In November, Ohio residents will have an opportunity to vote on Issue 1, a constitutional amendment that would finally abolish the state’s extreme partisan gerrymandering. Voters will not, however, be informed of this fact on the ballot. Instead, the Ohio Supreme Court’s Republican majority ruled Monday that the amendment will be described in egregiously misleading terms on the ballot itself, with ultra-biased language designed to turn citizens against it. Incredibly, a proposal that would end gerrymandering will be framed as a proposal to require gerrymandering, a patently false representation of its intent and effect. The court’s 4–3 decision marks yet another effort to subvert democracy in Ohio by Republicans who fear that the citizenry—when given a voice on the matter—might dare to loosen their stranglehold on power.
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2024/09/ohio-supreme-court-voter-fraud-gop.html
The GOP can’t win a fair competition. If they could, they wouldn’t need to do things like this.
FFS. Ohio’s officials need to actually face legal consequences for all its gerrmandering and other fuckery.
dude have you been paying attention? a fucking rapist traitorous con man took the white house, and is about to initiate jan.6 2.0, and has yet to face a single consequence beyond some piddling fines
And he didn’t even pay the full amount.
First boneless wings can have bones now this? Ohio is not ok.
Ohio is not OK. Oklahoma is OK. Ohio is OH.
That’s what I said. They aren’t ok
Ohio has never been ok
Ohio is skibidi.
No cap.
I don’t think the article included it and it’s a little difficult to find the phrasing.
I found a sample ballot
https://www.boe.ohio.gov/clark/c/upload/ELEC_BallotProofs.pdf
The phrasing there is
To create an appointed redistricting commission not elected by or subject to removal by the voters of the state
However a vote of “Yes” would establish a non-partisan (or, IMO more accurately, a mixed partisan) committee of 15 (5R, 5D, 5 other) where a majority of the committee must approve the redistricting.
The extended description starts with this
- Repeal constitutional protections against gerrymandering approved by nearly three-quarters of Ohio electors participating in the statewide elections of 2015 and 2018, and eliminate the longstanding ability of Ohio citizens to hold their representatives accountable for establishing fair state legislative and congressional districts.
Technically all of this is correct but I can absolutely see how it’s misleading voters.
Full disclosure, I’m not a lawyer or political scientist and I do not live in Ohio.
Possibly a rule 2/6 (opinion) issue. Not sure if you guys care on an article by article basis or just by source. Headline alone is pretty charged language.
This is when governments should be overthrown. The people spoke and the government did not follow through.
In 2015 and 2018, its voters overwhelmingly approved two constitutional amendments designed to limit partisan influence over maps. The amendments required the Legislature to enact genuinely bipartisan redistricting plans; if lawmakers failed to do so, a new bipartisan board, the Ohio Redistricting Commission, had to draw fair, representative maps.
This process proved easy to game by political actors, because Republican politicians held a majority on the new commission. In 2021 and 2022, this GOP majority enacted a series of flagrant gerrymanders, which the state Supreme Court struck down. The commission flouted the court’s decisions over and over again, running out the clock to the election. It then invited a conservative federal court to impose a gerrymander that the Ohio Supreme Court had already ruled unconstitutional. As a result, the state’s Republicans won a towering and unearned supermajority in the Ohio Legislature.
You have my pitchfork!
