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Dayton
Daily News...
Ohio voters may
face most issues in history
COLUMBUS — This November could set a record for citizen-driven ballot
initiatives in Ohio as issues regarding marijuana, voting rights,
abortion and dog auctions could be headed to the statewide ballot.
State officials have approved petition language for seven initiatives
vying for a spot on the November 2012 ballot and one in 2013 to join a
referendum on the elections reform law House Bill 194 and a call to
revise or amend the Ohio constitution.
Voters weighed in on 15 ballot issues in 1976, but only four were
citizen-initiated and the eight that passed were proposed by the
General Assembly.
However, several of the issues have not garnered enough valid
signatures of Ohio voters to make it on the ballot yet. To make the
ballot, 385,253 valid signatures must be submitted from 44 of Ohio’s 88
counties.
But a November ballot with all seven issues would set a record for the
most petition-driven initiatives in one year, according to records from
the Ohio Attorney General’s office. Fourteen petition initiatives
appeared on Ohio ballots since 2001 — twice as many as the 10 years
before 2001.
The upsurge in petition initiatives is likely to continue, said Paul
Beck, a political science professor at Ohio State University.
Petition initiatives began as a way for the public to object to
legislative bodies controlled by large corporations or a few
individuals.
Beck said today’s political polarization echoes that time in some ways.
When voters write laws or amend the constitution at the ballot box, the
measures don’t receive the debate and thought typically given to an
issue going through the General Assembly.
But Beck said the legislative process isn’t working that way.
“Assemblies in Ohio and the U.S. Congress are more interested in
scoring points on the other side than they are on trying to perfect
legislation so there’s none of this give and take that is the hallmark
of deliberative democracy,” Beck said.
The issues and the ballot process
Four ballot initiatives are tied to unsatisfactory or stalled
legislation: Two medical marijuana amendments (Ohio Medical Cannabis
and Ohio Alternative Treatment), regulations for dog breeders (Ohio Dog
Auctions Act) and removing redistricting power from elected officials
(Ohio Citizens Independent Redistricting Commission.)
Legislative districts drawn to favor one party or another have produced
a polarized General Assembly, said Ann Henkener, spokesperson for the
group behind the redistricting amendment and board member of the League
of Women Voters of Ohio.
“(A petition) is our only alternative when the Legislature is really
not getting to the needs of middle Ohio,” Henkener said.
Henkener said districts should be drawn to reflect Ohio’s 50-50 party
line split to spur more competitive elections, which is also a goal of
the citizen redistricting commission the petition supports.
Tonya Davis, a committee member for the Ohio Alternative Treatment Act,
said she would prefer the General Assembly pass House Bill 214, which
was introduced one year ago and never moved past initial committee
hearings.
Davis, a Kettering resident, suffers from several ailments and says
marijuana provides relief without resorting to addictive narcotics. She
said she’s lobbied lawmakers for 10 years and called the petition
initiative a reaction to lawmakers’ inaction. “They’re supposed to
represent me, the registered voter, and they’re not doing that,” Davis
said. Davis said Ohioans should weigh in on the issue and cited a 2009
University of Cincinnati poll that found 73 percent of Ohio adults
favored allowing medical marijuana.
The others are taking on issues that supporters say lawmakers won’t
debate because they’re too politically charged:
• Allowing workers to opt out of union membership and dues (freedom to
choose whether to participate in a labor organization).
• An anti-abortion amendment extending the title of person at the time
of conception (Personhood Ohio).
• Allowing same-sex marriages and churches to not recognize those
marriages (Freedom to Marry and Religious Freedom.)
“It’s frustrating when you have good legislation someone submits and it
gets held up in committee,” said Dr. Patrick Johnston of the Personhood
Ohio effort. “With an initiative, you can bypass that.”
Johnston said more constitutional amendment proposals signify a growing
dissatisfaction with federal and state government.
Chris Littleton, spokesman for Ohioans for Workplace Freedom and former
president of the Cincinnati Tea Party and the Ohio Liberty Council,
agreed. “The political system as it’s structured right now doesn’t lend
itself to constructive changes of any kind,” Littleton said. “It lends
itself to partisan battles that work for the wrong reasons.”
Littleton said the right-to-work amendment is not the same issue as
Senate Bill 5, which would have reformed public employee unions and was
easily defeated by voter referendum last fall.
Ian James, co-founder of the Freedom To Marry group, said the Senate
Bill 5 referendum generated a greater sense of activism in Ohio.
“People saw what happened when working families were under siege. There
is a sense that loving couples who can’t have their relationships
recognized, they feel under siege,” James said.
Chris Slagle, an attorney with Bricker and Eckler of Columbus, said the
number of proposed initiatives isn’t significantly more than recent
years. “To get an effort on the ballot simply requires a lot of
planning and strategy and I don’t know that one effort in one year
correlates to subsequent year — it’s just the way the timing works out.”
Successfully getting an issue to the ballot costs an average $1.5
million including advertisements, legal fees and petition circulators,
said Secretary of State Jon Husted. “It’s no longer the sympathetic way
that citizens go out and have their voice heard,” Husted said. “It’s a
professional political process now that people have used to, at best,
advance issues they care about and, at worst, turn into another way for
consultants and political operatives to make money.”
Husted said the state spent more than $2 million to advertise the 2011
ballot issues in Ohio newspapers.
Only three groups hired professional petition circulators as of Friday
— Ohioans for Workplace Freedom, the Ohio Clean Energy Initiative and
the Ohio Dog Auctions Act, according to records filed with the
secretary of state.
Beck said the total votes cast drops for initiatives further down the
ballot, so groups need to make sure their initiatives and messaging
about them is clear. “There’s a tendency for voters when they are
confused to vote ‘no,’ ” Beck said.
Read this and other articles at the Dayton Daily News
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