend the state constitution by ballot initiative. Since 1912, citizen-proposed ballot initiatives have only required a simple majority to pass. Ohio Issue 1, up for a vote in a special election on August 8, would change the threshold for amending the state constitution to a 60 percent majority, a far more difficult total to reach. (Initiatives to pass laws would keep their current 50 percent-plus-one-vote threshold.)
Now, that’s obviously anti-democratic to start with, but the reason Ohio Republicans want this thing to pass — and the reason they scheduled the election for the summer, when the already low turnout for special elections drops off even further — was that Republicans want to head off the possibility of a future citizen-passed amendment that would enshrine the right to abortion in Ohio’s constitution. You know, like the amendments passed last fall in California, Michigan, and Vermont, in addition to wide rejection of abortion limits in other states.
Issue 1 wouldn’t only raise the threshold for passing a constitutional amendment, though; it would make it much harder for citizens to even get an amendment on the ballot in the first place. Under current Ohio law, constitutional amendments can get on the ballot in one of two ways. They can be proposed by the Legislature, or proposed by citizens who then have to gather an assload of signatures on petitions, making sure that they have signatures from at least 44 of the state’s 88 counties. Measure 1 would require petitioners have signatures from all 88 counties instead, vastly increasing the cost of petition gathering and the chances of failure. The measure also eliminates the existing “make up” period that allows petitioners to get more signatures if they fall short.
Then if a citizen amendment does make it to the ballot, there’s that higher vote threshold to pass it. (The same 60 percent threshold would apply to Legislature-proposed amendments, too.)
Ohio Republicans have been fairly open about why they rushed Measure 1 onto the ballot in August: In March, state Sen. Matt Huffman (R) explained it was all about blocking two big ballot initiatives expected for the November general election. One would secure the right to reproductive healthcare, and another would legalize recreational weed.
Just in case Huffman was too subtle, Secretary of State Frank LaRose (R) explained to a Republican Party meeting that democracy is an intolerable threat to rightwing minority rule, saying that Issue 1 is “100 percent about keeping a radical pro-abortion amendment out of our constitution. The Left wants to jam it in there this coming November.”
Clearly, the solution is to jam in an amendment that subverts democracy. As Signal Cleveland notes, LaRose hasn’t been quite so upfront with reporters, to whom he’s “repeatedly denied” Issue 1 is meant to forestall any changes to Ohio’s strict abortion restrictions.
For added hilarity, last year Ohio Republicans passed a law that eliminated virtually all special elections in August, claiming counties couldn’t afford the burdensome expenses of special elections few voters pay attention to. But that was before all those voters in other states voted to preserve abortion rights, and before an Ohio poll last October found that 59.1 percent of Ohioans said they’d support a constitutional amendment to protect abortion rights, which would toss out Ohio’s present abortion ban.
And while supporters of abortion rights have certainly been among the loudest opponents of Issue 1, just about every good-government and civil rights group in the state has come out against it, too, because it would weaken democracy and reduce the ability of citizens to say hell no to the Ohio Republicans who have gerrymandered themselves into minority rule.
The Ohio Capital Journal succinctly and starkly lays out the stakes:
This is a patent attempt by Ohio Republicans and anti-abortion lobbyists to tip the scales on a citizen ballot initiative before voters ever get a chance to weigh in. The powerful are afraid of the majority. Nullifying majority rule in Ohio, which is what Issue 1 will do if passed, removes the threat that we represent as a check on power.
To those in state government hungry for unconstrained sovereignty, the GOP ballot initiative is a cynical means to an autocratic end.
We’re almost there. Passage of Issue 1 would finish the job.
So far, it’s looking like Ohio Republicans’ attempt to prevent democracy isn’t going so great. As with last August’s Kansas special election to sneak through a constitutional amendment that would allow an abortion ban, the first week of early voting for Issue One — the only thing on the August 8 ballot — has seen remarkably heavy turnout. In just seven days, more than 116,000 Ohioans have cast in-person ballots, and another 38,000 mail-in ballots have arrived.
As Secretary of State Frank LaRose noted in a press release, it represents a “five-fold increase” in compared to last year’s August election.
For additional context, the sum total of early in-person votes cast in last year’s May primary election — which included a hotly contested GOP U.S. Senate primary — was only about 138,000. The current trajectory of early in-person votes is on track with or even surpassing the 2022 general election.
Oh gosh, seems like people are paying attention. Let’s hope that continues all the way through August 8. And since the vote on Issue 1 is being conducted under existing Ohio law, it’ll only need a simple majority of voters to put the nails in its coffin.
[Signal Cleveland / Ohio Capital Journal / Ohio Capital Journal]
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