Voters in Ohio went to the polls to decide whether to approve a measure known as Issue 1 that would raise the bar for constitutional amendments on the ballot. In the ultimate irony, the vote against changing the amendment process exceeded the 60% supermajority that the special election was seeking to require in the first place.
One part of the proposal that wasn’t getting as much attention is that it upped the requirement for ballot measures from having to get signatures in 44 districts (half of them) to needing signatures in all 88. That was to try and suppress grass roots efforts from even getting on the ballot. Such an undemocratic bunch of chucklefucks.
It was always part of Issue 1. The 3 big changes for issue 1 were:
Change the number of counties requiring signatures for ballot measures from 44 (half the counties in Ohio) to 88 (all of the counties in Ohio). If I remember correctly, that’s 5000 signatures from each county.
Remove petition curing period so that if some counties fell short of the required number of signatures or if some signatures were rejected or disputed for whatever reason, there would be no time to get more. I think the current curing period is a week.
Require a super-majority (60%) for a ballot measure to pass, rather than a simple majority (>50%).
To me, the least troubling of these was the super-majority part that’s been so hyped up, because the first 2 changes would have made it near impossible for voter-led initiatives to even get on the ballot to begin with. The only ballot measures we’d ever have a chance to vote on would be whatever the state house deemed worthy. All to prevent a ballot measure this November that would allow abortions for non-viable fetuses.
Regarding point 2, it’s interesting to note that the cannabis organization initiative fell short by nearly 700 signatures just a couple of weeks ago. During that curing period nearly 7000 signatures were obtained.
This initiative easily had enough support to get put on the ballot, but issue 1 sought to make it so bills in this situation would be dead in the water. An active subversion of the will of the people.
Holy shit. That would have meant almost no grassroots ballot measures would get off the ground. People would be forced to hire groups all across the state to drive and get signatures from random rural fuck off counties.
It also removed the signature curing period, meaning that there is no second chance to get more signatures or any of the originals get thrown out. For example, there is a recreational marijuana initiative that people are trying to get on the ballot in November. When they turned in signatures, it was found that they were, iirc, 639 signatures short. Under the current rules (which will remain) they had 10 days to come up with what they needed. Last I saw, they had gotten over 6,000, so that’s cool.
Yay! Proud to say I was a part of this as were my wife and daughter! We all voted early on Saturday. Huge kudos to the MASSIVE turnout to shoot this down, sometimes you can be alright fellow ohioans.
This is the roadmap for swing states. Especially rust-belt or blue-collar states. Abortion, personal freedom and autonomy. These elections are better than polls. This is how you win, dems. Branch off of it, but for goodness’ sake hammer it home.
If this is an indication of anything, how does the GOP feel about their chances going into next year knowing that they're the party that gutted abortion rights? Yeah you're not winning presidency and you can kiss those mid-terms goodbye too, assholes.
The only way these assholes are gonna win anything, is if they abuse their power within Congress and the Supreme Court.
It’s at 58% reporting. I’m not relaxing until it’s at 80%+.
I voted three weeks ago, but this whole time I’ve been wondering if I can stay in this state if this managed to pass. My hope is that the No vote comes to 60%; the irony would be delicious.
Edit: Okay, it’s 91% reporting at 56.6% No. I feel good about this one. Good work folks!
It's at 70% reporting now. The AP called it saying it was impossible to switch to a yes given the districts reporting. The "no" still has a healthy lead at 57%. Pretty sure Ohio kicked the GOP right in the proverbial balls. Also, (at the moment) 2.3 MILLION voters turned out for an August special election with this being the only issue?!
EDIT: Just hit 80% reporting and still at a 57% no. Fuck yeah fellow ohioans!
EDIT 2: Just crossed 90% reporting and still at a 57% no. Democracy wins!
If you're American, you definitely do. Republicans have tried this same strategy before and will try again. Like notorious conservative apologist, David Frum, said, "If conservatives become convinced that they can not win democratically, they will not abandon conservatism. The will reject democracy."
Always remember that Ohio has been gerrymandered to shit. Republicans got so mad that the big-C cities voted Obama in twice that they decided to do everything they could to erode the rights and power of those city voters.
But you can't dilute the cities in a statewide vote. Look at the voting map on this issue: all major cities and college towns voted against
District 1 is a fucking joke, I hate living in it. How is downtown Cincinnati connected to Warren county in any way? The seat used to be competitive, but It hasn’t swung democrat since the change in 2011.
As a fellow OH-1 resident, you are aware we voted in Greg Landsman (D) as our representative this past election cycle, right? It was good to see Chabot go.
Prior to this, I was equally annoyed about our lack of representation and am still peeved about the state of Ohio districts in general.
Iirc, in the last (illegal) redistricting, the Rs kinda gave Cincinnati our representative back, but created at least one other district that would go hard R.
It is really nice to have Landsman in there, though. He actually fights to get us funding for things, as opposed to Chabot’s preferred stance of steering funding literally anywhere else.
Good point, I overlooked that. Guess I’m still salty from the previous decade lol. Was extremely happy to see Chabot go, and have been happy with Landsman in general so far. We have a ways to go but I’m trying to be optimistic!
It got more people to vote BECAUSE trump won. If everyone votes, the right has no chance. Even jim jordan with his bs gerrymandered to hell district would lose.
Republicans purposely made this seemingly decent legislation complete shit. It makes sense to have a higher threshold for constitutional amendments. But 60% makes it nearly impossible. And this did not require its own 60% bar to pass. And it required getting signatures from all districts instead of just half which would mean only larger organizations could do it. All of it was bullshit. They went for a very thinly veiled power grab and the people told them to fuck off. Well done Ohio.
“Overwhelmingly”, yet if issue 1 was in place and people were voting to get rid of it, they wouldn’t have reached it’s threshold. Shows how undemocratic it would have been.
The people of Ohio are generally very centrist to left leaning. We however have been so (illegally) gerrymandered that it certainly doesn’t appear that way. Rural Ohio is Conservative just like everywhere else in this country.
When decisions are made democratically, as this was, we usually make the correct decision. That’s why the right tried to take this away from us.
All States, except for Maine and Nebraska, have a winner-take-all policy where the State looks only at the overall winner of the state-wide popular vote. Maine and Nebraska, however, appoint individual electors based on the winner of the popular vote within each Congressional district and then 2 “at-large” electors based on the winner of the overall state-wide popular vote.
While it is rare for Maine or Nebraska to have a split vote, each has done so twice: Nebraska in 2008, Maine in 2016, and both Maine and Nebraska in 2020.
Or any other policy that isn’t supported by the political duopoly. Stuff like higher minimum wages, expanding Medicare and allowing felons to vote got passed in otherwise Republican states this way, which is why they wanted to require a supermajority.
This got tied to abortion because “wow isn’t that convenient timing” but was so much bigger. Republicans are watching other midwest states push through progressive policies using boots on the ground signature collection and it scares the shit out of them.
I read somewhere that Republicans spent $20 million to pass this thing, and it’s going to fail miserably. Just icing on the cake as far as I’m concerned! That $20 million could’ve went to paying Trump’s lawyers!
Not surprising, but I’m pretty sure that it cost the state somewhere around $20m just to have this bull crap special election in the first place. Party of fiscal responsibility. Hah!
I dunno about you guys, but Canadians get HUGE tax write-offs for political donations, so maybe the benefits outweigh the loss here.
And the GOP just learned an important lesson ... never let the people decide 'cause they are often smarter than the manipulative politicians (Brexit aside ofc).
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