Issue 1, Ohio’s Citizens Not Politicians constitutional amendment aimed at wresting control of drawing legislative district maps away from elected officials, was defeated Tuesday night.
AP called the race around 11:30 p.m. With 90% of precincts reporting, the issue failed with 54% voting no.
It was a win for the Ohio Republican Party and Ohio’s Republican Secretary of State Frank LaRose, who has been accused of putting his thumb on the scale when he led the Ohio Ballot Board to change the ballot language of Issue 1.
Ohio Works, the anti-Issue 1 committee, declared victory shortly after 10 p.m.
“Ohio voters spoke loudly and clearly on Issue 1," said Ohio Works senior advisor Bob Paduchik in a written statement, “Ohio’s constitution is not for sale to foreign billionaires and out of state left-wing special interest groups.”
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Supporters of the ballot measure argued that LaRose’s tampering with the ballot language gave the wrong impression of the ballot issue, making it sound as if Citizens Not Politicians would enshrine partisan gerrymandering in the state constitution.
Proponents argued the original ballot language made it quite clear that the ballot issue would do just the opposite by putting an end to partisan gerrymandering.
Issue 1 would have established a 15-member citizens’ commission with five Democrats, five Republicans and five independents, who would be charged with coming up with new maps. The amendment said no present or former elected officials, no party officials, and no lobbyists were eligible to serve.
In the waning days of the campaign, proponents of Issue 1 were saying the complicated ballot language might lead voters to be confused about what a “no” and a “yes” vote would mean.
Last month, backers of Issue 1 went to the Ohio Supreme Court asking that the lengthy ballot summary language written by LaRose be thrown out, arguing that it was deliberately deceptive and aimed at turning voters against the ballot issue. The lawsuit claimed that the ballot language Ohioans saw on their ballots Tuesday “may be the most biased, inaccurate, deceptive and unconstitutional ballot language ever adopted by the Ohio Ballot Board.”
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Not surprisingly, the Republican majority on the Ohio Supreme Court rejected the lawsuit, except for ordering a couple of minor tweaks to LaRose’s ballot language.
A mid-October poll from Bowling Green State University suggested that likely Ohio voters weren't buying what the Ohio Republican Party was selling.
That was true of a lot of GOP voters, too.
The BGSU/YouGov poll, conducted on the web among 1,000 likely Ohio Voters from Oct. 12-21, showed 56% in favor of Issue 1, with 32% opposed and 12% not sure.
That turned out to be way off the mark.
Last year, Citizens Not Politicians was spending its early money to qualify for the November ballot, including a massive volunteer effort to gather more than 413,000 valid signatures from Ohioans. The volunteer army, which seemingly could be found on every street corner in Ohio, turned in petitions with over 713,000 signatures. About 535,000 of them were found to be valid — far more than Citizens Not Politician needed.
Citizens Not politicians had an enormous fundraising advantage over opponents of the ballot issue. Through mid-October, the pro-Issue 1 committee had spent $37 million, with $25 million going to TV advertising.
By comparison, Ohio Works, an anti-Issue 1 committee driven by Republican and business interests in Ohio and Washington, raised $5.6 million and spent $4.5 million on TV ads.
The Ohio Republican Party was sending its supporters multiple daily messages via social media urging a "no" vote, along with a message on the slate cards Republicans passed out at Ohio’s polling places Tuesday.
LaRose, the state’s chief elections officer, was not the only Ohio Republican elected official banging the drum against Issue 1. Nearly every statewide GOP elected official joined the chorus, including the lame-duck governor, Mike DeWjne.
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DeWine has even said that with or without passage of Issue 1, he plans to ask the Republican supermajority in the legislature to consider the Iowa plan for drawing district lines — a system that includes citizen participation, but would leave the ultimate decision on maps in the hands of elected officials,
“What I’m not going to say is ‘never, never, never will I ever do that,' I’m not going to say it,” DeWine said in July when asked if he would still push for the Iowa plan if Issue 1 passed. “What I hope happens is that we can defeat this in the fall and I will push and I will do whatever I can to lead so that we end up with something that’s better than what we have now.”
That is unlikely to happen now.
