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Ohio Senate Republicans aim to make poor families suffer even more enormous hardship and pain
Every day that the Ohio Statehouse is in session is a dangerous day for the most vulnerable Ohioans. On Thursday, the unconstitutionally gerrymandered Republican supermajority in the Ohio Senate passed their version of the two-year state budget, attacking poor families’ access to affordable housing, food, and medical care. All of these things are already severely […]
Change to 88 counties under State Issue 1 would effectively kill Ohio grassroots amendment proposals
By far the most burdensome part of collecting signatures for citizens to amend the Ohio Constitution is the current requirement that they be gathered in 44 out of our state’s 88 counties. Organizers typically try to gather double the number of signatures they need to get a proposal on the ballot, because so many things […]
Happy Pride Month, Ohio. Creepy, bully Republican lawmakers are fixated on assaulting our community
Happy Pride Month, Ohio, where LGBTQ+ people are under constant assault by bully Republican lawmakers who are weirdly obsessed with our community, especially the transgender members of it. Transgender people — especially transgender people of color — have been leading the activist charge toward LGBTQ+ human rights and equality since the beginning, literally throwing the first […]
Ohio Republican education assaults are a travesty, wrapped in unthinking, immature, petty grievance
Ohio boasts cherished, prestigious academic institutions that we rightly take enormous pride in, but now Ohio Republican lawmakers have their culture war sights set on destroying all of it, out of unthinking, immature, petty personal grievance and power politics. For many years, right-wingers have seethed resentfully at the whole bulk of American academia — many […]
Gerrymandered Ohio Statehouse gives voters no recourse through initiated statute, only constitution
In order to understand the bad faith of the Republican arguments for attacking Ohio voters and asking us to enshrine 41% minority rule over our Ohio Constitution, voters need to understand the power dynamics at play when it comes to initiated statutes versus amendments to the Ohio Constitution. In Ohio, citizens have two options for […]
Gerrymandered Ohio GOP lawmakers launch tyrannical assault on 170 years of majority voter authority
The unconstitutionally gerrymandered extremist Republican supermajority in the Ohio House on Wednesday voted to be the first legislature in Ohio history to try to roll back the constitutional power of Ohio voters. Dripping with deceit and condescension, they say they want to hurt voters’ ability to pass constitutional amendments in order to protect the Ohio […]
Ohio citizens and organizers dismantle extremist special interest arguments for attacking voters
The attempt by more than 80 Ohio Statehouse Republicans and Secretary of State Frank LaRose to get voters to enshrine 41% minority rule over our state constitution in a special August election was passed out of an Ohio House Constitutional Amendments Committee Tuesday in a 7-6 vote, with all five Democrats on the committee voting […]
Bipartisan opposition makes Ohio Republican August election, minority-rule power grab look absurd
More than 200 bipartisan groups, four bipartisan former Ohio governors, and Ohio’s entire system of bipartisan elections officials are all against a special August election proposed by Ohio Republican politicians to attack the power of voters and enshrine 41% minority rule over the state constitution. This week, current Ohio Republican Gov. Mike DeWine said he […]
The shame of Ohio: Corrupt, gerrymandered Statehouse Republicans assault voters, again
Just moments after I watched Ohio Senate Republicans pass a resolution for 41% minority rule over the Ohio Constitution on Wednesday, I walked past a field trip of Ohio children touring the Statehouse. Seeing those kids’ faces as their eyes explored the beautiful Ohio Statehouse Rotunda, a sharp, stabbing pain of shame for our once-great […]
Feed Ohio school children. Please. At the very least, feed the children.
A strain of anti-public education ideology has been running rampant among a number of lawmakers in the Ohio Statehouse for many years now. The consequences can been seen across Ohio as districts have been robbed of previous state funding, such as the many millions lost with the phase-out of Tangible Personal Properties reimbursements. As Ohio […]
America’s most noble achievements have come from expanding democracy, not ripping it away
Deploying profoundly simplistic and misleading arguments for attacking Ohio voters’ ability to amend our own state constitution, various Ohio Republican politicians have pointed to the U.S. Constitution’s requirements for passage of amendments. This, they argue, justifies rolling back more than 110 years of popular democracy in Ohio to enshrine 41% minority rule over the reasonable […]
The political strategy against Ohio abortion rights: Manufacture hysteria and stack the deck
The political strategy to try to defeat Ohio’s proposed abortion rights amendment is wildly obvious: Manufacture hysteria over a slippery slope legal fallacy about parents rights, and use all levers of power at every level to stack the deck against Ohio voters and in favor of right-wing extremists. The first tool in stacking the deck against […]