News
Ohio Supreme Court lets stand most of the Ballot Board’s language on Issue 1
By: Karen Kasler | Statehouse News Bureau
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COLUMBUS, Ohio (Statehouse News Bureau) — Most of the three-page summary that backers of this fall’s Issue 1 say is biased and unfair will be what voters see when they cast their ballots. The Ohio Supreme Court has ruled six of the eight provisions approved by Republicans on the Ohio Ballot Board that the group Citizens Not Politicians sued over can stay. The other two must be rewritten and approved in a meeting that’s scheduled for Wednesday.
The court’s four Republicans ordered rewrites of language that said lawsuits over maps would be prohibited except on the proportionality standard, and the wording that said the public can’t express opinions to commission members. But it let stand language approved by the Ballot Board that says Issue 1 would require “gerrymandering” of maps. And the court allowed the title to remain as is: “create an appointed redistricting commission not elected by or subject to removal by the voters of the state”. The court determined the other six provisions in the lawsuit are not inaccurate.
Issue 1 would create a 15-member panel made up of Republican, Democratic and independent citizens to draw lawmakers’ district maps based on a proportionality formula that corresponds closely with the results of the last six statewide elections. Current and former elected officials and politicians could not serve on the panel.
The three Republicans on the Ohio Ballot Board agreed to that language created by GOP Secretary of State Frank LaRose, who said the five-point summary submitted by Citizens Not Politicians wasn’t sufficient for the complex amendment. The approved summary is three pages long and has 10 bullet points.
Those who brought the amendment say makes it appear that it would require gerrymandering when the goal is to eliminate gerrymandering. The majority opinion states: “What these rules require falls within the meaning of ‘gerrymander.’ They mandate the new commission draw district boundaries that give a political advantage to an identifiable group—Republicans in some districts and Democrats in others. They require the commission to draw these partisan-advantaged districts at the expense of traditional, neutral redistricting criteria to overcome natural political geography and achieve proportional representation.”
Democratic justices were direct in their dissents
Democratic Justice Michael Donnelly wrote that he concurred that the two provisions should be rewritten, but he wrote that’s not “even remotely adequate to prevent the ballot language as a whole from being misleading”. And he added: “Given that the four members of this court in the majority today apparently think that the word ‘boneless’ means ‘you should expect bones,’ I’m sure it comes as no great surprise that they think that a constitutional amendment to ‘ban partisan gerrymandering’ means to ‘require gerrymander[ing]’.”
Democratic Justice Jennifer Brunner wrote in her dissent, “We should be requiring a nearly complete redrafting of what is perhaps the most stunningly stilted ballot language that Ohio voters will have ever seen.”
This is the third time in the last year that the Ohio Ballot Board has been sued over its approved language. A coalition of unions and groups known as One Person, One Vote sued over approved language for Issue 1 last August, which would have required 60% voters approval for future constitutional amendments. The court ruled some of that summary had to be rewritten. Ohioans United for Reproductive Rights sued over the summary for November’s Issue 1, the reproductive rights amendment. The court ordered a slight tweak in the language but left most of it intact.
Before the lawsuits last year, the last time the Ohio Supreme Court intervened with language approved by the Ohio Ballot Board was in 1981.
LaRose issued a statement that reads in part: “This decision is a huge win for Ohio voters, who deserve an honest explanation of what they’re being asked to decide. The court’s opinion reinforces that this proposed amendment does in fact require the gerrymandering of Ohio’s legislative and congressional districts, and that’s something the dark money foreign billionaire behind this bad idea has consistently tried to deny.” He’s set the ballot board’s meeting to approve the rewritten language Wednesday morning.
The ruling comes just not long before county boards of elections have to send out overseas and military ballots, with early voting beginning on Oct. 8.