Right here in Hamilton County and for that matter nationwide, Republicans didn’t have an excellent November election. However their statewide Ohio candidates certain did, they usually deserve congratulations for that. However they deserve no reward for the debacle of the congressional or state legislative gerrymandering enabled by their ignoring the need of the voters of Ohio who amended the Ohio Structure to offer for fairer extra aggressive districts.
Nor ought to we hail those that now search to rewrite numerous legal guidelines to reverse election outcomes they don’t like. The Hamilton County Courtroom of Appeals will, for the primary time in historical past, have a 5-to-1 Democratic majority. In response, some in Columbus suggest so as to add Butler and Clermont counties to the jurisdiction of the appellate court docket in hopes that the brand new voters will return the make-up of the court docket to its Republican domination. They ignore, amongst different issues, what that can do to the amount and tempo of the court docket or the necessity to add further judges.
The current election modified the State Board of Schooling, making a majority bored with persevering with the cultural wars of the present board. The brand new majority desires to focus on schooling and academic equality. In response, the Republican majority proposes to strip the brand new board of its energy if they permit it to outlive in any respect.
They worry {that a} prone to come citizen proposed state constitutional modification to guard the liberty of alternative would meet with voter approval. They need to. In each state the place it has been thought-about by the voters since Roe was overturned, freedom of alternative has gained and efforts to curtail it have been defeated. So now those self same Republicans suggest to hurry to the poll a state structure modification that will require future citizen initiated constitutional amendments to have a 60% majority vote to be efficient as a substitute of the traditionally required 50%. Regardless of their current successes of their statewide candidates, these Republicans worry Ohio’s voters.
And naturally, they may now make a lie of their mantra “straightforward to vote however arduous to cheat.” Nonetheless having found no proof of any important unlawful voting (as a result of there’s none), they may search to scale back the times and hours of in-person early and mail-in absentee voting, add extra problems to voter ID necessities and cut back alternatives to return or right absentee ballots.
That is what has turn into of a Republican state legislature so one-sided that there aren’t any checks on its energy and never a touch of badly wanted bipartisanship.
Tim Burke lives in Mt. Lookout and is the previous longtime chair of the Hamilton County Democratic Occasion and the Hamilton County Board of Elections.
