Ohio voters just took firm positions on abortion and reproductive rights and adult-use recreational marijuana Tuesday, but gerrymandered Ohio lawmakers are already planning to flout the voters' wishes. This is what gerrymandering brings.
Ohio voters just took firm positions on abortion and reproductive rights and adult-use recreational marijuana Tuesday, but gerrymandered Ohio lawmakers are already planning to flout, ignore, challenge, and abuse the voters’ wishes. This is what gerrymandering brings. This is why it’s a fundamental poison in the lifeblood of our republic.
Mere hours after Ohio voters passed the Issue 1 reproductive rights amendment with 56.62%, according to unofficial results, and the Issue 2 recreational marijuana law with 57% (both getting nearly 2.2 million votes), Ohio Republican legislative leaders signaled they would not respect the will of the people.
When I lived in Arizona, I tried my best to inform people EVERY TIME the state Republicans fought back against voter initiatives (which was nearly every time).
They don't care. Arizonans even voted recently to make voter initiatives harder to pass
But at least they (barely) voted against the other bill Republicans put on the ballot: That their government be allowed to alter passed voter initiatives.
Like when the people of Florida clearly voted to restore voting rights to people who completed their time in the justice system, and Florida Republicans just said Nah. Fuck the Republicans.
What they did was actually worse than just saying "No." They said that former felons could get their voting rights back if they paid all their fines. Except, they didn't provide any way of figuring out what fines you owed. One government official might say you're good to go, but then you submit your paperwork and they discover a $5.12 fine three counties over and you get arrested on a felony again.
At least with a firm no, former felons would know where they stand. With this system, they technically can vote again, but practically can't unless they want to risk going back to prison.
I’m getting genuinely nervous that voting is not going to stop this one. With them lying and switching parties after being voted in, to the judicial system being completely corrupt and stacked, our window is closing fast. It needs to be legal to punch fascist in the face. Intolerance cannot be tolerated.
I genuinely don't understand how a human could see what they do and think "oh yeah these guys are good, fuck those assholes that care about basic human rights"
It's this. Many Republicans lack the ability of empathy for other people- especially for people different than them. They can not see things from both sides. They may wonder what happen to democracy when it is gone and be dumfounded when it is their rights being taken away.
That's what cracks me up the most. Republicans can hold a 1 seat majority and act like they were voted in on a tsunami wave of popular approval sent down by the Almighty himself. They'll use the slightest majority to spin up committees and investigations and will railroad through every appointment or piece of legislation that they can.
But then when voters reject their ideas with an overwhelming majority, then it's all "democracy is flawed" and "voters can't be trusted to know what's best for them." Bunch of hypocritical bastards.
They never really stopped. Before this was their previous attempt, the August election's Issue 1 in which they tried to suppress voter initiatives to amend the Constitution. Anybody that supports Republicans at this point is supporting fascism. There's not really "the lesser of two evils" in most elections now, it's the Evil party that is doing just about everything they can against America & the public, and then there's everyone else.
It's so important to be registered to vote and to vote in presidential, midterm, and off year elections. It's important to vote at the national, state, and local levels.
Fun fact, that special election in August broke their own rules as signed in HB 458. Aug special elections were removed unless to draw resolutions on fiscal emergencies (see sec 3501.022-A).
Yep, for a while now actually. DeSantis just kind of... Ignored the map drawn according to the law and resubmitted the old one. And the sunshine law that requires everything that passes over a public officials desk to be made public, including meeting records and emails
I thought calling Republicans fascist was a little hyperbolic, or at least premature... But then I saw DeSantis blatantly ignore the law, fire elected officials for dutifully fulfilling campaign promises (specifically, by adopting a rehabilitation first stance on crime, which was showing great results), form an extra legal panel to push "anti woke" policies in schools, and gave police the right to take children they suspect might be brought out of state for gender affirming care (obviously not cis gender affirming care like prosthetic boots for men insecure about their height while running for president). Then there's the book burnings, unconstituional laws, attempting to impose government censorship on Disney, and of course multiple fun flavors of voter suppression
I just want the rest of the country to understand how little of a say we have in our government in Ohio. They’re comfortable doing this with these margins because of how gerrymandered we are. Illegally so, but they just kept submitting the same map until the timer ran out
Yeah frankly I’m angry that they weren’t held in contempt of court for the first attempt at that. That’s not a situation where any bullshit should be allowed. We were gerrymandered so hard we did a ballot initiative to ban gerrymandering specifically in the way that prevents legislature from changing or overturning it and the Republican state Supreme Court said it was blatantly illegal. And these absolute dictator wannabes just sent the same one. A clear statement of “we do not respect democracy and we will not accept the will of our state population.” No, that’s not a situation that gets a warning. That needs a “if you continue to play stupid games we will stop you”
That or send a third party to create a fair map and decide that the legislature has abdicated their right to create their map
I lean right on most things, but do support both of these measures. I also support removing lawmakers that do not adhere to the will of the people they were elected to represent. Politicians need to be reminded they work for US, and need to be reminded they should fear the voting public.
As someone not from US, and generally interested in the specifics of gerrymandering, can someone share a link for the extent of gerrymandering in Ohio.