Ohio voters reject Issue 1 in special election

Ohioans have overwhelmingly rejected a proposal to make it more difficult for citizens to amend the constitution, the Associated Press has projected.

The only item on voters’ ballots Tuesday was Issue 1, a Republican-led, legislature-initiated amendment to Ohio’s constitution that would raise the threshold for future constitutional amendments to become law. Nearly 700,000 Ohioans voted early, and many more were expected to descend on polling locations to decide whether it is time to change a 111-year-old provision of the state’s main governing document.

Issue 1 would have raised the bar for constitutional amendments to pass to 60%, instead of a simple majority. It also would have enacted stricter signature requirements to put citizen-initiated amendments on the ballot in the first place; petitioners would have had to gather signatures from 5% of voters in each of Ohio’s 88 counties, a steep jump from the present 44-county requirement.

In a statement, Tim Burga, president of the Ohio AFL-CIO, reflected on the hasty process that brought Issue 1 to voters’ ballots less than 90 days before the election.

“For the entirety of this year, politicians supporting Issue 1 ignored the will of the people in the legislative process, flip-flopped on their ruling not to hold August special elections, costing tax-payers millions of dollars, and spread misinformation and lies from start to finish,” Burga said. “In the end, voters would not be fooled by this unprecedented, corrupt attempt to silence our voice.”

Read more at NBC4i.com here