An advocacy group called One Person One Vote and individual residents of Ohio have filed another legal challenge over a proposed amendment to that state’s Constitution that is slated to go before Ohio voters later this year, if Republicans have their way.
The Republican idea, as backed by state legislators, is to put the proposal before Ohio residents in August — and state officials rushed to put that plan together shortly before an amendment putting abortion rights into the state Constitution might be decided upon by the state’s residents. The GOP-backed idea would seemingly make enacting the abortion amendment or any other amendment more difficult, requiring 60 percent of the state’s participating voters to agree instead of a simple majority as has been used in the state for a long time. With other amendments in the future, it would also increase the logistical burden on those attempting to get a proposal before voters, including with a new requirement for signatures from all 88 of the state’s counties instead of just half of them.
The new lawsuit is over a title and summary for the proposed amendment that, as the process is going, will be presented to voters. The language seems leading, describing what the amendment would do if enacted as “elevating the standards” for ratifying changes to the state’s guiding document. In the text of the summary, there is no explanation of what would be changed by the update, should it be approved — and there is no recap of the long historical precedent for the previous standard, either. “The plaintiffs ask the court to direct the Ohio Ballot Board and LaRose to reconvene and rewrite the language of the amendment and to order LaRose to create a new ballot title,” Democracy Docket explained. Frank LaRose is currently a top elections official in Ohio. Read more at this link.
Image: Ohio Senate Dems on Twitter, used for editorial purposes
