In one of the most shameless power grabs in Ohio history, Statehouse Republicans — evidently, including Gov. Mike DeWine — are aiming to make it harder for Ohio voters to amend the state’s constitution.
Object: To derail an amendment, to be proposed by voter petition, that would guarantee the right of women to seek an abortion in Ohio.
Even worse, GOP legislative leaders seek to force their proposed constitutional change — requiring a 60% margin to ratify, compared to the simple majority in effect since 1912, and doubly difficult signature-gathering requirements to even get a citizen initiative on the ballot — onto a traditionally low-turnout August election. That would be the same kind of August election they recently abolished as too expensive and unrepresentative.
Last year’s Aug. 2 special election had an 8% voter turnout. The Nov. 8 election drew more than 52% of Ohio voters.
No wonder powerful precedents in law and practice have previously combined to put major constitutional changes before Ohio voters in the fall, when elections draw the most voters.
And this would be a consequential change — impacting Ohioans’ longstanding rights to propose and pass constitutional amendments as a brake against legislative corruption.
Yet, as with so much associated with this GOP legislative push to restrain Ohioans’ longstanding rights, past precedents don’t matter. The voters’ will doesn’t matter. And a law passed just months ago doesn’t matter.
Even Gov. DeWine, serving in what is likely his last term in office after a distinguished political career, and whose veto pen could derail this effort to silence the people via a low-turnout Aug. 8 election, shamefully has said he will not do so. He pledged this week to sign the special-election legislation, overriding a law eliminating such elections (except for fiscal emergencies) that took effect only 21 days ago.
The legislature’s current bid to crimp Ohio voters’ rights is so outrageous that four former governors — Republicans Bob Taft and John R. Kasich, and Democrats Richard F. Celeste and Ted Strickland — have all condemned it.
Why the 60% margin? Lawmakers assess — likely correctly — that a majority of Ohioans would ratify a reproductive rights amendment by a simple majority if given the opportunity to do so in November. But in states whose voters have constitutionally protected abortion, the range of “yes” votes for those rights has often been less than 60%.
Notably, these Statehouse proposals target citizen-initiated constitutional amendments with new signature-gathering requirements that could double the difficulty and cost of getting such amendments on the ballot. The required percentage of signatures must be gathered in all 88 counties, rather than 44 now, and a ten-day “cure” period to fix any signature shortfalls would be eliminated.
The state Senate, run 26-7 by Republicans, has already passed its proposed 60%-threshold amendment, which calls for an Aug. 8 special election to consider it. The measure, Senate Joint Resolution 2, and a companion bill to reinstate an August election, Senate Bill 92, are pending in the Ohio House.
The House is where the shell-game possibilities are especially ripe. The Ohio Constitution requires three-fifths of the members respectively elected to the Senate and House to place proposed constitutional amendments on the ballot — 20 (of 33) senators, and 60 (of 99) representatives.
In theory, Republicans hold 67 of the House’s seats. But because of a GOP caucus split between House Speaker Jason Stephens and a faction loyal to Rep. Derek Merrin, two GOP House seats remain vacant, leaving the 99-seat House with a net of 97 members.
By some interpretations, that could let the House place the proposed amendment on the ballot with 59 votes instead of (the previously assumed) requirement of 60 votes. That may sound like trivia but for two things: First, the House vote on the amendment is expected to be exceedingly close. Second, the GOP-run Supreme Court would likely have to decide the question — and if past is precedent, the court would let the House do whatever the House wants.
It’s nearly impossible to overstate how blatant these antics are. In effect, a majority of the state Senate, and likely but not certainly, a majority of Ohio’s House, aims to signal its contempt for the state’s voters by trying to rig rejection at the polls of the abortion-rights proposal as well as a likely 2024 anti-gerrymandering plan. This is politics at its grubbiest. Were its operatives capable of being ashamed, they should be.
