Newest attempted power grab by Ohio Republicans

[Luvnit2]

(05-10-2023, 07:22 PM)pally Wrote: Today in a straight party-line vote the Ohio State Legislature voted to place a referendum on the ballot that would change the threshold for the voters to amend the state constitution from 50% to 60%.  The 50% threshold for ballot amendments has been in place for over 100 years and somehow has never been an issue.  Additionally, instead of simply requiring signatures that exceed 10% of the votes in the previous gubernatorial election with signatures coming from 44 counties (=to 5% of that county's gubernatorial election) to requiring signatures from all 88 Ohio counties with each county needing the 5% mark.

On top of that, just months after making Aug special elections illegal, other than in fiscal emergency votes, they voted to place this vote in August at the cost of over $20 million to Ohio taxpayers.

Originally brought up by Secretary of State Frank LaRose, this whole change is to prevent the passage of a pro-choice amendment and an enhanced anti-gerrymandering amendment.  The abortion amendment is widely expected to be on the Nov ballot. He claims it is to prevent "big-money" and "out-of-state special interests" from driving an amendment change.  However, this proposed amendment is being bankrolled by an Illinois billionaire Richard Uihlein (Schlitz Beer heir) and his Save Our Constitution super PAC.

This proposed change to the state constitution is opposed by our last 4 governors and AGs (both Republican and Democratic), by the Libertarian Party, and hundreds of other Ohio public interest groups. The proposed amendment is supported by Ohio Right to Life.

Arkansas overwhelmingly defeated a similar bill in 2022.

Now, for those not in Ohio, there really is a "rest of the story".  Several years ago Ohio voters amended the constitution to attempt to eliminate political gerrymandering.  Last year the redistricting commission blatantly ignored the new amendment and proposed maps that didn't fit the new rules.  Each time the map was overturned in a bipartisan vote of the state Supreme Court.  Finally, we were forced to use one of those illegal maps by a 3 judge panel from the Federal District Court.  The 3 judges were all Republican with 2 nominated by Trump.

So what we have is a legislature voted in on illegally drawn districts that guaranteed a Republican supermajority in our State House putting forth an amendment that essentially eliminates citizen referendums from passing, one of which would permanently remove politicians from being involved in legislative district redistricting.  58% of Ohioans believe that abortion should be legal in this state.  This whole power grab is because Republicans are afraid to let us vote.

All of this comes after they passed the most restrictive voter ID law in the country

Ironically, this new 60% threshold requirement will only need a 50% vote to pass

This goes against the whole one person one vote idea by allowing a minority of Ohio voters to dictate our future

I lived and voted in Ohio for almost 50 years. Ohio is one of the simple states to vote IF YOU ARE A RESIDENT OF OHIO. I voted absentee 80% of the time because my job required travel so I was not going to be in town on election day. It was easy to vote. The times I voted in person was also easy. I just went in to my voting place, showed a picture ID and was handed a ballot. This hard to vote line pushed by Democrats is simply a lie.

As far as using the legislative process to create change to anything, that is what elections are all about. If it does pass, the voters want it, if rejected the voters did not want it. I think you don't trust the process and that is your problem.