Lawmakers in Ohio moved to put the brakes on special-interest groups bypassing the regular legislative process by putting a constitutional amendment on the ballot for a special August election. A “yes” vote on Issue 1 would amend the Ohio Constitution to require a 60% supermajority for future amendments instead of the current 50% threshold.
The reason for the amendment is simple: It should not be an easy process to amend the Constitution. It should not be subject to the whims of temporary controversies or bucketloads of cash from out-of-state special-interest groups. The proposed amendment would elevate “the standards to qualify for an initiated constitutional amendment and to pass a constitutional amendment,” according to the certified ballot language.
Secretary of State Frank LaRose, a leading proponent of the amendment and likely candidate for the U.S. Senate, told PJ Media that the Ohio Constitution is “for sale to the highest bidder currently because it’s just too easy to do it.”
For years, Democrats and their wealthy friends have used the amendment process to advance policies they could not get passed in the legislature. Now, they’re in full panic mode because their ability to bypass the legislature may be coming to an end. The Columbus Dispatch editorial board, in especially high dudgeon, declared that passage of Issue 1 would “drive a dagger in Ohio’s ‘heart.'” Other activists (note, I include the Dispatch among the activists) have called it a “knife to the neck of voters.” The Cleveland Plain Dealer called Issue 1 a “travesty” and warned that Ohio voters “should do everything they can to counter the deceit and manipulation by exercising their constitutional right as citizens to vote.”
The hyperbole is telling. The constitutional amendment process has been abused for decades to help everyone from payday lenders to casinos, among other big-money interests, who have essentially written their business plans into the Ohio Constitution. In fact, the casinos used the constitutional amendment process to give themselves a gambling monopoly in the state, even including real estate plats in the Constitution to show where their casinos would go.
The state Constitution has been amended almost 200 times and contains nearly 70,000 words. It “looks like a paperback novel, something you’d pick up in the grocery store with Fabio on the cover,” LaRose quipped. Compare that to the U.S. Constituiton. “There have been 11,000 attempts throughout our history, but it’s only been amended 27 times because the founders said you need 75% of states to ratify constitutional amendments,” he added. “It’s about 7,000 words. It has led our nation through some very challenging times. And it fits in your pocket.”
“And so what they’re trying to do, just like you’ve seen in some other states, is they’re trying to do legislating via constitutional amendment,” LaRose explained. “That’s not good government. And, of course, their allies in the media are misrepresenting this as an ‘attack on democracy.’ It’s the most foolish thing I’ve ever heard.”
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There’s a very important detail that seems to have been lost on the “my democracy!” crowd, either through ignorance or outright deception: If Issue 1 passes, citizens will still have the authority to pass laws via an “initiated statute” with a 50%-plus-one majority. They can still repeal a law via referendum with a 50%-plus-one vote. The only thing they won’t be able to do is to amend the Constitution with a simple majority.
“So this doesn’t take away majority rule or harm democracy,” the secretary of state said. “It effectively strengthens democracy by saying that lawmaking should be at a simple majority — 50% plus one — but constitutional amendments are different or special. It’s the founding charter of our states that you’re talking about modifying here. And to do that, you should have a consensus. Left, right, urban, rural, you should have a broad cross-section of Ohioans that agree. Sixty percent is the number that was picked for Issue 1. You should have at least 60% of Ohioans backing your idea before you amend our founding charter.”
LaRose called out the lies from “so-called journalists — using air quotes because these people aren’t objective journalists, they are partisan shills when it comes down to it — that are very clearly in the bag for trying to defeat this. The biggest [lie] is that this is somehow an attack on democracy.”
He pointed out that Ohio is a massive outlier compared to other states. “Most other states don’t even allow citizen-initiated constitutional amendments,” he said. “You have to propose a constitutional amendment in a constitutional convention or on the floor of the state legislature. So there’s only 17 states in the whole country that even allow them to initiate constitutional amendments. We’ll still have that after the passage of Issue 1. We’re just raising the threshold.”
The second big lie is that Issue 1 is only about abortion. LaRose noted that he spent ten minutes discussing Issue 1 at a county Lincoln Day dinner, pointing out “how this is not just about abortion. This is about protecting our Constitution. And this is about this whole range of issues the left wants to put into our Constitution.”
As part of that speech, LaRose said, “I’m pro-life. I suspect many of you are, so of course, this is about abortion, but it’s about all these other things as well because abortion is just the thing the left wants to put into our Constitution.”
A tracker for left-wing Sen. Sherrod Brown, whom LaRose hopes to unseat in 2024, fed the selectively edited clip to media hacks, who accepted it without question.
“Of course, they took that 10-second clip where I said, ‘Of course this is about abortion,’ and left out the part about it being about other issues as well. The media used “a partisan tracker’s video to try to run what they call a news story that was completely bogus.”
He said that “The next thing is minimum wage. There’s already an effort underway to gather signatures to put a $15-an-hour minimum wage with an automatic inflation that would kill small businesses. And so it’s not just about abortion; it’s about a whole host of things that the left wants to put into our Constitution, and they are telling outright lies to try to get their dirty work done.”
I’ve argued many times over the years that direct democracy is a bad idea — that it subverts our republican form of government.
I'm against direct democracy in principle, but if we're going to have it, we should at least raise the threshold for amending the state Constitution to prevent billionaire-funded special-interest groups from overriding the will of the people's elected legislature.
— Paula Bolyard (@pbolyard) June 26, 2023
A while back, one of my neighbors showed up on my doorstep asking me to sign a petition to overrule our township trustees and stop a new Dollar General from going in up the street. I gave her an earful about how we elect trustees to represent us, and we need to let them do their jobs. If we don’t like their decisions, we can bounce them out in the next election. That’s how a republican form of government works — or should work.
Instead, in Ohio, the special-interest groups with the most money — or who come up with the most terrifying (and dishonest) ads — get their amendments into the Constitution. Citizens are the losers. A 60% majority to amend the constitution is completely reasonable and desperately needed to combat the special interests who want to enshrine their pet projects into the state’s charter.
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