We Ask You To Vote No On August 8th

The Secular Humanists of Western Lake Erie oppose State Issue 1 and ask that you vote NO on August 8th.

Since 1912, Ohio cit­i­zens have count­ed on being able to try and amend the Ohio con­sti­tu­tion with a major­i­ty of votes. The ille­gal­ly ger­ry­man­dered Ohio leg­is­la­ture is propos­ing adopt­ing a 60% thresh­old for cit­i­zen ini­ti­at­ed amend­ments. Their pow­er grab would also require sig­na­tures of 5% of all vot­ers in all 88 coun­ties in the state and would not allow peti­tion­ers to gath­er addi­tion­al sig­na­tures should they fall short ini­tial­ly. SHoWLE believes this “ele­va­tion of stan­dards” makes a dif­fi­cult process near impos­si­ble for mar­gin­al­ize groups in the state and vio­lates our Humanist val­ues.

The spe­cif­ic rea­son this amend­ment is on the bal­lot in August is because there like­ly will be a Reproductive Rights Amendment on the November bal­lot and the Christian Nationalists, led by Ohio Right to Life, wants to change the rules in hopes of sab­o­tag­ing the effort to pro­tect repro­duc­tive rights in the state after the end of Roe v Wade.

When reli­gious con­ser­v­a­tives have ideas peo­ple don’t sup­port they change the rules or “buy” sup­port from the leg­is­la­ture.

Republicans in the leg­is­la­ture claim they are pro­tect­ing the Ohio con­sti­tu­tion from out­side inter­ests. Forgive us for snort­ing while laugh­ing at this ludi­crous state­ment. The ger­ry­man­dered ille­gal super major­i­ty has ignored the Ohio con­sti­tu­tion con­cern­ing draw­ing leg­isla­tive dis­tricts. They also ignored five Ohio Supreme Court judge­ments rul­ing the ger­ry­man­der­ing vio­lat­ed the Ohio con­sti­tu­tion and they want to say they are pro­tect­ing the con­sti­tu­tion?

We also ques­tion the legit­i­ma­cy of one of the spon­sors of the Joint Resolution in the Senate. Senator Theresa Gaverone vot­ed in the May 2022 pri­ma­ry in Erie coun­ty before her ger­ry­man­dered dis­trict was imposed by fed­er­al court on May 28th 2022. According to the Ohio Revised Code she for­feit­ed her office when she vot­ed out­side her dis­trict. For some­one who claims to want to pro­tect the con­sti­tu­tion and takes an oath to defend it, she total­ly ignored it.

More than like­ly had the leg­is­la­ture dis­tricts been redrawn accord­ing to the con­sti­tu­tion, this amend­ment to change the thresh­old most like­ly would­n’t have been put on the bal­lot.

We believe that amend­ments to con­sti­tu­tions should be dif­fi­cult but not impos­si­ble. One should­n’t need mil­lions of dol­lars and hun­dreds of sig­na­ture gath­er­ers to attempt to get on the bal­lot. The cur­rent process works just fine. Since 1912, 69 bal­lot issues have been con­sid­ered and only 24% have passed by major­i­ty vote. The last cit­i­zen ini­ti­at­ed amend­ment to pass was Marsy’s Law in 2017.

Since Ohio does­n’t have a mech­a­nism to recall elect­ed offi­cials, the bal­lot ini­tia­tive is the only way to address griev­ances with what laws are passed. It becomes the only recourse when the leg­is­la­ture ger­ry­man­ders itself so vot­ers can’t choose their own elect­ed offi­cials.

The make up of the Ohio leg­is­la­ture does­n’t reflect the actu­al views of a major­i­ty of Ohioans and if State Issue 1 pass­es, there will be even less of chance to hold them account­able.