After passing a law eliminating August special elections due to high expenses and low voter turnout, the Ohio General Assembly reversed course and is holding an election August 8 for only one issue. They are asking us to pass a new amendment to the Ohio Constitution (which ironically needs only a simple majority to pass) that would make three major changes: 1) Raise the threshold to pass any amendment to the Ohio Constitution to 60% of the vote instead of 50% + 1. 2) For citizen-initiated amendments, require signatures of 5% of the electors in all 88 counties, rather than in 44 counties in addition to requiring signatures from 10% of the electors who voted for governor in the previous gubernatorial election. 3) Remove the 10-day period for petitioners to gather additional signatures if they filed an insufficient number of signatures. (A signature becomes invalid, for example, if someone signed it when they lived in one county and then later moved to another county.)
The justification for this higher standard is ostensibly to prevent special interests from interfering with Ohio’s constitution. In fact, the tagline is that this amendment would “save our constitution” from special interests. I argue that the exact opposite is true. The additional requirements would encourage even more special interest money into the state in order to meet the more stringent signature requirements.
Citizen-initiated amendments are already exceedingly difficult to pass. According to the Ohio Attorney General’s Office, since 2006 out of the 94 citizen-initiated petitions for constitutional amendments filed, 53 were certified and only 7 made it to the ballot (https://bit.ly/3JINQYX). In the last 50 years, only 11 out of 40 citizen-initiated constitutional amendments passed. As these numbers indicate, approximately 7% of petitions made it to the ballot and only 27.5% passed (https://bit.ly/3NWXytc). The facts don’t show that our constitution needs to be saved nor do they warrant a special election.
For those who see Issue 1 as a means to stopping the proposed Reproductive Rights Amendment, this amendment will NOT prevent it from appearing on the November ballot. The new signature requirements would NOT go into effect until January 2024. If the Reproductive Rights Amendment does make it to the ballot, historically it only has a 27.5% chance of passing. However, 82% of the citizen-initiated amendments that did pass, already passed by over 60% of the vote (https://bit.ly/46sxJZz). Are you willing to relinquish your power as an Ohio citizen to initiate all future amendments, for one that isn’t even officially on the ballot yet? Remember this change would also make any amendments that do pass equally as hard to repeal.
Ask yourself why was this proposed amendment rushed to the ballot? Why is an issue that is so important to our democracy being voted on in a special election that has low turnout? Who is this amendment really benefiting? It’s not the people of Ohio.
Vote “No” on Issue 1. Early voting starts July 11 and election day is August 8.
Sharlyn Katzner
Bowling Green
