Direct Democracy Is Under Attack

But There’s a Way To Fight Back

Here in Ohio, amid an already ugly lame duck legislative session, much of the talk is rightly centered on a proposal by Secretary of State Frank LaRose to increase the vote threshold required to pass a people-driven Constitutional Amendment from a simple majority to a super-majority (60%).

LaRose claims this is to “protect” Ohio’s Constitution from special interests.

He even says that with a straight face. Which is impressive, since this is a guy who violated the Ohio Constitution six times over the last year (that’s not me saying that, but the bipartisan Ohio Supreme Court).

The truth is, LaRose’s words are pure projection. And his effort is yet another disturbing attack on Ohio’s deeply damaged democracy.

Why do I call it projection? Because what this proposal is actually about is protecting the “special interest” agenda of the far right from being checked BY the people of Ohio themselves.

So it’s protecting special interests from the people—not the other way around.

And this becomes especially clear once you realize that this is not simply an Ohio issue. This is part of a nationwide battle that too few see: far-right interests have locked themselves into power in dozens of states via gerrymandered legislatures. The people of these states, who no longer feel represented by these extreme legislatures, have no recourse but to fight back through direct democracy. And it’s THAT people-driven pushback and accountability that LaRose and the far right interests are trying to stop, in Ohio and across the country.

Here’s the background:

2022 Was a Banner Year for Direct Democracy.

In states across the country, reacting to lurches to the extreme right, the people themselves fought back in November 2022.

And they did so decisively in one particular way: ballot initiatives.

In Montana, Kansas, Michigan and Kentucky, voters voted to protect abortion access in their states. In Nevada, voters passed a state-level equal rights amendment, while Michigan voters enshrined the “right to vote” into their state constitution.

These outcomes are part of a longer-term trend. Over the past decade, in the 24 states where they are able to do so, voters have been enacting change directly that legislatures in their states—sealed off from the voters through gerrymandering—simply wouldn’t do.

In Florida, they voted to enfranchise felons while increasing the minimum wage. In Missouri, they voted to expand Medicaid after their elected leaders refused. In Maine, they voted to lift the minimum wage. In South Dakota, they voted in campaign finance and lobbying reforms. In Ohio and Missouri, they decisively passed redistricting reform.

In state after state, the people themselves are on the march.

And once they’ve approved these measures at the polls, that should settle it, right?

Sadly, it hasn’t. In fact, what’s happened in response to these efforts is a stunning example of how anti-democratic the entrenched interests in these states have become.

The Far-Right/Special Interest Response: 1) Ignore the People…

To a stunning degree, the response from legislators locked into power through gerrymandering has been to ignore the will of their own people.

I wrote about this in Laboratories of Autocracy:

In Florida, the legislature gutted the felon disenfranchisement ban.

In Missouri, they didn’t fund Medicaid expansion until the state’s Supreme Court forced them to.

In Maine and South Dakota, they repealed the measures.

And in Ohio and Missouri, they simply ignored Constitutional amendments to end partisan gerrymandering. In Missouri, they delayed implementation long enough to jam through a new legislature-driven amendment to reverse the citizen-led one. In Ohio, they violated the new Constitution (and court orders) long enough to get themselves a new court that will let them get away with defying those reforms going forward.

…Then 2) Block the People

As if that isn’t bad enough, defying the results of these referenda is just the warm-up act.

Their bigger move is to block these efforts from happening in the first place, by blocking the people themselves. So don’t give Frank LaRose any points for originality. He’s simply joining a litany of right-wing efforts across the country to seize power from the people.

How bad is it?

In 2021, according to the Ballot Initiative Strategy Center, 146 bills(!) were put forward in states to restrict or abolish the ballot measure process. And in early 2022, 13 statehouses around the country proposed another 87 restrictions. (Compare that to only 33 such bills in 2017.)

And know that this is a coordinated effort, led by conservative groups (eg., ALEC, the Republican State Legislative Council) that have been using legislatures to push through their right-wing corporate and social agenda for a generation. They know that direct action by the people is a growing threat to their state-based agenda, and are working hard to kill that threat.

What form do these restrictions take?  

Higher signature requirements, logistical hurdles (the form that a petition must take in South Dakota apparently makes it the size of a beach towel), and additional legal or procedural hurdles, to name a few.

But the top one?

You guessed it — as the leader of BISC explains here:

“the most common tactic to undermine ballot initiatives is legislation that raises the threshold to pass a ballot measure after it has gone through the rigorous process of qualifying for the ballot in the first place. Legislators are eager to create supermajority requirements for policies that the people bring forward while keeping a simple majority for policies they want to pass.”

Lawmakers in Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Missouri, North Dakota, Oklahoma, and South Dakota all introduced such measures in 2021 alone. Usually the proposed threshold is 60%; Missouri’s proposal takes it to 66%.

So LaRose isn’t only disingenuous in his comment about “protecting the Ohio Constitution”—he’s actually ripping a page from the playbook put together BY special interests to protect their agenda against the people.

You see why I called it projection? Stomach-churning.

The Good News!

Amid this disturbing trend, there is hope.

Several weeks ago, Arkansas’ attempt to lift the threshold to 60% was on the state ballot. Voters and a broad spectrum of public interest groups rallied against it, throttling it 59%-41%.  It lost in 68 out of 75 Arkansas counties.

The same thing happened in South Dakota in June, where a ballot measure would’ve imposed a 60% requirement for tax increases.  That lost 67%-33%.

And while Arizona voters did approve a 60% threshold for ballot measures requiring tax increases, they rejected a measure that would’ve given legislators greater power to amend approved ballot measures.

Bottom line: when voters see these attacks as the power grabs that they are, they aren’t impressed.

The lesson:

Step 1: we should make as much noise as possible to convince these legislators not to advance this to the Ohio ballot. A number of groups are already in the process of doing just that; for those interested, I’ll share ways on how you can take part.

Step 2: if they do push forward, as happened in Arkansas, unite EVERY group in Ohio that is offended and impacted by LaRose’s shameful power grab—and there will be many of them, across a broad spectrum—and rally them all against it. Whether your priority is to legalize marijuana, guarantee abortion access, raise the minimum wage, protect workers in other ways, or even reducing taxes, this is an attack on YOU.

Make this Ohio’s next Senate Bill 5 (the attack on collective bargaining that lost everywhere in 2011). So let’s unite a broad coalition—way beyond a single party or set of interests—and crush this arrogant power grab everywhere.

And since Frank LaRose has designs on being a US Senator, let’s defeat this in such a resounding way that it will be seen as the biggest political mistake he’s ever made.