|
County |
NO VOTE |
Catholics |
Blacks |
|
Cuyahoga |
76% |
28% |
30% |
|
Summit |
66% |
22% |
15% |
|
Lorain |
63% |
25% |
9% |
|
Lake |
59% |
35% |
6% |
|
Medina |
54% |
28% |
2% |
|
Geauga |
52% |
34% |
1% |
|
Wayne |
42% |
8% |
2% |
|
Ashland |
37% |
3% |
2% |
Everything You Need To Know About The Ohio Ballot Measure
Key points: my comments in italics
Latest in a string of efforts by GOP politicians to change the rules governing ballot measures with the implicit, or sometimes explicit, aim of thwarting citizen-led policy proposals. Since 2017, at least 10 states — Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Maine, Missouri, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Dakota and Utah — have considered increasing the threshold for at least some ballot initiatives to pass. All these efforts were led by Republican legislators.
The good news for opponents of Issue 1? These types of rule changes aren’t usually successful with voters.
Sounds to me that a good issue for Democrats who want to overthrow Republican dominated legislators. Democrats in Ohio should be looking at House and Senate districts where this fails to plot a strategy for November.
It’s also part of a widespread pattern of Republicans making it harder to get initiatives on the ballot in the first place. Since 2017, at least 16 states — Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Idaho, Maine, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, South Dakota, Utah and Wyoming — have proposed increasing the number of signatures needed to qualify a ballot initiative or, like Issue 1, adding new requirements that those signatures come from specific jurisdictions, like counties or congressional districts.
These efforts have been slightly more successful than those attempting to raise the voting threshold. Arkansas, Idaho, Michigan and Utah have all enacted new signature-distribution requirements in recent years, although Idaho’s and Michigan’s were later struck down in court. But it’s worth noting that none of those laws needed to go before voters (and, in fact, when Arkansas tried that in 2020, voters rejected the proposal).
Again, this seems to be good issue to use against Republicans, i.e. that the Democrats are the peoples party who are for majority rule. Republicans are attempting to govern by seizing power as a minority.
Florida requires 60 percent to pass its constitutional amendments. Since 2006, nine amendments (out of 53 that have appeared on the ballot) have failed with between 50 and 60 percent of the vote. For comparison, 13 failed with less than 50 percent of the vote. In other words, 41 percent of the Florida constitutional amendments that have failed since 2006 would have passed under a simple majority system.
Again, we have a clear example of Republicans empowering themselves as a forty percent minority with the right to veto the will of the majority.
I voted today here in Ohio for the first time in person in a long time.
There are three ways to vote in Ohio:
1. By mail ballot which is secret. Since your marked ballot is placed inside an envelope which is placed inside another envelope. The first election worker removes the first envelope and records that you have voted; a second worker opens the second envelope which does not have your name and runs it through the scanner.
2. In person at the County Board of Elections in the weeks preceding election day (that is what I did today for next Tuesday's vote on a Constitutional amendment requiring a sixty percent vote to pass future Constitutional amendments.
3. In person at local voting places on election day.
What I encountered today was a new voting system requiring two machines.
After identifying myself and being determined eligible I was given a ticket which I presented to an election worker who guided me to the first machine and instructed me on how to use it. I made my choice, verified it and then pushed a button which printed out a record of my choice,
The election worker walked me to a second machine which read my paper ballot into the electronic voting record and dropped the paper ballot into a lockbox. Obviously a very secure system. Probably very difficult to modify both the paper and electronic record.
After leaving the polling station, it occurred to me that the election worker saw my ballot and others nearby may also have seen it. There was not a lot of space between machines.
The new system could probably be improved in some fashion to prevent others from seeing your ballot choices while allowing you to inspect them.
I wonder if more people will decide to vote by mail because they are concerned about the lesser amount of secrecy that has been introduced into in person voting.
We don't have voting machines in our town (I'm sure they do in the larger metro area). There are partitions on three sides of the voting tables. There are paper ballots where you blacken the circle with a #2 pencil, which is furnished. You put them in a holder which is the size of the ballot, with only the printed signature of the election official showing at the bottom. You hand the holder to a poll worker who dumps the ballot into a slot in a locked box. The ballot is never visible to anyone else. It seems like they could do something similar with the ballots that the machine prints out.
ReplyDeleteIn PA we have mail-in ballots and electronic machines at the polling places. I prefer paper to the electronic blackbox. I'd prefer Athenian shards of pottery to the electronic blackbox.
ReplyDeleteIn the NYTimes today about the Ohio election
ReplyDeleteThe Critical Election Republicans are Hoping You Won’t Notice
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/04/opinion/ohio-abortion-referendum.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare
The Critical Election Republicans Are Hoping You Won’t Notice
Jack - what you've described is how we vote in Illinois, too: the voter uses a touchscreen to make choices electronically; the voter's choices print on a laser printer; and then the voter walks the print-out to a scanner which scans the paper and deposits it in a locked ballot box.
ReplyDeleteWe also offer paper ballots, which voters can take to polling stations, which basically are standing desks with panels along the side and back to offer some privacy. Voters fill out paper ballots the old fashioned way with black pens (or Sharpies are preferred). After the voter complete her/his ballot, s/he walks it over to the scanner, which scans and deposits the paper ballot, just like the laser printer printout.
We have an election judge by the scanner to help voters scan their ballots; quite a few voters aren't accustomed to working with scanners. The judges are supposed to use voter shields (laminated legal-size paper in heavy stock) to cover the ballots as they're inserted into the scanners. But a determined judge could see at least some of the voter's ballot choices. What I've found is that most voters don't care who knows who they voted for, although some do care, and in any case the sanctity of private voting must be protected.
Nothing wrong with electronic voting machines as long as there's a paper copy. I like your systems. Can you check the piece of paper to check for correctness. A QR code unreadable to humans would not do.
ReplyDeleteStanley - in Illinois, I believe the printout piece of paper doesn't reproduce the entire ballot with all candidates (the entire ballot appears electronically on the touchscreen), but does show the voter's choice for each race.
DeleteAs long as the voter can check that the printout is correct. It's a good system.
DeleteI am all for efforts, whether led by Republicans, Democrats or independents, to make it harder to get ballot initiatives onto ballots, and to make it harder to pass them. Better yet, just ban them. The United States is a republican democracy: we elect representatives to legislate. Plebiscites are a different, and worse, form of government.
ReplyDeleteSince I grew up in California, which has always had ballot initiatives, and have spent most of my adult life in Maryland, which also has them, I am all in favor or them. At times it’s the only way the people can fight the machinations of political parties. The GOP obviously doesn’t want the people to have a direct voice in the political realm - which means they fear the outcome if the people can speak directly.
DeleteSince 2017, at least 10 states — Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Maine, Missouri, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Dakota and Utah — have considered increasing the threshold for at least some ballot initiatives to pass. All these efforts were led by Republican legislators.
It’s equal opportunity. In Maryland, a high tax state dominated by the Democrats, several ballot initiatives to hold the line on taxes have been successful- supported even by Democratic voters against the party’s wishes.
I might agree to fewer plebiscites if we had ranked choice voting to make the choosing of representatives more democratic and to break the two party stranglehold. Right now, plebiscites are the only way to penetrate the hard shell of entrenched power. When I look at the elected representatives we have, I want to cry.
DeleteYes, we have them here in Illinois, too, a state which arguably is bluer than Maryland. They often fail here, too, against the party's wishes. And against mine :-). I'm thinking specifically of local initiatives to raise taxes or issue bonds to support libraries and schools. These often fail because of opposition by anti-tax activists, to the detriment of public services.
DeleteThe two parties are going to give us Biden vs. Trump, so 'nuff said.
DeleteI'd love to be an independent election judge, but in our county, one must choose a party affiliation in order to serve.
The Ohio initiative by the republicans is an attempt to make it harder to empower the people themselves to decide whether or not they want abortion to be legal in Ohio. The Republicans have learned that even in Red states, the voters favor legal abortion.
DeleteJim
DeleteI'm thinking specifically of local initiatives to raise taxes or issue bonds to support libraries and schools. These often fail because of opposition by anti-tax activists, to the detriment of public services.
That’s not a problem here. We don’t have villages and towns deciding these things. It’s generally the county governments. The problem here isn’t getting funding for libraries and schools, it’s gold plating them, especially when renovating. Our local library closed just before Covid hit - to be renovated. It is a 16,000 sq ft building on one floor. The cost was more than $3 million. I finally went in person a couple of months ago, after they reopened. They spent all of Covid time renovating. I didn’t know what to expect for $3 million, but it wasn’t what I found. There was a new floor - some kind of fake wood looking stuff. They had removed a small quiet room - it had a half dozen study carrels and they were seldom used. So a bit more floor space for bookcases. They rearranged the computer area but didn’t add computers. They added a couple of more self- checkout scanners. They retained two small quiet rooms, each with a door and a computer. They had always been there so no need to build them.
So….what on earth cost $3 million? The floors? The amount they spend to renovate schools is mind- boggling. So around here even the Democrats often become tax activists!
The county is always building new schools somewhere as it has grown in population. Current there are 209 public schools.
"Gold plated", sounds like what happened here. They spent 46 million on a new library cum city building which occupies an entire block and is three stories. Took two years to build, they demolished the old building and put the interim library in an old unused city building. Had to downsize the book collection to practically nothing to fit the space. Hope they have enough money left to buy some more books to put in the fancy building.
DeleteThat definitely sounds a lot like what they do here.
DeleteOff topic but here is my cousin's daughter in Draper, Utah after a storm flooded the finished basement level if her house. Called a one in five hundred year rainstorm.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.ksl.com/article/50702955/draper-family-cleans-up-home-filled-with-mud-after-storm-came-blasting-through-basement?utm_source=email_share&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=news&utm_content=utah&fbclid=IwAR0M8nmFFENf1I5ov4eLmC3R3-1quZnrVz4XDiZniS25Sj1AbIBfjI2hddA
Suspiciously a climate change induced problem. I expected my Florida relatives to suffer the effects, but not my Utah relatives.
The way candidates fund their campaigns these days is another argument against encroaching populism in our politics. The idea that Citizens United represents a threat to our democracy is almost as quaint nowadays as the notion that railroads are accelerating the pace of life too quickly. These days, it is not bazillionaire donors who are dominating politics, but rather waves and hosts of small-dollar donors. Perhaps Bernie Sanders made this viable, but Donald Trump's organization seemingly deserves credit for perfecting the technique.
ReplyDeleteThe problem is that the way to motivate many small-time donors to give a few dollars is to get them and keep them lathered up in perpetual states of rage and panic. By way of comparison, the Kochs and Soroses of the world are rational donors targeting specific policy outcomes and sensibly looking for the best candidate who is likely to win and thus give them a return on their "investment".
The small-dollar donation approach is sufficiently baked into the political process now that the GOP has made it a criterion for appearing on its debate stage starting later this month that the candidate have received donations from a sufficiently broad spectrum of donors. In order to qualify to debate, marginal candidates (everyone except Trump and DeSantis) are spending millions of dollars to induce (and bribe) people to make donations. At least one is offering gift cards to any voter who will make a small donation.
What an elitist establishment political viewpoint! Keep the rich guys in power because they do less harm than the people would do if they were inflamed by a demagogue (who like Trump is usually from the margins of the rich).
DeleteWhat would Jesus think of such politics? For sure, he did not think very much of the rich, not simply the ultra-rich but even the common garden variety of rich men. But he certainly was not out there to incite the poor again the rich. Rather he valued the poor in their poverty. He was constantly finding dignity, value and worth in the people who were on the margins of society.
Of course, American politics was established on the basis of money rather than aristocracy, and on the competition to rise to the top of a meritocracy of money rather than ancestry. Its republican form of government represented the wealthy rather than the common people. Our struggle has been to get beyond the theoretical opportunity of equality for the common man to become wealthy to a real equality of dignity and worth not based on money.
Of course, today the wealthy are buying politicians and the media to communicate to voters. Obama was actually the guy who discover small donor, except for him it was the smaller rich donor since Hilary had gotten all the ultra-rich. But that is not what won the presidency for Obama; it was the young people who had no money. Bernie improved that strategy by rejecting the wealthy and going to the small donor. But again, he was successful because he mobilized the young people who had no money. Both had genuine grass roots movements.
Not so Trump, he was a media darling who knew how to keep his face on TV, and in the course of that endeavor found out how to gain an enduring (but minority) audience whom he could manipulate against all the establishments which he (and they) hated because they despised him and them.
Good analysis, Jack!
DeleteThis country was designed to favor elites. That's why it's a republic. In the beginning, in some states, men without land weren't allowed to vote. That's never been shaken off. The problem is that these elites don't seem to be wiser or smarter than anyone else. They have prejudice and narrow vision. Edward Bernays, the "Father of Public Relations", thought most people were emotional dummies, easy to manipulate, and SHOULD be manipulated. So what was his big accomplishment? Getting women to smoke. Eventually, elites become so detached from the problems of the many that real, ordinary people are abstractions to them.
Delete"What an elitist establishment political viewpoint! Keep the rich guys in power because they do less harm than the people would do if they were inflamed by a demagogue (who like Trump is usually from the margins of the rich). What would Jesus think of such politics?"
DeleteI don't think it's elitist. I just think it's American. It's the basis for representative government: rather than governing directly as the Athenians did, we elect representatives to govern on our behalf. Part and parcel of that is to exercise their own judgment on policies and problems.
The populist style gave us Donald Trump. And it may give us Trump again. That is a very bad thing. It's far from clear that the American people, directly, would stop a populist like Trump from taking the White House again.
In the event of that disastrous circumstance of Trump's re-election, do you know who might stand athwart Trump? The elitist Senate, that august (read: elite) institution that was specifically constructed to be shielded from the same popular passions that would elect Trump. Certainly, if Democrats manage to maintain their majority in the Senate (which may not happen, but don't underestimate Trump's ability to screw up down-ballot races for his party), the Senate certainly will be able to block some of Trump's worst policies. Even if Republicans gain a narrow majority, the Senate will serve as somewhat of a brake.
As for what Jesus would do, as far as I know he did not articulate a particular form of government. I am pretty sure he would tell our millionaire senators and representatives (and president) to work for the common good. And it's noteworthy that, within a few years of his death, a hierarchical governance structure for the antecedents of the church already was forming, with the surviving apostles in Jerusalem in charge of the nascent movement. His own followers apparently didn't see the Jesus movement as an exercise in popular governance. (But it's arguable that they did see it as an exercise in synodality.)
Apparently African Americans are very concerned about the vote also.
ReplyDeletehttps://religionnews.com/2023/08/08/for-some-black-faith-leaders-ohios-issue-1-is-bigger-than-abortion/
Sounds like no matter where one falls on the political spectrum, there would be something to like or dislike about this bill (is it a bill?). Depends on if you want to change the status quo or keep it. In this day of razor thin margins on basically any electoral issue, it seems to assume an exaggerated importance.
ReplyDeletePreliminary results are in for Ohio:
ReplyDeleteThe early voting results for Lake County; 4,814 ( 29%) Yes; 11,719 (71%) No. That was about the ration of yard signs around my area.
With 21% of the votes in, NYTimes is reporting 70% NO, and Yes (30%).
If the vote in November is going to be 70% for abortion rights and 30% against, the passing of this issue would not have prevented it.
Again, I think the Democrats need to analyze the results of this election, and the November issue county by county to plot their way to undoing the Republican dominance in recent years.
Jack, you said something in your update that Democrats may have a better issue in portraying Republicans as trying to impose their will on others. I think that would be better and more honest than making it all about abortion and making the Democratic party the Party of Abortion. Because that is a toxic look and makes a too-easy target for the right wing.
DeleteI think abortion is a complicated topic. But once it has been legal, it seems that most Americans don't want the option to go away - regardless of whether it's likely to directly impact their lives. That's my take on what is playing out in Ohio. It's what played out already in Michigan and Kansas. It played out in state Supreme Court elections in Wisconsin last year.
DeleteIt's like the Ring of Power in Lord of the Rings. Most of us can't summon the will and courage to eradicate the temptation - there is a part of us which says, It may come in handy some day.
It’s a matter of personal beliefs about when personhood is present in a developing embryo or fetus, so in a religiously pluralistic country, it’s right that women have a choice. Many would not choose it for themselves, but they don’t feel that the government should play God since the morality of early abortion is truly very ambiguous. You may think that all who favor choice secretly believe that abortion is always wrong but might choose it in order not to derail their own lives, but the fact is, most who are pro- choice genuinely don’t agree that pre- viability abortion “kills a baby”. An embryo is not a baby, and most abortions are done during the embryo stage. Most Americans have also always indicated that they would like limits - 12-15 weeks plus exemptons for saving the life of the mother, and victims of rape and incest.
DeleteThat said - I personally feel sad that this issue is the one that has so mobilized voters to be pro- active in coming out to vote. They are motivated in fighting the bans - in getting initiatives on the ballot to protect choice, and fighting the manipulations being used by the GOP to thwart the wishes of the voters.
I wish they would also be motivated to come out to vote to fight the Republican culture wars, to support action on climate change, and especially to thwart the authoritarian direction the GOP is moving towards. The MAGA movement is working overtime to obtain the ability to limit all of our freedoms. They no longer even try to hide this ambition. This is especially likely to happen if trump is elected and has a compliant GOP dominated Congress.
"I personally feel sad that this issue is the one that has so mobilized voters to be pro- active in coming out to vote." Me too. Like you say, the bigger issue is the authoritarianism which the GOP seems too be lurching towards.
Delete