Ohio constitutional amendments
Ohio Ballot Board approves language for August amendment proposal despite objections
The Ohio Ballot Board has approved language for an August ballot measure from Ohio Republican lawmakers. The proposal asks voters whether to make it harder to pass future constitutional amendments by requiring 60% of the vote. The board’s two Democrats and an outside organization currently suing to block the August election criticized the ballot language […]
Restaurant association won’t comment on its allies in fight to lock down Ohio Constitution
Ohio’s restaurants have some strange bedfellows that their industry representative would rather not talk about — including a billionaire out-of-state election denier. The Ohio Restaurant Association’s members depend on patronage from a broad swath of Ohioans. But in joining the battle to make it a lot harder to amend the Ohio Constitution, it’s taking a […]
Ohio abortion foes are banking on a low-turnout August election. In Kansas, that didn’t go so well.
Supporters of the push to make it a lot harder for voters to amend the Ohio Constitution have given many, sometimes-inconsistent reasons for wanting to do it. But clearly a major one is to try to block an abortion-rights amendment that is currently in the works. To pull off the maneuver, abortion opponents are trying […]
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 […]
Billionaire backing effort to raise Ohio amendment threshold funded election deniers, Jan. 6 rally
An out-of-state donor who wants to make it a lot harder for voters to amend the Ohio Constitution has a history of supporting candidates who falsely deny the results of the 2020 presidential election — and he's a major supporter of a group that helped organize the rally on Jan. 6, 2021 that led to a violent insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. Meanwhile, a bipartisan group of five former attorneys general on Monday added their names to a swelling group that is opposed to the move. They join four former governors — two Republicans and two Democrats — more than 200 groups of all political stripes, and a group representing the state's election workers have all come out in opposition to the plan.
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 […]