Deja Vu: Ballot Manipulation 101

The Deep Rot That is Frank LaRose--Now Trying to Save Gerrymandering

It’s become one of their favorite tricks of late.

One of their slickest, and sickest, tactics in attacking democracy.

When the Ohio GOP is losing, or fears a loss, their officials actually twist and manipulate the very ballot Ohioans utilize when they vote, hoping that misleading words or a manipulated ballot order will deliver victory for them from the jaws of defeat.

And in some cases, they are actually trying to trick the voters into voting the opposite way from their desired intent—which is about as sick as it gets.

And they’re at it again….today in fact.

Example 1:

After losing three of four Ohio Supreme Court races in two years (even in a year where Trump won by 8), the Ohio’s GOP solution: add party labels to the ballot and move those races much higher on the ballot so that they appear as partisan as all the others.

Example 2:

When they feared losing Issue 1 last November (the issue that enshrined reproductive freedom into the Ohio Constitution), and failed to stop it with their illegal special election in August, what did they do?

They used the ballot board process they control to present a summary of the amendment on the ballot that left the false impression that the Amendment was restricting the rights of citizens as opposed to protecting them from government interference.

While they were at it, they censored out aspects of the amendment that they knew were popular, such as protecting fertility care such IVF (that’s right—they all opposed protecting IVF). Then they replaced biological terms such as fetus with the term “unborn child” (four times!) in the hopes of swaying voters against the measure. (Later, and to no one’s surprise, it turned out the ballot board’s language came from the anti-freedom groups that opposed Issue 1.)

While Orwell would’ve been impressed by such an abuse of government power over language—Ohioan weren’t fooled. And Issue 1 passed.

The New Example: Gerrymandering Amendment

Well, here we go again—one August later.

This year, we have another Issue 1 moving down the pike. It’s called “Citizens, Not Politicians,” its goal is to end gerrymandering, and like last year’s Issue 1, it looks to be quite popular.

Why? Because it would replace the politicians from the process of drawing (their own) district lines, and replace them with a multi-party, independent panel of citizens who would have to follow strictly defined rules and a map-drawing process to generate non-partisan districts in Ohio.

Which would fever change Ohio—and mark the beginning of the end of the corrupt power that is sending Ohio in the wrong direction.

Well, wouldn’t you know it? The corrupt powers that be don’t want to let this happen.

So their trusted errand boy, Ohio’s Secretary of State (vying to be the worst and most dishonest Secretary of State in Ohio history), is trying to manipulate the ballot once again. In a way every bit as misleading and Orwellian as a year ago.

What ballot language is LaRose proposing in a meeting that will take place today?

Before I reveal this, remember, this is Ohio’s direct democracy—the citizens’ process to amend the Constitution. As is their right, Ohio citizens presented and got the ballot language approved by the Attorney General for the amendment. Then those same Ohio citizens gathered the 535,000 signatures of other Ohio citizens needed to place this on the ballot. Amid this path of direct democracy, the role for Ohio’s “ballot board” is simply to approve the language of that citizen-led amendment as it is to appear on the ballot; needless to say, the politicians on the ballot board are not supposed to interfere with that direct democratic process itself by injecting their own personal views into the ballot language.

Yet….here’s what LaRose is pushing at a meeting today.

As the Cincinnati Enquirer describes: “The proposed ballot language for state Issue 1, distributed Thursday and obtained by the USA TODAY Network Ohio Bureau, paints a picture of a measure that encourages rather than curbs gerrymandering, defined as drawing lines to unfairly favor one political party over another.” The language specifically references “manipulating the boundaries of legislative districts and repealing constitutional protections against gerrymandering.”

How in the world could they take a measure aimed at ending gerrymandering and make it seem like it’s pro-gerrymandering?

Here’s how:

First, LaRose proposes that the first paragraph of the language appear as follows:

"The proposed amendment would: Repeal constitutional protections against gerrymandering approved by nearly three-quarters of Ohio electors participating in the statewide elections of 2015 and 2018, and eliminate the longstanding ability of Ohio citizens to hold their representatives accountable for establishing fair state legislative and congressional districts."

So yes, the first impression left by the ballot language is that the amendment is somehow removing protections against gerrymandering, as opposed to taking steps to protect against gerrymandering.

Think for a moment how cynical LaRose’s proposed language is. LaRose is now touting the amendments form 2015 and 2018—those “constitutional protections against gerrymandering approved by nearly three-quarters of Ohio electors”—when HE was the one who violated those protections five times (in 2021 and 2022) to give us the unconstitutionally gerrymandered maps we are living in today. The very reason were are demanding change to the process now is because lawbreakers like LaRose, DeWine and Matt Huffman so egregiously violated the anti-gerrymandering amendments approved by the voters (knowing full well that’s what they were doing, including LaRose sending a text to staff calling the first illegal map “asinine.”) LaRose and company are the ones who eviscerated those amendments. That’s why a new one is needed.

As for the second half of that sentence—that Issue 1 “eliminate[s] the longstanding ability of Ohio citizens to hold their representatives accountable for establishing fair state legislative and congressional districts”—the entire point is that Ohio citizens can not hold their representatives accountable because when the representatives draw their own districts, they ensure that those districts are so one-sided, they can never be held accountable. That’s the entire problem!

So yes, LaRose wants the first sentence of the ballot to be the government of Ohio presenting the exact opposite impression of what the Amendment is doing; and then that government creating the false impression that representatives are held accountable when the entire problem is that they are not.

But that’s just the first sentence. As summarized in the Cincinnati Enquirer, other details in the proposed ballot language include:

• “Emphasis on the cost of the new taxpayer-funded commission and "an unlimited amount for legal expenses”—not mentioning, of course, that under the prior process where politicians like LaRose repeatedly broke the law to continue gerrymandering, the legal process played out for months, and included seven different cases at the Ohio Supreme Court (all ruling their maps unconstitutional), as well as a federal trial and appellate process (in other words, Ohio taxpayers paid to have our own maps rigged against us)

• “Language that the measure would ‘limit the right of Ohio citizens to freely express their opinions to members of the commission or to commission staff regarding the redistricting process or proposed redistricting plans.’” Of course, this fails to point out that the process is LED by Ohio citizens themselves, and is required to be transparent all the way through—as opposed to the backroom and unconstitutional shenanigans and horse-trading that have dominated this broken process for decades, including the last round last summer that led to more gerrymandered maps that are the districts on our current ballot.

• “A 27-line description of the process for selecting members of the 15-member citizen commission.” They love to make this process seem highly complex, when essentially what the Amendment does is enlist retired justices to help select a a 15-member citizen commission made up of five Republicans, five Democrats and five independents who are not politicians, lobbyists, or have close political ties. You know, citizens, not politicians. Once those 15 are in place, the process will be far simpler and smoother than the current process—because these citizens aren’t hell-bent on breaking the rules for their own benefit, as the politicians have proven themselves to be every time.

To cap it all off, the title LaRose wants to give the Amendment is: “To create an appointed redistricting commission not elected by or subject to removal by the voters of the state.”

Because apparently, to the arrogant GOP politicians of Ohio, locked into corrupt power and gerrymandered districts, the first thing they think of when they think of the 11 million-plus of us who are “Ohio citizens” is that we are “not elected by or subject to removal by the voters of the state.” As opposed to being the very people who put these bozos in office and who they are supposed to serve.

They literally just insulted all of us with that one line summary.

We ARE the citizens. You serve us! Don’t you dare insult us!

One Choice: WIN, then keep going!

Yes, this garbage makes my blood boil. If it doesn’t do that to you, I don’t know what would.

In official government processes and even the ballots we use to vote, own government is twisting words and warping history to mislead voters about the meaning of an amendment—when the whole point of that amendment is to give voters more control over that corrupt and unaccountable government.

It truly is right out of George Orwell.

And yes, this can and will be fought out today at the Ballot Board, and fought out in Court (FYI: it will be in the hands of a majority that found “boneless” to mean with bones).

I wish had more hope that the ballot language would ultimately reflect the citizen-led amendment—but Ohio is deeply broken, so I’m not holding my breath.

BUT…I don’t write all this to worry you.

We overcame this last year. No one was fooled by LaRose’s Orwellian language then.

And even in 2022, voters voted for Democratic candidates for Supreme Court justice in far greater numbers than the rest of the statewide Democratic ticket—so even that manipulation didn’t work as well as they’d hoped. And we can still those critical races this year.

And it’s NOT going to work here either.

Hell no it’s not!

What it does do is remind us how fundamentally broken Ohio government and Ohio’s democracy are. And how fundamentally corrupted the politicians who’ve been in power have become . They have truly forgotten what their role is supposed to be in a democracy, and are so far down the anti-democratic path in their thinking and actions, it’s clear they will never change their ways.

So, this November, we will pass Issue 1, fire the politicians from the districting process, replace them with citizens, and then after that…..

We will vote out all the politicians like Frank LaRose who abused government for years to try to stop us from re-asserting control over our own government.

Citizens, not politicians!

This train has left the station. We are NOT slowing down now.