constitutional amendments
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 House committee narrowly advances 60% supermajority provision despite opposition
In an Ohio House committee, witnesses pleaded with lawmakers to reject the effort to install a 60% threshold for future constitutional amendments. The joint resolution they’re considering would put the question to voters on an upcoming ballot. After breaking for an extended recess around lunch time, lawmakers heard more testimony and voted to advance the […]
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 […]
GOP lawmakers, Right to Life meet with Ohio Chamber, Business Roundtable on amendment change
The following article was originally published on News5Cleveland.com and is published in the Ohio Capital Journal under a content-sharing agreement. Unlike other OCJ articles, it is not available for free republication by other news outlets as it is owned by WEWS in Cleveland. The resolution to make it harder to amend the Ohio Constitution has […]
Ohio Senate President Matt Huffman attacking voters to uphold state GOP’s patriarchy
“This is not what democracy looks like,” said state Rep. Anita Somani, D-Dublin. The new lawmaker, a practicing Ob-Gyn, had just listened to testimony on a proposed resolution to change the constitutional amendment process in Ohio. The reaction of the Columbus Democrat, shared by many in the packed hearing room, was spot on. The Ohio […]
Revived measure to require 60% for Ohio constitutional amendments gets first hearing
More than a dozen people milled around in crypt-like hallways of the Statehouse basement Wednesday morning. They’d shown up almost an hour early for the first hearing of Ohio House Joint Resolution 1, a proposal which would require 60% of the vote to pass constitutional amendments. Rep. Brian Stewart, R-Ashville, brought forward a similar proposal […]
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 […]