Ohio Redistricting Reform Group Submits More Than 731,000 Signatures
Ohio Redistricting Reform Group Submits More Than 731,000 Signatures
The group hoping to get a citizen-led redistricting commission inserted as an amendment to the Ohio Constitution was required to collect 413,487 signatures by July 3 in order to qualify for the Nov. 5 general election.
Not strictly Cincinnati but figured it merited a mention here.
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Ballot intiatives are always premium legislation, love to see that direct democracy stuff fly over the heads of our two parties.
It’s Ohio, it’s the only way we ever get what we want
Truly.
For anyone unfamiliar with Ohio's gerrymandering woes, This American Life did a really good show on one of the most egregiously obstructed struggles to create a fair district map in Ohio.
The GOP members of the commission just kept shamelessly running down the clock, even on the most fairly divided maps. The judge overseeing the process gave them extensions multiple times. It's a pretty crazy and revealing story. It was depressing at the time, but really encouraging to see people didn't give up on the reform fight.
It's a good podcast, and free too: https://www.thisamericanlife.org/784/mapmaker
And because of that gerrymandering we often find an adverse relationship between the state government and the people. Last year’s big elections are a good example of it. The state was trying to ban abortion despite a consistent majority supporting it and the state wanted heavy regulation of marijuana despite a strong majority preference for recreational legalization. We had a direct democratic election that legalized both and the state government attempted to restrict them as much as possible anyways.