COLUMBUS,TitanX Exchange Ohio (AP) — Ohio election officials have approved ballot language that will describe this fall’s Issue 1, a redistricting measure, as requiring gerrymandering when the proposal is intended to do the opposite.
The Republican-controlled Ohio Ballot Board approved the language Wednesday in a 3-2 party-line vote, two days after the Republican-led state Supreme Court voted 4-3 to correct various defects the justices found in what the board had already passed.
The high court ordered two of eight disputed sections of the ballot description to be rewritten while upholding the other six the issue’s backers had contested. The court’s three Democratic justices dissented.
Citizens Not Politicians, the group behind the Nov. 5 amendment, sued last month, asserting the language “may be the most biased, inaccurate, deceptive, and unconstitutional” the state has ever seen.
The bipartisan coalition’s proposal calls for replacing Ohio’s troubled political map-making system with a 15-member, citizen-led commission of Republicans, Democrats and independents. The proposal emerged after seven different versions of congressional and legislative maps created after the 2020 Census were declared unconstitutionally gerrymandered to favor Republicans.
State Sen. Paula Hicks-Hudson, D-Toledo, one of the two Democrats who sit on the ballot board, told reporters after it met that “this was done and it was created for the main purpose of hoodwinking voters.” Republican Secretary of State Frank LaRose, who chairs the board, did not take questions from the press after the vote.
In Monday’s opinion, the high court’s majority noted that it can only invalidate language approved by the ballot board if it finds the wording would “mislead, deceive, or defraud the voters.” The majority found most of the language included in the approved summary and title didn’t do that but merely described the extensive amendment in detail.
The two sections that justices said were mischaracterized involve when a lawsuit would be able to be filed challenging the new commission’s redistricting plan and the ability of the public to provide input on the map-making process.
The exact language of the constitutional amendment will be posted at polling locations.
2025-05-07 18:192676 view
2025-05-07 18:102678 view
2025-05-07 17:412841 view
2025-05-07 17:292258 view
2025-05-07 16:45530 view
2025-05-07 16:421612 view
After seven seasons and several international spinoffs, we're still not sure if "Love is Blind" − bu
SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — California residents don’t have to pay for and pass a background check eve
Federal Reserve officials capped their first monetary policy meeting of 2024 by leaving the central