The more I read history, and try to uncover for myself the often hidden history some want to censor, the more I value contemporaneous accounts. Memoirs. Journals. Accounts of the details from the moment.
Anything that documents things as they happened—not to be colored by later analysis or re-interpretation.
So before tomorrow’s vote on Issue 1 in Ohio, and whatever analysis follows and however memories fade, I think it’s critical to take a look back on the past year. Because when we take that step back, what we’ve seen and experienced is an entire year of Ohio officials in government positions abusing that power to subvert democracy and majority rule in this state.
And I worry deeply that this will be the future of this state and many others if we allow this to become normalized.
So whether or not it succeeds tomorrow, it’s critical that we never lose sight of how the far right is waging its political battle at the moment. That we don’t let it get whitewashed, or forgotten, or not seen in the first place.
So let’s take an up-close look at the entire sequence of events—and as you do, imagine what we would say if this all happened in another country:
Dobbs, Ohio and the Reproductive Freedom Amendment
After Dobbs, Ohio’s Attorney General rushed to federal court to end a restraining order that had previously kept a 6-week abortion ban, with no exceptions for rape, incest or health of the mother, from becoming Ohio law.
As a result, almost overnight, that ban took effect. Chaos, fear and uncertainty ensued.
The first example of the ban’s impact soon played out to the entire nation’s horror. A ten-year old victim of rape was forced to go to Indiana to get abortion care that Ohio’s new law denied her. Horrible.
That was followed by the first instance where Ohio officials—using their official positions—began their year+ of disinformation about Ohio’s extreme abortion ban and the citizen-led effort to get rid of it.
Specifically, the same Attorney General who’d rushed to court after Dobbs now rushed to Fox News to cast doubt on that young victim’s story. And he spoke as the Attorney General, wielding the credibility of that public office to add legitimacy to his point….which would turn out to be absolutely wrong. (The case he was gaslighting was happening right under his nose!)
But this initial effort was a warning shot: Ohio GOP government officials were prepared to do anything to protect their extreme abortion ban.
Meanwhile, in part due to the outrage over the treatment of that 10-year old victim, a group of doctors began organizing to place a Constitutional Amendment on the Ohio ballot for 2023. Legally, the Amendment establishes Ohioans’ right to make their own reproductive decisions, and protects that right from being infringed by government. After the required pre-work was done, in March, thousands of activists began to collect signatures to place the issue on the ballot.
And that’s when Ohio’s government really got involved in an all-out effort to stop its own citizens from weighing in on an issue that even the Supreme Court said should be up “to the people of the states.” In multiple ways, key functions of government have been weaponized against the people’s own exercise of direct democracy. And against an effort which, at its heart, has been to establish a right and keep the government from infringing on that right.
Ohio Government Versus Its Citizens
This use of government against its own citizens has happened constantly, and in numerous ways:
1. With signatures already being gathered, the gerrymandered legislature (remember, its members sit in districts that still today violate the Ohio Constitution) passed a measure to change the threshold to amend the Ohio Constitution to 60%.
Yes, they attempted to change the rules of democracy midstream to suppress their state’s majority will.
2. Because this too required an Amendment, the only way to pass this change in time to affect the ongoing election was before November. But since they (early in the year) had banned August special elections (saying they were undemocratic and too costly) they were stuck.
Some legislators tried to repeal that ban on August elections (proving that they knew a legal change was needed). But they couldn’t get the votes necessary to do so.
So what did they do?
They said “the hell with it” and ordered that the election take place anyway, in spite of the fact that doing so violated the Ohio Revised Code and the law they’d put in place.
3. And the Ohio Supreme Court—a Court that the legislature made partisan in a 2021 law change after they’d lost the Court in 2020—dutifully ruled 4-3 that it was OK that they’d scheduled an election on a day that violated that law. And that the election could take place after all.
So Ohio government was so intent to stop Ohio’s majority from exercising its will, it forced a special election on a day where that special election is forbidden. (It’s a strain to say that Ohio has a rule of law after that election was allowed to happen).
4. Thankfully, and due to heroic efforts, that effort (Issue 1) failed on that special election day. But the government effort to stop the people was just warming up.
5. After the doctors’ group filed an enormous amount of valid signatures to get the issue on the ballot, the “ballot board”—a government body which exists simply to summarize an amendment so it fits on the small size of the ballots presented to voters—rewrites the language in a way that opponents to the measure could have only dreamed of (and probably drafted). Its rewrite/summary is actually longer than the amendment itself—a sure sign of troublemaking afoot. And if it wasn't already clear what the ballot board’s aim was, the members who approved the Orwellian summary spent much of the meeting explaining how much they disagreed with the amendment.
I summarized that ballot manipulation here:
A recent poll found that this blatant manipulation—which includes replacing the term fetus with “unborn child” numerous times, along with other indefensible alterations—significantly lowers voters’ support for the measure.
The Amendment is also assigned the number “1,” so thanks to the lawless election in August, proponents of the Amendment now face the extra task of convincing all those who voted “No on 1” in August to vote “Yes on 1” in November.
Of course, the same Court that allowed the lawless August election to take place also ultimately allows this ballot manipulation to take place. So now, in Ohio, it’s legal for government to present a manipulated version of an amendment (and a “summary” longer than the actual amendment) to sway how the people vote in that election.
7. Speaking of government, not long after the ballot summary itself emerged as a form of government disinformation, a new “online newsroom” pops up in Ohio that spews similar disinformation about Issue 1.
But who’s behind the newsroom? Ohio’s Senate. The official side, not a political arm.
And because it’s an official government site, the AP finds, this disinformation campaign isn’t only being paid for by tax dollars, it’s prioritized in web searches about the issue. The government involvement gives the propaganda added legitimacy, including by algorithms!
8. Around the same time, the Attorney General who started it all “releases” a “legal analysis” of Issue 1, which of course echoes right-wing talking points about what the measure would do. (ie. it’s “worse than Roe!”). I don’t recall similar official analyses of past ballot measures from a taxpayer-funded office. Once again, an official government body is busy doing campaign work.
9. Next comes the same guy (Secretary of State Frank LaRose) who championed the August special election, and who wrote and enacted the manipulated ballot summary, quietly purging 27,000 Ohio voters right around the time of the voter registration deadline, so there’s no time to for a voter who finds herself purged to re-register.
10. And the Governor of Ohio begins a statewide media tour suggesting he will renegotiate the abortion ban he signed if only the voters vote against Issue 1, which (if it passed) would directly eliminate that ban. The Governor frames his approach to Issue 1 as if he is a good-faith and neutral arbiter of it—"we looked at it closely” amid the confusion, he and his wife tell us—without admitting that he’s the one who signed the extreme abortion ban in the first place, the one that kicked in right after Dobbs, and sent the young victim to Indiana. He also never mentions that after that horror story, he did not seek to renegotiate his ban, but simply refused to talk about it.
But now that he fears Issue 1 will pass, he promises that he will act as Governor to renegotiate the ban.
Democracy Itself Is On the Ballot
I’ll stop there. You see the awful picture.
With one day to go, this election is close, the campaign made all the more difficult from the collective effect of all this government disinformation and manipulation.
I’m not here to make predictions, but I think Ohio voters may very well overcome all this government interference with them exercising their will.
Either way, documenting all this is critical: The leaders of an American state have spent a year weaponizing government itself—wielding the many tools it provides them (meant to be used responsibly)—to interfere with, manipulate and misinform its own people.
As you contemplate this, also remember: the Initiative and Amendment process provided by the Ohio Constitution is not for the government. It’s for the people. It is direct democracy in action. It’s the people’s path to weigh in directly about our rights as Ohio citizens, and to limit the government’s role if we so choose. And that is what Issue 1 does.
The government already had its say—all of the people mentioned above played their role—and in their say, they brought us the extreme abortion ban.
But the Amendment process means it’s the people’s turn. Not those officials’. Still, they refuse to step aside. Even worse, to protect their own policies and favored interests, they are using all aspects of their government offices to interfere with the people’s process. And with a process to establish a right and keep them from infringing upon that right.
And once you see it that way, it’s disturbing as hell. And it’s important that whatever happens tomorrow, we never lose sight of it. We can never let any of this be normalized.
My deepest worry is that this behavior—resembling Orban-style, taxpayer-funded trappings of autocracy with no rule of law to speak of—will not only continue here, but will become the norm in other states as well. And that will especially become true if it succeeds at the ballot box tomorrow.
Which is why this Issue 1 campaign has become even more than a vote on reproductive freedom and the extreme abortion ban, as important as they are.
It’s become yet another vote on democracy itself. A national one, with enormous implications.
Don’t let the grotesque, anti-democratic and thuggish Ohio tactics succeed.
Vote Yes on 1!
Then keep calling out all the lawless tactics as long as they continue.
A democracy is at stake. Let’s keep it.
Documenting the Ugliness