Report from Ohio: Sneak Attack On Democracy Crushed by Voters

There were quite a few of these signs in my neighborhood, and far fewer Yes signs than there had been Trump signs, which wasn’t very many to begin with. That’s what life in a Black-majority, working class city looks like.

Signs aside, according to elections officials there was an incredibly high 38% voter turnout for the August special election, with only one issue on the ballot.

Ironically, just a year or so ago the Republican-dominated state legislature had abolished August special elections. However, they made an exception just for this abortion of an amendment, no doubt hoping that the distractions of summer would keep turnout low so they could sneak through a measure that would doom not only a woman’s right to control her own body, certainly bad enough, but all citizen-initiative ballot rights in Ohio—forever.

This antidemocratic abomination would not only have increased the popular vote margin for a ballot initiative from 50 to 60%, but would have required 5% of the number of people who voted in the last governor’s election in each of all 88 counties to sign petitions. The current number of 44 counties is bad enough; this would have made citizen initiatives well-nigh impossible.

The antidemocratic, oligarchical forces in the legislature tried to sneak this garbage past Ohioans in the Age of the Internet, and failed miserably.

According to the Ohio Secretary of State, the measure went down in flames, 57%-43%.

Once again, it’s nice to be able to give some good news about the people in my home state. Thank you for reading and have a nice night.