COLUMBUS, Ohio – With Ohio approving abortion rights and recreational marijuana proposals in November, challenging national perceptions of Ohio in the process, could we be in for an era of progressive ballot issues?
Republicans have warned of a tidal wave of left-wing policy ideas that could be coming to Ohio after they failed in August to convince voters to make it harder for the public to change the state constitution, and then saw Ohioans subsequently approve both ballot issues by wide margins in November.
“There’s a lot of bad ideas coming our way,” Secretary of State Frank LaRose, the U.S. Senate candidate, said at a Republican event in November.
Democrats, meanwhile, have been emboldened by the wins. They say it changed the narrative about Ohio in the eyes of the kinds of people who bankroll ballot issues.
Donors big and small – but mostly big – dropped at least $53 million to defeat the August measure and to pass the abortion amendment in November. The results could direct more money from the national pipeline of progressive ballot measures to Ohio, a change from how the national left largely has stayed out of Ohio since the 2016 election.
“By winning in August and again with Issue 1 in November, what that demonstrates is that in Ohio we are capable of putting a broad, diverse coalition together that individuals in Ohio, small donors, medium size donors large donors will invest in,” said Dennis Willard, a Democratic operative who served as a spokesperson for the campaign to defeat the August amendment “But just as significantly, donors outside the state that are so critical to making us competitive will also invest because they see the possibility of winning.”
“What we saw on Election Night was a sleeping giant of the electorate that was awakened, recognizing that our democracy was on the line because of these out of touch, unaccountable politicians,” said Prentiss Haney, co-director of the progressive Ohio Organizing Collaborative.
Sarah Walker, a policy and legal director with the progressive Ballot Initiative Strategy Center, said the wins in Ohio shows the potency of ballot issues, which allow voters to back popular individual policies that a majority party may not be willing to pursue.
“There are so many issues that aren’t getting addressed, and this has been a long-time coming,” Walker said. “So I think you’re likely to see more ballot issues in Ohio and across the country.”
So, Democrats are feeling good about their chances in Ohio. What does that mean might be coming down the pike?
Michigan, where voters approved a similar abortion rights measure in 2022, again could provide an example.
Redistricting and voting rights
People often question the reasons for the political divergence between Michigan and Ohio, since both states are demographically similar and historically have been swing states.
But Ohio has become a reliably Republican state in recent years, a transition solidified by ex-President Donald Trump’s big wins here in 2016 and 2020. Michigan meanwhile has trended Democratic, with Trump narrowly winning there in 2016 while losing in 2020.
The explanation behind the opposing trends is multifaceted, involving things like geography, demographics and political culture. But Ohio Democrats often point to differences in voting and redistricting rules as part of the reason. A pair of 2018 Michigan ballot measures provides a road map for something progressive activists may try here.
In 2018, Michigan voters approved one measure expanding voting rights, including guaranteed automatic voter registration and 40 days of early voting, including 10 days during which voters can register and cast a ballot the same day. It also allowed voters to check a single box to cast a straight-party ticket.
The same year, Michigan also approved a redistricting reform amendment that replaced a Republican-controlled panel of elected officials with a citizen’s commission. Under the commission’s inaugural maps, and using the new voting rules, Democrats in 2022 won 56 of the state’s 110 House seats and 20 of the state’s 38 Senate seats, which along with Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s reelection, gave them a rare “trifecta” in state government.
Ohio is well on its way to seeing a redistricting reform amendment next year. A campaign called Citizens not Politicians began gathering signatures this month, with the goal of getting the roughly 413,000 valid voter signatures needed before a July deadline to qualify for the November ballot.
Maureen O’Connor, a former Republican Ohio Supreme Court chief justice who holds a leadership role with the Ohio redistricting campaign, said this year’s elections gave momentum to the measure’s backers while showing that the gerrymandered Republican-controlled legislature is out of touch with the people of Ohio.
“Ohioans saw politicians spend millions on a summer election to try to take away majority rule,” O’Connor said in a statement. “The people stood up and said ‘no thanks.’ And now, the citizens the citizens of Ohio across the political spectrum are mobilized to end the gerrymandering that gives rise to this type of political arrogance.”
Voting-rights groups like the ACLU of Ohio and the League of Women Voters of Ohio pursued a voting-rights measure here in 2020 similar to the one that passed in Michigan. But the effort got derailed by the coronavirus pandemic.
These groups plan to revive the proposal, potentially as soon as next year, according to people familiar with organizing around the measure.
Backers of a potential voting-rights ballot issue filed proposed petition language with Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost on Dec. 19. The proposed constitutional amendment would establish a right to automatic voter registration and same-day voter registration; give elections officials authority to expand early-voting hours, locations and to use multiple drop boxes; and eliminate voter purges for infrequent voters, among other changes.
Yost rejected the petition language on Dec. 28, saying it did not “fairly and truthfully” summarize the proposed amendment. Petitioners can resubmit the language with changes to the problems Yost identified.
Minimum wage
Another measure that’s in the works for 2024 is a proposal to hike the state’s minimum wage to $15 an hour. Like the failed voting rights measure, a minimum wage issue was queued up for the ballot in 2020 but fell apart because of the pandemic, although the previous proposal would only have targeted $13 an hour.
Besides being a policy priority, some Democrats believe that putting minimum wage on the ballot, by boosting turnout and potentially drawing political opposition from Republicans, could help Democratic U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown win reelection next year in what’s expected to be a hotly contested race with national implications. Business groups, who opposed a successful campaign in 2006 to hike the minimum wage to $6.85, have signaled they plan to oppose the $15 proposal next year.
Guns
The push for a ballot issue often derives from a policy that backers think will have popular support but which stands no chance to make it through the legislature for political reasons. It’s hard to think of a clearer example of this kind of policy than gun restrictions.
Public polls consistently show huge public support for a handful of gun control measures, like requiring a background check for all gun purchases and “red flag” laws that would allow police to seize guns from people deemed by a judge to be a threat to themselves and others.
Cleveland Mayor Justin Bibb, a Democrat who has made moves to position himself as a statewide political figure, has expressed interest in pursuing gun control measures through a ballot measure. He said as much shortly before the August election.
But groups that push for greater gun restrictions, like former New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg’s Everytown for Gun Safety, have shied away from pursuing them through ballot issues. A push for a gun-safety ballot issue in Ohio following the 2019 mass shooting in Dayton failed to get off the ground, in large part due to a lack of funding. Some on the left think the proposals may be popular, but could cause political backlash for individual Democratic candidates.
Everytown for Gun Safety didn’t return a message for this story. In a statement, Bibb said he’s continuing to try to lobby the Republican-controlled legislature, which has passed myriad laws loosening gun laws in recent years.
“A ballot measure may be one way to get there, but it’s also a very long and expensive process when our communities need action now,” Bibb said.
On the other end of the spectrum, many Republican states have passed measures asserting gun rights in recent years. One could be on the ballot here in Ohio next year: state legislators have proposed a measure enshrining a constitutional right to hunt and fish, although it’s yet to advance at the Statehouse.
Abortion
Ohio Senate President Matt Huffman, a Lima Republican, predicted a “revolving door” of ballot measures to roll back or repeal Issue 1 as the measure passed last month. Many thought he was saying such a proposal would come from the legislature, but he later said he didn’t specifically mean lawmakers would propose them.
Some abortion opponents considered fast-tracking such a measure shortly after the election. But they’ve since backed off, with Huffman, Gov. Mike DeWine and other Republicans saying they think the issue should be shelved at least past next year.
Voting changes
A proposal for “approval voting” – a system that would allow voters to pick multiple candidates in contested races, with the candidate who got the most votes winning the race – was floated here early this year. But the idea fizzled out without clearing even an initial step, as many ballot proposals do.
A similar, more well-known proposal called ranked-choice voting – which allows voters to rank their preferred candidates – has a presence in Ohio, but the measure has shown no signs of having serious political backing for the time being.
Mandatory sick leave
A proposal that conceivably could come to Ohio is a version of a proposal requiring employers to offer full-time employees a minimum number of paid sick days.
A proposal requiring employers to either offer five or seven sick days, depending on their size, is on the ballot in Nebraska next year. If it passes in Nebraska it could pass in Ohio, although there is no specific indication that one is coming here.
Andrew Tobias covers state politics and government for cleveland.com and The Plain Dealer
An earlier version of this story incorrectly stated that Donald Trump lost in Michigan in 2016. It has been corrected.