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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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