I urge all Ohio voters to join me in voting NO on ballot Issue I in August. Passage of Issue I would deny Ohio voters the power to pass, by a simple majority, citizen-led initiatives when the legislature cannot or will not follow our will. For 110 years we have had this power under the state Constitution. Currently 50% + 1 of votes cast are required to pass an initiative. Issue I would increase the required percentage to 60%. That means 40% of opposing voters would be able to outweigh the will of the majority who favor an initiative.
The proponents of Issue 1 claim that passage would protect Ohio from the passage of laws by “special interests.” That claim is based on the absurd assumption that the over-8 million registered voters in Ohio are more vulnerable to undue influence and corruption than the 99 Ohio House and 33 Senator members. The evidence suggests otherwise: In recent years Ohio’s legislative leadership was corrupted by special interests involving the nuclear power industry, resulting in a conviction and 20-year prison sentence for the Ohio House speaker and costing Ohioans millions of dollars. Such corruptibility indicates that we citizens need the availability of citizen-led initiatives to rein-in our legislature when it fails to follow our collective will or, even worse, is corrupted by special interests.
A political action committee (PAC), named Save Our Constitution, was established specifically to fund support for Issue 1. More than $1 million of that support has come from Illinois billionaire Richard Uihlein. He looks an awful lot like the kind of out-of-state, special interests whose influence supporters of Issue 1 claim we need protection from. Proponents of Issue 1 have cited no examples from the past where Ohio voters have been victimized by “special interests” into passing a citizen-led initiative that favored such interests over the interests of the majority. We never needed that protection, and should not be misled into believing that Issue 1 will in any way “save our Constitution.”
This should not be a partisan issue, but one of good government. The last four governors of Ohio—two Republicans and two Democrats—are all publicly opposing Issue 1. Former Republican Governor John Kasich said: “Ohio is stronger when we can all lend our voices and we all have an equal chance to participate in the work of our state’s democracy. I’ve experienced that firsthand having policies backed by myself and a majority of the legislature’s members overturned at the ballot box and it never occurred to me to try to limit Ohioans’ right to do that. It wouldn’t have been right then, and it isn’t right now.”
The way to protect citizen-led initiative by the majority is to vote NO on Issue 1.
Joseph Jacoby
Bowling Green
