Surprise Them! VOTE on August 8,2023
As strange as it might be, there is an election in Ohio on Tuesday, August 8, 2023. They are trying to sneak one by you! This is a “special election” with only one item on the ballot. This item, Issue 1, proposes three changes to the Ohio’s Constitution as follows: 1) Any future amendment to the Ohio Constitution would require a 60 percent majority to pass (The current threshold is a simple majority of 50 percent plus one vote). 2) Issue 1, if passed, will require that the signature threshold for placing any amendment on the ballot after January 1, 2024, will be 5 percent of the eligible voters from each of Ohio’s 88 counties. Currently signatures are required from only half (44) of the state’s counties. 3) Any ballots submitted for future constitutional amendments which are deemed to have faulty signatures will not be counted. Currently there is a ten day “curing period” during which a voter can correct a signature deemed to be faulty, to allow it to still be counted.
This ballot initiative to alter our State of Ohio Constitution is being placed before the voters on August 8th by the Ohio General Assembly (OGA), which is led and dominated by members of the Republican party. It is noteworthy that this special election is estimated to cost Ohio taxpayers twenty million dollars. Additionally, this same OGA passed a law just last year, prohibiting special elections in August because they recognized that elections of this nature are not only expensive, but have low turnout. Amazingly, in an about face, the OGA passed a resolution allowing this August 8th, 2023, election in contradiction to the law that they had just passed last year!
One must ask, why schedule an expected low turnout election during the “dog days” of summer to amend these three aspects of the Constitution of the State of Ohio which have been in place for 111 years? The answer is clearly out in the open. During a Seneca County Republican event on May 25, 2023, Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose said about Issue 1, “It is 100% about keeping a radical pro-abortion amendment out of our constitution… It IS about abortion.” What is radical is changing your own rules to conduct an expensive special election. Made worse by acknowledging that a simple majority of the less than 10% of Ohio’s eligible voters, who turnout for the August 8th election, will potentially amend the constitution to enshrine minority rule in Ohio.
A brief exploration of how other states make amendments to their constitutions is insightful. All fifty states provide for their legislatures to propose constitutional amendments. The citizens must approve the “legislatively referred amendment” in every state except Delaware. The citizen approval vote is by a simple majority (50% plus 1) in all but four of those 49 states. The outliers are Colorado (55%), Florida (60%), Illinois (60%), and New Hampshire (66%). Only 17 states allow “citizen-referred amendments. The same four outliers as noted above are at play in those 17 states. If Ohio passes Issue 1 it will be one of a significant minority of states requiring a supermajority. When one factors in the Issue 1 requirement for signatures from 100% of Ohio’s counties, our state will be in a class by itself. It will be the only state in the entire USA with these signature requirements. This scenario is the definition of radical.
The reproductive rights amendment to be decided this November 8, has gathered nearly twice the necessary signatures under current Ohio law to be placed on the ballot for November 7, 2023. If Issue 1 passes on August 8th, its 60% threshold becomes effective immediately, thus placing the vote on the November amendment in higher jeopardy. Additionally, passage of Issue 1 will eliminate the century-old power of the majority to implement potential changes regarding issues such as minimal wages, environmental protection, education, health initiatives, gun violence, LGBTQ+ rights, gender affirming care and any others.
Issue 1 represents an effort by politicians and pro-birth interest groups to eliminate the health care choices for women and the power of we the people to have a majority voice in our governance. A minority of 40% plus one should not be able to thwart the desires of 60% minus one. I encourage you to turn back this cynical attempt at ramming a radical agenda down our throats. Uphold the rights of the majority by voting NO on Issue 1.
