Loveland Magazine

LOVELAND MAGAZINE

News and Events from the Loveland, Ohio Area

Without fear or favor

Since 2004

Tag: Ohio Ballot Board

Ohio property tax repeal campaign preparing to collect signatures

Ballot petition signature collection. Photo by WEWS.

By: Nick Evans – Ohio Capital Journal

In a short meeting, the Ohio Ballot Board signed off on a proposed constitutional amendment abolishing property taxes in the state. The only question before the board was whether the proposal contains one or multiple amendments.

Supporters contend lawmakers have been unwilling or unable to make significant enough changes as property taxes climb. But critics warn eliminating that revenue stream could cripple important services like schools and first responders.

Campaign reaction

GET THE MORNING HEADLINES.

The day after the ballot board meeting, Beth Blackmarr described her mood as ‘busy.’

“Busy, busy, busy,” she said, “I mean, here we go — we’ve got to hit the ground running.”

Blackmarr is part of the organization Citizens for Property Tax Reform which is leading the repeal campaign. With the ballot board’s decision, the group is now able to start gathering signatures to appear on the ballot.

To go before voters, they’ll need 10% of the electoral turnout from the last governor’s race (just shy of 415,000). Additionally, in 44 of Ohio’s counties, they’ll need signatures from at least 5% of the governor’s race turnout. In practice, campaigns turn in hundreds of thousands more signatures than necessary to make up for any rejections.

Blackmarr said they want to start collecting “as soon as humanly possible,” and work could begin as early as next week. Asked whether they’d work with paid circulators, she just laughed.

“Many of us are youthful at heart, but senior citizens that are just really working out of our pockets,” she said. “There’s no big money backing this at all. It’s all volunteer.”

The merits

Blackmarr argued Ohio’s current property tax system is broken. She points to other states like New Jersey and Texas that have far more generous initiatives to keep seniors, vets and the disabled in their homes.

“You can’t have senior citizens who have paid for their homes — fully paid for — having to move out because they can’t afford property tax,” she insisted.

Blackmarr contends those kinds of protections are low-hanging fruit. Lawmakers have had continual warnings and “ample opportunity” to act. Instead, she argued, they’ve dithered with changes at the margins.

“I suspect it’s because they built a wobbly tower of property tax law over these decades,” she said, “and they’re afraid to pull one of the blocks out, because they’re afraid the whole thing’s gonna come tumbling down.”

That ‘tumbling down’ is exactly the concern many critics voice about the plan. The most recent annual report from the Ohio Department of Taxation puts 2023 property tax collections at about $18.5 billion. That’s an enormous amount of funding to just disappear. It’s roughly double the amount reported for state income taxes, and a billion more than Ohio’s sales and use tax.

Spread evenly, it would cost every single Ohioan more than $1,500 to make up that gap in funding.

Blackmarr argued repeal will just force lawmakers “to come up with an alternative.” But that’s a big ask — particularly for Republicans allergic to tax increases.

Still she’s right about dramatic increases in property taxes. The same Department of Taxation report shows assessed values climbing almost 40% in five years while tax collections have risen more than 21%.

Legislature’s role

In a statement following the ballot board decision, House minority leader Allison Russo said the proposal “clearly demonstrates frustration by Ohioans on this issue” and blamed lawmakers for failing to act.

“However, this particular initiative concerns me because while it eliminates the property tax, it doesn’t explain how we’ll replace the funds that support police, fire departments, public education, and other critical services,” she said.

Russo argued Democrats have signed on to bipartisan legislation providing direct relief but Republican leaders haven’t prioritized those bills.

Blackmarr acknowledged that as their campaign gains steam, pressure will grow on lawmakers to pass legislation or propose their own ballot measure to undercut their efforts.

“At the end of the day it goes to the voters,” she said. “They have to make the decision for themselves.”

And if lawmakers’ intervention means voters have to choose between competing visions, that’s just fine with Blackmarr.

“Wouldn’t that be nice, you know?” she said.

Follow Ohio Capital Journal Reporter Nick Evans on X or on Bluesky.

Nick Evans

Nick Evans has spent the past seven years reporting for NPR member stations in Florida and Ohio. He got his start in Tallahassee, covering issues like redistricting, same sex marriage and medical marijuana. Since arriving in Columbus in 2018, he has covered everything from city council to football. His work on Ohio politics and local policing have been featured numerous times on NPR.

Ohio Capital Journal is part of States Newsroom, the nation’s largest state-focused nonprofit news organization.

MORE FROM AUTHOR

May 16, 2025
Ohio Supreme Court approves redistricting summary with only two small revisions

The Gavel outside the Supreme Court of the State of Ohio, September 20, 2023, at 65 S. Front Street, Columbus, Ohio. (Photo by Graham Stokes for Ohio Capital Journal. Republish photo only with original article.)

Republican majority rejects 6 of 8 changes requested by anti-gerrymandering advocates proposing the amendment

By: Susan Tebben – Ohio Capital Journal

The Ohio Supreme Court largely approved ballot summary language for November’s Issue 1 anti-gerrymandering amendment on Monday, sending the language back to the Ohio Ballot Board for two revisions.

A 4-3 Republican majority rejected 6 of 8 revisions requested by anti-gerrymandering advocates, while Democratic justices on the court said that was inadequate and that the summary needed “a nearly complete redrafting.”

The summary was written by Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose, who opposes the amendment, and approved 3-2 by the Ohio Ballot Board, which is chaired by LaRose. LaRose is also a member of the current Ohio Redistricting Commission that the amendment proposes to replace with citizen commissioners.

While the court allowed most of the summary language in a decision released Monday night, it ordered the board to include in the summary “language that accurately conveys” that “the public would have the right to express itself to the new redistricting commission” under the terms of the amendment, written by anti-gerrymandering coalition Citizens Not Politicians.

“Distilled, the proposed amendment would provide the rights of public participation in the redistricting process through meetings, hearings and an online public portal, and would forbid communication with the commission members and staff outside the public-meeting and portal context,” the court wrote.

The other change ordered by the court compels the ballot board to make it clear that judicial review of the amendment is not limited to a “proportionality standard.”

The current seven-member Ohio Redistricting Commission includes the Ohio House Speaker and Ohio Senate President, along with the governor, secretary of state, auditor of state, and two minority party legislative leaders.

If approved by the voters, the amendment would replace the politician commission with the Ohio Citizens Redistricting Commission, which would have 15 members made up of five Republican citizens, five Democratic citizens, and five independents.

The summary language does not change the text of the proposed redistricting reform or what the amendment would actually do; it’s just the summary language used to describe the amendment on voter ballots.

An average of Ohio voter preferences over the last 10 years including 2022 show a 56-43 Republican-to-Democratic preference of Ohio voters, but Republicans control supermajorities of 67 out of 99 Ohio House seats and 26 out of 33 Ohio Senate seats. Ohio voters were forced to vote under unconstitutionally gerrymandered districts in 2022 after Republicans on the Ohio Redistricting Commission ran out of time to produce constitutional maps and a split federal court ruled the maps that were declared gerrymandered by a bipartisan majority on the then-Ohio Supreme Court had to be used.

Republican politicians on the Ohio Redistricting Commission battled with the bipartisan court majority for nearly two years over the maps in 2021 and 2022, with five Statehouse maps and two U.S. Congressional district maps being rejected as unconstitutionally gerrymandered. The swing vote in those cases, Republican Supreme Court Justice Maureen O’Connor, was forced to retire due to age. She is now leading the Citizens Not Politicians amendment effort.

One provision challenged by Citizens Not Politicians but allowed by the court states the 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 and legislative and congressional districts.”

Citizens Not Politicians attorneys argued mention of the vote margin and method were not necessary, and the court said challengers laid out arguments that the language was “tantamount to an argument against adopting the proposed amendment.”

But the court majority found that “at worst” including the vote margin and method could be “questioned on relevance grounds” not on “accuracy grounds.”

“This information is factually accurate, and relators have not shown that the information would ‘mislead, deceive or defraud the voters,’” the court majority stated in their decision.

The court also allowed language added by state Sen. Theresa Gavarone during the Aug. 16 board meeting, which states the amendment would “establish a new taxpayer-funded commission of appointees required to gerrymander the boundaries of state legislative and congressional districts to favor the two largest political parties in the state of Ohio.”

Justices dismissed Citizens Not Politicians arguments that the language leads voters to believe the amendment would “require gerrymandering,” despite the fact that the amendment states it would ban partisan gerrymandering.

The court said “the fact that the proposed amendment announces that it would ‘ban partisan gerrymandering,’ … is of little assistance in ascertaining whether the ballot language’s use of the word ‘gerrymander’ is improper.”

The court explored various definitions of “gerrymandering” in coming to its decision, finding that the requirement the amendment uses to dictate the drawing of Statehouse and congressional maps “falls within the meaning of ‘gerrymander.’”

“Because the board’s use of the term ‘gerrymander’ is consistent with dictionary definitions and how the United States Supreme Court has used the term, it does not mislead, deceive or defraud voters,” the decision stated.

The court did not order any changes to the ballot title, though that was included in the changes requested by Citizens Not Politicians.

“We conclude that the secretary did not err in crafting the ballot title,” the court wrote.

While all the justices agreed to the changes, they were split on how many changes needed to be made.

In his concurrence, Justice Patrick Fischer claimed “gerrymandering, though in a bipartisan manner, is absolutely ‘required under the proposed amendment,” and that the state constitution “would dictate” that independent and third-party voters would have their voice “removed from Ohio’s political world.”

Justice Michael Donnelly agreed to the decision that ordered changes to the ballot language, but “vehemently” disagreed “that those corrections are even remotely adequate to prevent the ballot language as a whole from being misleading.”

He and Justice Melody Stewart joined Justice Jennifer Brunner in an opinion that agreed to the changes, but said the majority opinion “reflects an abject failure of this court to perform an honest constitutional check on the ballot board’s work.”

“We should be requiring a nearly complete redrafting of what is perhaps the most stunningly stilted ballot language that Ohio voters have ever seen,” Brunner wrote.

She went on to say the ballot board language “is tantamount to performing a virtual chewing of food before the voters can taste it for themselves to decide whether they like it or not.”

While the summary language will appear on ballots in the November general election, the actual language of the proposed amendment will be posted in polling places.

The Ohio Secretary of State’s office said the ballot board will meet to make the revisions on Wednesday morning.

Reactions

Citizens Not Politicians released a statement saying they disagreed with “much of the decision” but agreed with the court’s “repudiation of the politicians on the ballot board for violating the Ohio Constitution.”

Ballot Board chair Frank LaRose released his own statement, calling the court’s decision “a huge win for Ohio voters, who deserve an honest explanation of what they’re being asked to decide.”

Former Ohio Redistricting Commission co-chair and Auditor of State Keith Faber said the court was “thoughtful in its approach and they got it right.”

Senate President Matt Huffman and Gov. Mike DeWine have both spoken against the measure publicly.

Faber’s fellow co-chair Senate Minority Leader Nickie Antonio said while the decision “enables Ohioans to make a more informed choice by addressing some of the most deceptive language, other misleading and argumentative language still remains.”

Susan Tebben

Susan Tebben is an award-winning journalist with a decade of experience covering Ohio news, including courts and crime, Appalachian social issues, government, education, diversity and culture. She has worked for The Newark Advocate, The Glasgow (KY) Daily Times, The Athens Messenger, and WOUB Public Media. She has also had work featured on National Public Radio.

Ohio Capital Journal is part of States Newsroom, the nation’s largest state-focused nonprofit news organization.

MORE FROM AUTHOR

Sep 17, 2024
Citizens Not Politicians: Ohio Supreme Court should tell ballot board to ‘start over’

A July 1 rally of Citizens Not Politicians at the Ohio Statehouse. (Photo by Graham Stokes for Ohio Capital Journal. Only republish photo with original story.)

By Susan Tebben – Ohio Capital Journal

Advocates pushing an anti-gerrymandering amendment in Ohio to remove politicians from mapmaking in favor of a citizen commission said the state’s ballot board should be forced to start over on summary language for the November proposal.

Attorneys said the proposed amendment would ban partisan gerrymandering “by setting forth robust redistricting criteria to ensure fair maps, selection standards to ensure the new commission’s impartiality and accountability, and transparency measures to ensure public information and participation,” according to a merit brief filed Thursday.

But they say the summary language written by Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose and adopted by a majority of the Ohio Ballot Board on Aug. 16 “would have voters believe exactly the opposite.”

The Ohio Ballot Board decides what language voters will see on their ballots when they go to vote, but that summary language does not change what the proposed amendment would actually do. In a 3-2 vote, the Ohio Ballot Board approved summary language that supporters of the anti-gerrymandering amendment say is intentionally misleading and biased against the amendment. They have filed a lawsuit with the Ohio Supreme Court opposing the summary language.

The merit brief is part of that lawsuit filed by Citizens Not Politicians, the group who has led the charge for the anti-gerrymandering amendment. The lawsuit asks the state’s highest court to order changes to the summary language made by the ballot board, chaired by Ohio Sec. of State LaRose.

The proposed amendment signed by more than 535,000 verified Ohio voters would replace the current Ohio Redistricting Commission made up of seven politicians, including LaRose, with a 15-member citizens commission made up of Republicans, Democrats, and independents.

Citizens Not Politicians Attorney Don McTigue pointed to a change made by state Sen. Theresa Gavarone, R-Bowling Green, during the ballot board’s meeting, in which she changed the word “manipulate” to “gerrymander” when describing the methods of redrawing congressional and statehouse district lines within the amendment.

“Earlier this year, Attorney General Dave Yost certified that the Amendment’s summary was ‘fair and truthful,’” McTigue wrote. “That summary states, consistent with the amendment’s plain text, that the amendment would ‘ban partisan gerrymandering.’”

The brief emphasizes what the original complaint filed on Aug. 19 asserted, which is that the opinion of whether or not the proposed amendment “offers better policy than the existing system” should be left up to the voters in November.

“The Ballot Board’s job is to provide ballot language that gives voters the facts so that they can make up their own minds,” the brief states.

That language should follow constitutional rules dictating the language and the title, something the LaRose language doesn’t do, according to Citizens Not Politicians.

The Ohio Constitution states ballot language “shall properly identify the substance of the proposal to be voted upon,” and the language “shall not be held invalid unless it is such as to mislead, deceive or defraud the voters.”

The Ohio Revised Code says the secretary of state or the ballot board is required to “give a true and impartial statement of the measures in such language that the ballot title shall not be likely to create prejudice for or against the measure.”

The title of the redistricting amendment, as approved by the board majority, is “to create an appointed redistricting commission not elected by or subject to removal by the voters of the state.”

“The Ballot Board’s attempt to put a thumb on the scale against the amendment is a thumb in the eye of Ohioans who expect their representatives on the Board to carry out their mandatory duties impartially,” McTigue wrote.

The Ohio Attorney General has filed an answer to the complaint, but the filing has already received criticism from the Democratic members of the ballot board, who say they were not consulted on the legal document, nor have they been given outside counsel to speak on their behalf, despite the fact that the the two Democrats, state Sen. Paula Hicks-Hudson and state Rep. Terrence Upchurch, voted against the ballot board language.

Hicks-Hudson and Upchurch ended up filing a brief themselves on Wednesday night, in which they did not fight arguments that the ballot board “as a whole violated its constitutional duty,” and said the “chosen ballot title is inaccurate, biased, argumentative and misrepresents the proposed amendment’s procedures for removing commissioners who fail to comply with their duties.”

McTigue said the court “has never hesitated to strictly enforce the legal requirements for the text that appears on the ballot, in recognition of Ohioans’ century-old right to amend their constitution and laws through direct democracy.”

“The court should do the same here, by directing (the ballot board) to start over and adopt ballot language and a ballot title that are consistent with their clear legal duties.”

The Ohio Supreme Court was asked just last year to make changes to a ballot board-approved summary, in that case for the reproductive rights constitutional amendment that would eventually pass with 57% of the vote.

The coalition that sued took issue with ballot language that used the phrases “unborn child” and “reproductive medical treatment,” along with using the phrase “the citizens of the State of Ohio” rather than just “the State of Ohio” when speaking of the prohibitions against “indirectly burdening, penalizing or prohibiting abortion.”

In a similar way to the redistricting amendment author’s arguments that the LaRose language could mislead voters as to the intentions of the proposed amendment, the lawsuit against the reproductive rights amendment summary said it could mislead voters about the rights the amendment created, the restrictions in the amendment, discretion when it comes to fetal viability and state regulation of the amendment.

The Ohio Supreme Court said they agreed “that the ballot language approved by the ballot board misleads the average voter about whose actions the amendment restricts.”

“But the ballot language is not defective in any other respect,” the court wrote.

The court asked the ballot board only to change the phrase “citizens of the State of Ohio” to “State of Ohio,” and approved the rest.

Justice Michael O’Donnelly wrote in his concurring opinion that it was “unfortunate that advocacy seems to have infiltrated a process that is meant to be objective and neutral.”

Susan Tebben

Susan Tebben is an award-winning journalist with a decade of experience covering Ohio news, including courts and crime, Appalachian social issues, government, education, diversity and culture. She has worked for The Newark Advocate, The Glasgow (KY) Daily Times, The Athens Messenger, and WOUB Public Media. She has also had work featured on National Public Radio.

Ohio Capital Journal is part of States Newsroom, the nation’s largest state-focused nonprofit news organization.

MORE FROM AUTHOR

Aug 31, 2024
Ohio Ballot Board approves controversial language to describe anti-gerrymandering amendment

Attorney Don McTigue speaks before the Ohio Ballot Board on Friday, Aug. 16, to discuss summary language that will appear before voters in November on the redistricting reform amendment. (Photo by Susan Tebben, Ohio Capital Journal.)

By: Susan Tebben – Ohio Capital Journal

The Ohio Ballot Board passed controversial language written by Secretary of State Frank LaRose on Friday as the ballot summary that will explain to voters November’s anti-gerrymandering amendment. Supporters of the amendment have called the language deceptive and unconstitutional and have said they would challenge it in court.

The board met on Friday morning to determine the summary that will appear on individual ballots, the final words Ohioans will see before they choose to accept or deny the measure.

The proposed amendment would remove Ohio politicians from the process of drawing Statehouse and congressional district maps, and instead create a citizen commission to draw maps made up of Republicans, Democrats, and independents.

The board was led by LaRose in passing his preferred ballot language for the amendment 3 to 2, with both Democratic members of the board, state Sen. Paula Hicks-Hudson and state Rep. Terrence Upchurch, voting against the approval. LaRose is one of the politicians who sits on the current Ohio Redistricting Commission, and one of the Republican members who repeatedly voted for maps that were declared to be unconstitutionally gerrymandered by a bipartisan majority on the Ohio Supreme Court before they were nevertheless forced on voters by a federal court in 2022 after time to draw constitutional maps had run out.

One amendment was made to the LaRose language Friday, brought by board member and Republican state Rep. Theresa Gavarone. That change takes a paragraph that says the commission will be “required to manipulate the boundaries of state legislative and congressional districts…” and changes it to say the commission will be “required to gerrymander” those districts, a change that elicited shocked scoffs from the crowd gathered at the board meeting.

The ballot measure seeks to create a 15-citizen redistricting commission to decide Statehouse and congressional voting districts throughout the state, which authors of the proposed amendment from the group Citizens Not Politicians say will be done in public meetings and include opportunities for public input as the process goes on.

Citizens Not Politicians submitted its own proposed summary for ballot board consideration, and it said commission members would be non-elected citizens who “who have demonstrated the absence of any disqualifying conflicts of interest and who have shown an ability to conduct the redistricting process with impartiality, integrity and fairness.”

Democrats attempted to approve the language provided by Citizens Not Politicians, but the motion was voted down 3 to 2, supported only by the Democratic members of the board.

Hicks-Hudson also tried to amend the LaRose-written language to replace it with the Citizens Not Politicians language, but that motion was also struck down.

“This is a dangerous proposal that threatens the integrity of the vote on Issue 1,” Hicks-Hudson said of the Secretary of State language.

With the title that says the amendment would “create an appointed redistricting commission not elected by or subject to removal by the voters of the state,” the language approved by the board speaks of the elimination of “the longstanding ability of Ohio citizens to hold their representatives accountable for establishing fair state legislative and congressional districts,” and the purpose to “repeal constitutional protections against gerrymandering approved by nearly three-quarters of Ohio electors participating in the statewide elections of 2015 and 2018.”

Attorney Don McTigue made the point that it’s impossible for citizens to hold their elected lawmakers responsible by voting in gerrymandered districts — which are by definition guaranteed to ensure the gerrymandered lawmakers’ victory.

“The problem is that the whole accountability argument only works when you have fair districts, not when you have the severely gerrymandered districts that you have in this state,” McTigue said during the public comment portion of the board meeting.

McTigue, who represents the creators and supporters of the ballot initiative, requested the use of the language Citizens Not Politicians submitted rather than the Secretary of State language, citing Ohio law dictating ballot language and title.

“The (SOS) language is stunning in it being false and misleading, and it is unabashed in terms of its prejudicial language,” McTigue said. “There’s no reasonable person who … after reading that language could conclude that it is an honest attempt to provide fair ballot language that allows voters to make an independent decision about the issue.”

He cited the 2015 and 2018 redistricting measures, in which the ballot board “distilled the most important aspects of the proposed redistricting changes to the Ohio Constitution.”

The language, which LaRose said in the ballot board meeting was written by him “with the input of my team,” was harshly criticized by the measure’s leaders and supporters leading up to the meeting as misleading and biased language that violated constitutional rules.

LaRose defended the language in his summary that said the amendment 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,” saying the language might unduly shield members of the new commission from public scrutiny.

McTigue pushed back, saying context is important in reading the summary, which is why he didn’t support the Secretary of State language.

“I think that something can be misleading or deceptive if you don’t have the full context,” McTigue said.

The Secretary of State’s language was released Thursday, giving board members and McTigue little time to read through it, something that was discussed in the meeting.

“I think the record should be really clear that 24 hours isn’t necessarily a lot of time to deal with 900-some words that really, I’m not sure fit in to the confines of what the law requires and … making a really thoughtful evaluation of the language,” said Hicks-Hudson.

Gavarone said the 900 words in the LaRose language “accurately explain what this is,” and noted the details on the process of redistricting were not included in the Citizens Not Politicians proposed summary language.

LaRose also touched on the selection process for commission members in the amendment, saying the longest part of his summary language was explaining that process.

“The way that you end up on the current commission (the Ohio Redistricting Commission) is pretty straightforward,” LaRose said. “(The proposed process) is a bit of a Rube Goldberg device that involves a lot of twists and turns … it’s a complex process.”

He called the five-bullet summary proposed by the CNP “wholly inadequate” and said it could not “identify the substance” of the lengthy amendment.

Noted opponents of the ballot measure include Senate President Matt Huffman and Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine, both of whom made public cases against the measure. Huffman said the effort would bring about an onslaught of legal trouble for the state, and DeWine said the focus on proportionality in the rules of the redistricting process would cause more problems than supporters claim it would fix, and “Ohio would actually end up with a system that mandates, that compels map-drawers to produce gerrymandered districts,” he said at a recent press conference.

Supporters of the amendment have said they will appeal the decision of the Ohio Ballot Board in court, just as the supporters of the ballot measure on reproductive rights did to the Ohio Supreme Court after ballot board approval.

Indeed, immediately after the board meeting adjourned, Citizens Not Politicians pledged to “seek remedy” from the Ohio Supreme Court by filing a brief next week on the language, according to Jen Miller of the League of Women Voters of Ohio.

LaRose did not speak to reporters after the meeting.

Susan Tebben

Susan Tebben is an award-winning journalist with a decade of experience covering Ohio news, including courts and crime, Appalachian social issues, government, education, diversity and culture. She has worked for The Newark Advocate, The Glasgow (KY) Daily Times, The Athens Messenger, and WOUB Public Media. She has also had work featured on National Public Radio.

Ohio Capital Journal is part of States Newsroom, the nation’s largest state-focused nonprofit news organization.

MORE FROM AUTHOR

Aug 17, 2024
Ohio Ballot Board approves anti-gerrymandering amendment. Proposal to go forward

Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose and the rest of the Ohio Ballot Board approve the language of a proposed anti-gerrymandering amendment that is likely to appear on the ballot next year. (Photo by Marty Schladen, Ohio Capital Journal.)

Signature gathering can proceed

BY: MARTY SCHLADEN – Ohio Capital Journal

Activists who hope to pass an anti-gerrymandering amendment to the Ohio Constitution can now begin gathering the nearly half-million signatures on the need to get the measure on the November 2024 ballot after the amendment was approved as a single issue by the Ohio Ballot Board Thursday.

Without much ceremony, the board unanimously agreed that the proposed amendment pertains to a single subject, which is required under Ohio law.

The timing of the approval is significant because early voting on two other measures that are on this year’s ballot started yesterday (Thursday.) Voting has begun on Issue 1, a constitutional amendment protecting abortion rights, and Issue 2, a voter-initiated statute legalizing recreational marijuana. The general election for those measures is Nov. 7.

Activists trying to get the anti-gerrymandering amendment on next year’s ballot have to gather about 415,000 verified signatures of registered voters. And because of a relatively high rate of rejections in previous efforts, they want to gather hundreds of thousands more than that.

They say that having the summary language approved now enables them to do their work at county boards of election, where registered voters are gathering to cast ballots on this year’s abortion and marijuana measures. Petition circulators will also be able to work voter-rich environments near polling places on Election Day.

The approval comes in the nick of time for the activists. Attorney General Dave Yost twice rejected the summary language for the petitions as not adequately reflecting the proposed amendment itself before approving it on its third attempt.

Ohio is regarded as one of the most extremely gerrymandered states in the country. While Donald Trump carried the state with less than 54% of the vote in 2020, Republicans control 68% of seats in the state House, 78% in the state Senate and 66% of the state’s seats in the U.S. House of Representatives.

That’s despite the fact that in 2015 and 2018, amendments to curb extreme partisan gerrymandering in the legislature and Congress both passed with more than 70% of the vote.

After the 2020 Census, the Republican-dominated Redistricting Commission created by those amendments seven times ignored rulings by a bipartisan majority of the Ohio Supreme Court. The rulings said the districts the commission had drawn violated the anti-gerrymandering provisions of those same amendments.

So now Ohio’s lawmakers are representing districts that the state’s highest court has ruled unconstitutional.

Former Chief Justice Maureen O’Connor, a Republican, voted with the court’s three Democrats in ruling that the districts were unconstitutional, but she was forced to retire last year because of her age.

Now she’s working with anti-gerrymandering activists to try to get the latest proposed amendment on next year’s ballot. It attempts to eliminate power grabs when district lines are drawn by creating an independent commission to draw them. That’s in contrast to the current one, which is composed entirely of elected officials.

Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose voted with the other Republicans on the Redistricting Commission in support of the current, unconstitutional maps. In his role as head of the Ballot Board, on Thursday he voted to approve the latest proposed anti-gerrymandering amendment. But he emphasized that it was only a vote on whether its language regarded a single subject.

“I will remind you again that we are not here today to debate the merits of the proposal, but only whether it constitutes a single proposed amendment to the Ohio Constitution,” he said.

But Sen. Paula Hicks-Hudson, D-Toledo, commented on the merits, anyway.

“I’d like to recognize and support the citizens of Ohio who have moved to create a fair opportunity… for their districts to be drawn to reflect all the things Ohioans believe are important and to have a government that is responsive to the citizens of the state of Ohio,” she said.

After that, LaRose again emphasized that the vote wasn’t on the merits of the proposed anti-gerrymandering amendment.

MARTY SCHLADEN

Marty Schladen has been a reporter for decades, working in Indiana, Texas and other places before returning to his native Ohio to work at The Columbus Dispatch in 2017. He’s won state and national journalism awards for investigations into utility regulation, public corruption, the environment, prescription drug spending and other matters.

MORE FROM AUTHOR

Oct 14, 2023
Abortion rights groups ask Ohio Supreme Court to order full amendment text for November ballots

“Gavel,” a sculpture by Andrew F. Scott, outside the Supreme Court of Ohio. Credit: Sam Howzit/Creative Commons.

BY: SUSAN TEBBEN – Ohio Capital Journal

In the fight against Ohio Ballot Board language that reproductive rights groups say is deceptive, an attorney has asked the Ohio Supreme Court to order the full text of the proposed amendment to be used on November ballots.

The Ohio Ballot Board approved language last month for voters to see on their ballots that took out specific details of the amendment, such as protections for miscarriage care and contraception.

The language was ostensibly meant to summarize Issue 1, a proposed amendment that would add abortion and reproductive rights into the state constitution, but those who created the proposed amendment say the summary approved by the ballot board in a 3-2 vote misleads voters and adds biased terms like “unborn child” instead of the medically accurate term “fetus.”

In a filing this week, attorney Don McTigue asked the Ohio Supreme Court to send the Ohio Ballot Board back to the drawing board, specifically to “prescribe that the amendment’s full text be used as the ballot language.”

“The Ballot Board’s prescribed language misleads the voters about ‘what they are being asked to vote on’ and engages in improper ‘persuasive argument … against’ the Amendment,” McTigue wrote, citing previous Ohio Supreme Court languages.

The summary language has various defects, according to the abortion rights groups, including misleading voters about “what right the amendment would create,” what restrictions the amendment would create, “whether and to what degree” the proposal would continue a pregnancy, a physician’s discretion regarding fetal viability, and “how the amendment would limit state regulation.”

“Each of these defects violates the constitution and laws of the state of Ohio, and cannot survive under this court’s precedents,” McTigue wrote.

Along with the alleged defects, the brief says the ballot board’s summary changes language enough to alter the meaning of the amendment and give false information to voters.

The summary language states that the amendment would “always allow an unborn child to be aborted at any stage of pregnancy, regardless of viability if, in the treating physician’s determination, the abortion is necessary to protect the pregnant woman’s life or health.”

“To the contrary, if the amendment were adopted, such an abortion would not be allowed insofar as the pregnant patient objected to it,” McTigue wrote. “In that case, the pregnant person would have an individual right to decide to continue [their] own pregnancy.”

He also argued that the majority that voted for the summary language included two people who have been working against the measure. One of which, state Sen. Theresa Gavarone, took time during the board meeting in which the summary language was considered, to call the amendment “dangerous” and commit to campaigning against the measure.

“Gavarone attacked the substance of the amendment itself as ‘an abomination,’ and asserted that the amendment entailed an ‘assault on parental rights,” the court filing noted.

Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose, who leads the ballot board, has also been a vocal opponent of the proposed amendment, posting on social media with anti-abortion groups, and working on a failed constitutional amendment to raise the threshold to approve amendments specifically to block the abortion rights measure.

“This context, together with the ballot language’s length and many defects, makes clear that the board majority’s personal opposition to the amendment infected the ballot board’s exercise of authority,” McTigue told the court.

The Ohio Attorney General’s Office, who represents the ballot board in legal proceedings, denied wrongdoing by the board in response to the lawsuit.

SUSAN TEBBEN

Susan Tebben is an award-winning journalist with a decade of experience covering Ohio news, including courts and crime, Appalachian social issues, government, education, diversity and culture. She has worked for The Newark Advocate, The Glasgow (KY) Daily Times, The Athens Messenger, and WOUB Public Media. She has also had work featured on National Public Radio.

MORE FROM AUTHOR

Sep 8, 2023
LaRose pushes unfair, inaccurate language for voters on November Ohio reproductive rights amendment

COMMENTARY

by Marilou Johanek

Play fair or play dirty. Issue 1 showed Ohio voters how state Republicans play when they can’t persuade. Extremists know most Ohioans support the right to abortion within limits. The outright ban on abortion gerrymandered pols seek is wildly unpopular. Convincing rational minds otherwise is pointless. So Ohio’s GOP overlords cheat to win.

Lawmakers rushed a game-changing ballot amendment to an August election (in violation of state law) to sabotage the abortion rights amendment in November. Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose spearheaded the shady maneuver to cancel self-governance by majority vote — just to keep a majority of Ohio voters from having their say on abortion access as a constitutional right.

The state’s elections chief actively campaigned to end the only enduring recourse of ordinary citizens to circumvent a crooked government because he didn’t want an abortion rights amendment to pass. Sit with that for a minute. The guy who administers the electoral system in Ohio tried to undercut the electorate.

That’s how amoral LaRose has become as he angles for attention as the greatest MAGA candidate in the U.S. Senate race. Burnishing his anti-abortion bona fides with the pro-Issue 1 crowd, in partnership with a leading anti-abortion lobbyist, was more important than upholding majoritarian democracy. Stumping for minority rule on the hollow pretense of “protecting” the constitution was a new low for LaRose.

But the integrity-is-overrated elections boss and Republican kingpins in the Statehouse badly mistook the masses for rubes. All the misleading, fear-mongering, coming-after-your-children TV ads (out-of-state money could buy) didn’t fool an overriding majority of ticked-off Ohio voters who showed up in record numbers to beat back an egregious political power grab on Aug. 8.

The beaten cheerleader for Issue 1 refused to concede the people had spoken (a Trumpian reflex?) and last week rolled out another snow job to derail the abortion rights amendment through ballot language subterfuge. LaRose chairs the Republican-dominated Ohio Ballot Board that voted along party lines Thursday to approve the summary language voters will read on their November ballot about the proposed abortion amendment.

Under state law, LaRose could have used the full text of the amendment as written, and attorneys for Ohioans United for Reproductive Rights urged him to so “there can be no dispute about whether legal standards have been satisfied, or whether the condensed text misleads, deceives, or defrauds voters.” Instead, LaRose recast the amendment to purposely mislead and deceive.

His draft is slanted with such routinely deployed anti-abortion propaganda it could have been dictated, word for word, by Ohio Right to Life President Mike Gonidakis. LaRose’s specious interpretation of the proposed amendment to enshrine reproductive freedom in the state constitution is deliberately deceptive with provocative wording to unfairly prejudice outcome.

The revisions he engineered on an amendment he campaigned against are so beyond the pale of “fair and accurate,” as the secretary ludicrously declared, that stunned amendment backers filed suit Monday with the state supreme court for fairness and accuracy. LaRose omitted actual provisions of the original amendment.

He deleted a description of reproductive choices an individual should have the “right to make and carry out” such as “decisions on contraception, fertility treatment, continuing one’s own pregnancy, miscarriage care, and abortion.” LaRose’s altered the language stipulating an individual right to “one’s own reproductive decisions” to just “a right to one’s own reproductive medical treatment, including but not limited to abortion.”

Perhaps most blatant was the secretary of state’s pointed replacement of the medical term “fetus” throughout the amendment with “unborn child,” employing the same weighted rhetoric seeded over decades by the anti-abortion movement. He also curiously substituted “the citizens of the State of Ohio” for amendment prohibitions specifically targeting “The State,” defined in the language “as any governmental entity and political subdivision.”

So what was originally worded “The State shall not, directly or indirectly, burden, penalize, prohibit, interfere with, or otherwise discriminate against” Ohioans exercising their reproductive rights became “the citizens of the State of Ohio” prohibited for doing the same. Different meaning. Why?

Original language allows that “abortion may be prohibited after fetal viability” or when the fetus can survive outside the womb — a standard restriction for decades under Roe. With a six-week ban on hold by the courts, abortion is currently legal in Ohio up to 22 weeks of pregnancy, a measured limitation widely acceptable.

LaRose flipped that reasonable allowance upside-down with inflammatory assertions that the amendment would “always allow an unborn child to be aborted at any stage of pregnancy, regardless of viability, if, in the treating physician’s determination” the applicable life and health exceptions are met. The glaring prejudicial language and selective editing of the fall abortion amendment to intentionally distort an initiative petition so it fails should infuriate every Ohioan — regardless of their beliefs about abortion.

Frank LaRose, the public servant responsible for conducting free and fair elections in Ohio is playing dirty to win. It’s wrong. But it’s only the beginning. Issue 1 was a preview of the depths Ohio Republicans will go to when they can’t persuade. They cheat.

The devious battle to deny abortion access in Ohio, despite the wishes of a majority of voters, will be epic.

MARILOU JOHANEK

Marilou Johanek is a veteran Ohio print and broadcast journalist who has covered state and national politics as a longtime newspaper editorial writer and columnist.

MORE FROM AUTHOR

Aug 29, 2023
Ohio Ballot Board sets language for proposed recreational marijuana law

BY: MEGAN HENRY – Ohio Capital Journal

The Ohio Ballot Board unanimously voted Thursday to solidify the language voters will see for the proposed recreational marijuana law in the November election.

The Coalition to Regulate Marijuana like Alcohol is backing the ballot proposal which would legalize and regulate cultivation, manufacturing, testing and the sale of marijuana to Ohioans 21 and up. It would also legalize home grow for Ohioans 21 and up with a limit of six plants per person and 12 plants per residence, and impose a 10% tax at the point of sale for each transaction.

“Unanimous approval by the bipartisan ballot board should assure voters that ‘What they see is what they’ll get’,” Coalition to Regulate Marijuana like Alcohol spokesperson Tom Haren said in a statement. “That means: hundreds of millions of dollars in new revenue and stringent regulation like we already have in our existing medical marijuana market. We are looking forward to putting the illicit market out of business this November.”

The proposal will be State Issue 2 on the Nov. 7 election.

No one spoke during the public comment portion of Thursday’s meeting in regards to Issue 2 nor was there discussion about it among the five-person Ballot Board, chaired by Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose. State Rep. Elliot Forhan, D-South Euclid, citizen William N. Morgan, Sens. Theresa Gavarone, R-Bowling Green and Paula Hicks-Hudson, D-Toledo are also on the board.

The Ballot Board determines what language voters will see on ballot.

After originally not getting enough valid signatures, CRMA ended up collecting more than enough after the 10-day cure period, winding up with 127,772 valid signatures — 3,000 more than needed to get on the ballot.

The ballot language

COLUMBUS, Ohio — AUGUST 24: The Ohio Ballot Board meeting to certify the language for Issue 1, the proposed constitutional amendment entitled “The Right to Reproductive Freedom with Protections for Health and Safety” and Issue 2 entitled “An Act to Control and Regulate Adult Use Cannabis,” August 24, 2023, at the Ohio Statehouse in Columbus, Ohio. (Photo by Graham Stokes for Ohio Capital Journal)

The proposed law would establish the Division of Cannabis Control within the Department of Commerce which would “regulate, investigate, and penalize adult use cannabis operators, adult use testing laboratories and individuals required to be licensed.”

It would create five funds in the state treasury: the adult use tax fund, the cannabis social equity and jobs fund; the host community cannabis fund; the substance abuse and addiction fund, and the division of cannabis control and tax commissioner fund.

Landlords or an employer would have the authority “to prohibit the adult use of cannabis in certain circumstances, and prohibit the operation of a motor vehicle while using or under the influence of adult use cannabis and from using any other combustible adult use cannabis while a passenger in a motor vehicle.”

The proposed law would require the Division of Cannabis Control to enter into an agreement with the Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services to establish a program for cannabis addiction services.

Follow OCJ Reporter Megan Henry on Twitter.

MEGAN HENRY

Megan Henry is a reporter for the Ohio Capital Journal and has spent the past five years reporting in Ohio on various topics including education, healthcare, business and crime. She previously worked at The Columbus Dispatch, part of the USA Today Network.

MORE FROM AUTHOR

Aug 26, 2023
Split ballot board approves reproductive rights amendment summary written by Ohio Sec. of State

In a 3-2 decision, the Ohio Ballot Board rejected using the full amendment proposal text for voters to see, and the approved summary language leaves out protecting contraception, fertility treatment and miscarriage care

BY: SUSAN TEBBEN – Ohio Capital Journal

In a 3-2 split decision Thursday, the Ohio Ballot Board rejected using the full text of a proposed reproductive rights amendment on the ballot in November, adopting instead summary language written by the Ohio Secretary of State’s Office that was criticized for being incomplete and inaccurate.

The board’s approval of the language – which is now titled Issue 1 for the November general election – was the next step in the process of voters deciding whether or not the Ohio Constitution will include the right to abortion, as well as contraception, fertility treatment, miscarriage care, and continuing one’s own pregnancy. Those last four items were all left out of the language approved by the ballot board majority.

The summary language does not change what the actual amendment would state in the constitution, but would be the last representation of the amendment voters read before the casting their approval or rejection.

The full text of the amendment will be available at boards of elections during the election, but not in the ballot booths with voters. LaRose said posters with the text will be accessible at voting locations.

In the summary language approved by the board, the medical term “fetus” is changed to “unborn child,” and the amendment’s “decision” language is changed to “medical treatment.”

The leader of the Ohio Ballot Board, Secretary of State Frank LaRose, said the changes were made by “staff” of the board, though Democratic board member and state Rep. Elliot Forhan said “I would assume that the buck stops with the secretary of state.”

LaRose during the meeting also said that, “having worked extensively on drafting this, I do believe it’s fair and accurate.”

LaRose has been vocal in his opposition of the amendment, even saying the effort around the previous Issue 1, which would have changed the threshold to approve a constitutional amendment had it not been roundly defeated, was targeting the abortion rights fight specifically.

At the beginning of Thursday’s meeting, he prefaced the board’s activity by saying the group was not there to “debate the merits” of the amendment or the marijuana ballot initiative also on the table at the meeting.

Ohio Ballot Board member, State Sen. Theresa Gavarone, R-Bowling Green, speaks at the Ballot Board meeting Thursday. (Photo by Graham Stokes for Ohio Capital Journal. Republish photo only with original article.)

Board member and state Sen. Theresa Gavarone, however, gave a speech in the middle of the meeting harshly criticizing the amendment and calling it “a bridge too far,” even after multiple comments by LaRose about the neutrality with which the board was supposed to conduct their business.

“This is a dangerous amendment that I’m going to fight tirelessly against,” Gavarone said. “But that’s not why we’re here today.”

Gavarone also claimed, as anti-abortion groups throughout the state do as well, that the amendment is “an assault on parental rights.” Neither the amendment nor the summary approved by the board mention parental rights of any kind.

The senator continued her comments during the board meeting, saying the true nature of the amendment “is hidden behind overly broad language,” despite the fact that the board summary took out pieces of the full text.

The summary passed by the board does not include a list of the rights to “reproductive decisions” spelled out in the ballot measure, including contraception, fertility treatment, continuing one’s own pregnancy, and miscarriage care, all of which would be impacted under the new constitutional amendment.

A clause in the proposed amendment that says “the state shall not, directly or indirectly, burden, penalize, prohibit, interfere with, or discriminate against” the exercise of the amendment by an individual or an assistant of the individual was reduced to “the citizens of the state of Ohio” in the summary.

The phrase “the citizens of the state of Ohio” is also used in the clause summarizing a prohibition of abortion that would only happen if a pregnant patient’s physician finds the pregnancy to be viable.

The phrase “pregnant patient” in the ballot measure was changed to “pregnant woman” in the summary.

Ohio Ballot Board member, State Sen. Paula Hicks-Hudson, D-Toledo, speaks at the Ballot Board meeting Thursday. (Photo by Graham Stokes for Ohio Capital Journal. Republish photo only with original article.)

State Sen. Paula Hicks-Hudson, the other Democratic member of the ballot board, made two motions to change the language of the summary to bring back the full text or certain clauses of the actual amendment text into the approved language.

“The full text is clear, it’s concise and it’s direct, which is one of the requirements that’s needed for us to present to voters in the state of Ohio,” Hicks-Hudson said.

Both motions were rejected 3-2, with LaRose, Gavarone and the final board member, Bill Morgan, voting against the motions.

Morgan didn’t speak during the meeting other than to register his votes, and didn’t specifically comment on the amendment discussion or language afterward.

“I think it’s what we were supposed to do, what the ballot board does,” Morgan told the OCJ.

Groups for and against the initiative anticipated potential issues with the board’s decision, with pro-abortion rights group Ohioans United for Reproductive Rights requesting that the ballot language mirror the amendment itself, so voters could see the entire constitutional change when they vote in November.

Lauren Blauvelt, a member of the coalition, decried the changes made to the language, and said the group is considering a lawsuit to fight back.

“The entire summary is really propaganda and we are going to talk about all of the reasons why Ohio voters should just be able to see the language for what it is,” Blauvelt said after the board meeting.

Anti-abortion groups argued against using the full text, saying it was unnecessary, and Ohio Right to Life president Mike Gonidakis pushed back on calls for a lawsuit against the summary.

“Any litigation filed on this is going to be thrown out by the Ohio Supreme Court because the statutory responsibility of the ballot board is to provide a fair and accurate representation. That’s what the law requires, and that’s what they did today,” Gonidakis said.

Gonidakis said he did not work with anyone on the ballot board on the summary language, but he wished the language was “stronger.”

Mike Gonidakis, president of Ohio Right to Life, talks to the press after the Ohio Ballot Board meeting Thursday. (Photo by Graham Stokes for Ohio Capital Journal. Republish photo only with original article.)

“Look, at the end of the day, people are going to make up their minds before they go in the ballot box anyways, and they’re not going to go in and then try to figure out what they want to do by reading something on a screen,” he said.

The proposed amendment has gone through a rollercoaster of activity since the Ohio Ballot Board approved the measure in March as compliant with the regulations for a constitutional amendment proposal, allowing a petition campaign that resulted in nearly 500,000 supporting signatures from Ohio voters.

Amid all the necessary hoops through which the abortion rights campaign has jumped, abortion rights groups have also had to battle against lawsuits attempting to block the amendment from voters. Another lawsuit alleged the Ohio Ballot Board hadn’t taken enough time or consideration before certifying that the amendment was compliant.

The Ohio Supreme Court rejected both lawsuits, clearing the way for voters to see the issue in the Nov. 7 general election.

SUSAN TEBBEN

Susan Tebben is an award-winning journalist with a decade of experience covering Ohio news, including courts and crime, Appalachian social issues, government, education, diversity and culture. She has worked for The Newark Advocate, The Glasgow (KY) Daily Times, The Athens Messenger, and WOUB Public Media. She has also had work featured on National Public Radio.

MORE FROM AUTHOR

Aug 26, 2023
Abortion amendment ballot language submitted, Ballot Board set to meet Thursday

Abortion rights groups request full text on November ballots

BY: SUSAN TEBBEN – Ohio Capital Journal

Gearing up for an Ohio Ballot Board meeting where constitutional amendment language regarding reproductive health will be considered, groups pushing for the measure want to see the entire text of the amendment on November ballots.

In a letter received by the Ohio Secretary of State on Monday, attorney Donald McTigue represented petitioners for the constitutional amendment in asking the board to use full text of the proposed amendment or a condensed version, so that voters can read the entire thing on their ballots in the general election this year.

“By using the full text, voters will see for themselves the language they are being asked to approve and can make a free and independent decision on this fundamental question,” McTigue wrote.

The abortion rights groups also argued that, in using the full text, “there can be no dispute about whether legal standards have been satisfied or whether the condensed text misleads, deceives or defrauds voters,” according to the letter.

The ballot measure’s title, as submitted by the groups for approval by the ballot board, is “To Establish the Right to Reproductive Freedom with Protections for Health and Safety.”

Because of the rejection of Issue 1 earlier this month at the polls, which would have raised the threshold to approve a constitutional amendment, a simple majority is needed to pass the measure.

In the language of the amendment, it specifies that “every individual has a right to make and carry out one’s own reproductive decisions, including but not limited to” contraception, fertility treatments, pregnancy, miscarriage care and abortion.

It prohibits the state from doing anything to “directly or indirectly burden, penalize, prohibit, interfere with or discriminate against” the exercise of the rights in the amendment, or those who assist in the exercise of the rights.

The amendment makes exceptions in terms of abortion, in which it would be “prohibited after fetal viability.”

“But in no case may such an abortion be prohibited if in the professional judgment of the pregnant patient’s treating physician it is necessary to protect the pregnant patient’s life or health,” the amendment states.

“Any attempt to alter wording away from the text of the amendment should be seen for what it is: an attempt to confuse and mislead voters,” said Lauren Blauvelt, of Ohioans United for Reproductive Rights, in a statement announcing the submission of the ballot language.

Opposition groups have claimed the amendment would impact parental rights and allow “late-term abortion,” neither of which are included in the language submitted to the ballot board. “Late-term abortion” is not considered a legitimate medical term.

Two different lawsuits attempting to keep the amendment from going before voters have been rejected by the Ohio Supreme Court.

Most recently, a former state legislator and a Catholic Ohio resident asked that the measure be blocked because it was unclear what laws it sought to change. A separate previous lawsuit argued the Ohio Ballot Board abused its power by improperly considering, and thus moving the ballot measure forward so that signatures could be collected in support of it.

That signature collection amounted to nearly 500,000 valid Ohio voter signatures, which allowed the measure to head to the ballot.

Another abortion-related lawsuit is still in the process of making it through the state’s highest court. That lawsuit was filed by Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost, challenging a Hamilton County court’s right to pause a six-week abortion ban implemented almost immediately after the Dobbs decision overturned Roe v. Wade.

That law was passed in 2019, but has since been entangled in court cases. It bans abortion after six weeks gestation and was in place for several months following the Dobbs decision before being halted by the courts.

The Ohio Ballot Board is scheduled to consider and vote on the language on Thursday, where they will also consider language regarding a proposed statute for recreational marijuana.

SUSAN TEBBEN

Susan Tebben is an award-winning journalist with a decade of experience covering Ohio news, including courts and crime, Appalachian social issues, government, education, diversity and culture. She has worked for The Newark Advocate, The Glasgow (KY) Daily Times, The Athens Messenger, and WOUB Public Media. She has also had work featured on National Public Radio.

MORE FROM AUTHOR

___________________

[pdf-embedder url=”https://lovelandmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/The-Right-to-Reproductive-Freedom-with-Protections-for-Health-and-Safety.pdf”]

Aug 22, 2023