A Republican State?
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This is a weekly column consisting of letters to my perspicacious progeny. I write letters to my grandkids — the Stickies — eventual selves to advise them and haunt them after they've become grups and/or I'm deleted.
Trigger Warning: This column rated SSC — Sexy Seasoned Citizens — Perusal by kids, callowyutes, or grups may result in debilitating psychological trauma.
"If it ain't broke, don't fix it." -Unknown
Dear Stickies and Gentlereaders,
As my regular readers are aware, I live in a fortified lair, Casa de Chaos, in the mountains of Ohio.
Ohio is a Republican stronghold these days although we do have a token Democrat, Senator Sherrod Brown, our Senior Senator (in more ways than one, he'll be 71 in November) who's been a politician for all but two years of his life since leaving college.
His brother, Charlie Brown, was the Attorney General of West (by God) Virginia from 1984 to 1989 when, according to Wikipedia, "...he resigned...in exchange for an end to a grand jury investigation into allegations that he lied under oath and into his campaign financial records." And which resulted in a very brief Wikipedia entry.
{Charlie Brown? You're making that up!}
No I'm not, Dana, follow the link.
My current official position concerning America's two major political parties can be summed up by Mercutio's famous declaration in Romeo and Juliet, "A plague o' both your houses! They have made worms meat of me."
{Thou wouldst have us believe thou art a Shakespeare fanboy, gentle sir?}
We studied a condensed version of Romy and Julie in high school and I saw the (in?)famous 1968 movie version that very briefly featured Romy's bum and Julie's boobs.
The teenage actors, now in their 70s, were so scarred by the experience they sued Paramount — 55 years later — for half a billion bucks, although unsuccessfully. And I'm definitely a Mark Knopfler fanboy whose song Romeo and Juliet is a favorite of mine (but not the kinda dumb video).
But I'm drifting, Dana.
{As is your wont, gentle sir.}
All things considered, I'd rather live in a state where the Republicans are in charge rather than one in which the Democrats are because California. California reveals everything you need to know about the current state of the Democratic Party.
Big BUT, Ohio, like California, demonstrates what can happen when one-party rule is in effect.
There's going to be a special election this week, in feckin' AUGUST! (8/8/23) to gut an Ohio tradition that's been in effect since 1912.
There are elections every year somewhere in Ohio. We not only have off-year elections we have off-off-year elections. This year there will be statewide elections in August and November. The one in August only has one issue (no humans) on the ballot to vote for or against.
It will cost the good citizens of Ohio about $20,000,000.
{It can't wait till November?}
Nope.
The powers that be are using the August election to change the rules in the middle of the game to help them defeat a ballot issue in the November election that will expand abortion rights — if the citizens of Ohio agree to do so.
Currently, the carefully gerrymandered GOP supermajority has decreed that abortions are only permitted for the first six weeks of pregnancy and they don't want to take the chance that the voters might disagree.
If next week's ballot initiative (initiated by the legislature) passes, come November it will take 60% of Ohio voters to expand abortion rights. Since 1911, ballot initiatives have only required 50% + 1 vote to pass.
Going forward, not only will it take 60% to pass an initiative, the Rules&Regs for citizens seeking to get an initiative placed on the ballot will tighten dramatically. Bottom line: much harder to initiate, much harder to pass.
Given how polarized Americans are just now, getting 60% of voters to agree on anything, anywhere, is obviously a tough sell.
And by the way, since the old Rules&Regs will still be in effect on Tuesday, it will only take 50% + 1 voter to pass the new Rules&Regs, and the taxpayers are on the hook for the $20,000,000 regardless of the result.
Machiavelli smiles.
A very long story short: At the Ohio Constitutional Convention of 1912, Teddy Roosevelt spoke in favor of the creation of the current system. “I believe in the initiative and the referendum, which should be used not to destroy representative government, but to correct it whenever it becomes misrepresentative.”
The referendum on referendums passed and it became possible for anybody to start a petition drive to amend the Ohio constitution, propose a new law, or overturn an existing one. Get enough signatures and the proposed statute or amendment will be on the ballot.
If 50% of the voters, and that nut job from Newton Falls support it (+1), it passes.
(Irony alert. The referendum that permitted initiatives and referendums passed with 57.5% of the vote. If the proposed new Rules&Regs had been in effect it wouldn't have passed.)
Last January, the legislature passed HB 458, an election reform law. According to Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose the bill, among other things, did away with "...August special elections – a costly, low-turnout, and unnecessary election for our county boards to administer – unless it involves a political subdivision or school district that is in a state of fiscal emergency."
(It's a tradition in Ohio for subdivisions and school districts to use August elections to get unpopular levies passed with the help of low voter turnout. F.Y.I., despite allegedly being a Republican state, Ohio has a sales tax, sin taxes, property taxes, local special levies, local income taxes, and a state income tax.)
Last May, they decided that there would be at least one more special state-wide August election, hoping to bump 50% to 60% before the abortion vote this fall, hopefully while no one was paying attention. The good news is that a lot of ones were, and are, paying attention. The Democratic Party, among others, has made sure of that.
{Wait-wait-wait. Aren't you the one that's written about the wisdom of America's founding pasty patriarchs setting up a republic to counteract the downsides of democracy? Couldn't "initiatives and referendums" proposed by Wokies or Normies get ugly?}
Potentially, sure. Another big BUT: since 1913, only 71 citizen-driven ballot initiatives made it to the ballot and just 19 were approved by voters. That's an average of once every six years or so.
Poppa loves you,
