Thousands of joyful Ohioans packed the atrium at the Ohio Statehouse on July 1 to witness and celebrate the submission of 731,306 signatures, placing a referendum for a new, nonpartisan commission to do all future state and congressional redistricting on the November ballot.
The Secretary of State officially validated the signatures on July 24 ensuring the measure will be on the November ballot.
The ballot measure, called “one of the most widely supported citizen-initiated constitutional amendments in Ohio’s history,” reflects the pitched battle Buckeyes are waging against GOP MAGA autocratic control of state government resulting in extreme gerrymandering, voter disenfranchisement, anti-people policies, attacks on democratic rights, and corruption.
The truckload of submitted signatures was the third-highest total ever collected for a state referendum, including a 2023 referendum enshrining abortion rights in the state constitution. The total indicates how frustrated voters are with the current corrupt redistricting system.
The referendum establishes a new nonpartisan commission under the state constitution to replace the current system gamed by Ohio MAGA Republican elected officials to create the nation’s most gerrymandered state, according to most observers.
The current system has disenfranchised millions of voters. Ohio was once considered a purple bellwether state, but now its government is deep red. While Republicans got 56% of the vote in the last presidential election, extreme gerrymandered maps give them supermajorities in both state legislature chambers, control of all statewide offices, and domination of the state supreme court.
The Ohio state government under GOP unified power routinely ignores the will of the people, adopts policies to the right of South Carolina, and is the most corrupt in the nation.
According to retired Ohio Supreme Court Judge Maureen O’Connor, who helped spearhead this campaign, at least three previous redistricting referendums passed by voters were either flawed, blocked, or unconstitutionally ignored by Republican elected officials. Previous referendums allowed legislators to be the final arbiters of their own district maps, an “untenable position.”
The current seven-member Ohio Redistricting Commission includes the Ohio House Speaker and Ohio Senate President, the governor, the secretary of state, the auditor of state, and two minority party legislative leaders. They met separately behind closed doors to draft new maps and then autocratically rammed the plan through the state legislature. Under O’Conner, the State Supreme Court rejected six redistricting maps drawn by GOP legislators, but lawless GOP legislators found a way to bypass the rulings.
If approved by the voters, the amendment would replace the current commission with the Ohio Citizens Redistricting Commission, which would have 15 members, five matching the political party of the governor at the time, five from the party of the gubernatorial candidate who received the second-most votes in the most recent election, and five unaffiliated members.
The new system bars elected officials of all political stripes from participating in drawing the state legislative and congressional maps.
The “We Are Ohio Alliance,” a coalition of 74 organizations, including organized labor, the African American community, religious, and other voter empowerment groups, comprising thousands of activists, led the campaign to collect signatures for the Citizens not Politicians referendum.
By law, signatures must exceed 10% of the vote in the last governor’s election, and activists gathered nearly twice that number were turned in. Activists gathered signatures in all 88 Ohio counties, qualifying for the ballot in 57 counties when only 44 are required. No Ohio referendum has ever qualified in so many counties.
“This shows how frustrated our people have become with right-wing politicians picking their own voters, instead of the other way around,” said Norm Wernet, Ohio ARA President. “It’s up to us all to get out, get involved, and take our democracy back.”
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