Abortion rights. Casinos. Minimum wage. A crime victims bill of rights. Livestock standards. Voters added each one to the Ohio Constitution.
Ohioans who want to bypass the GOP-controlled state Legislature to pass policies often choose a constitutional amendment. But there is an alternative: passing a state law at the ballot box.
That option, which is called an initiated statute, has a clear flaw: State lawmakers can change whatever voters approve immediately. This nearly happened after Ohioans voted to legalize recreational marijuana in 2023 (and still might if legislators can agree on changes.)
One Republican lawmaker has a different idea: Encourage reformers to pick the initiated statute by making it easier to use and harder to repeal.
A different approach to initiated statutes
Colerain Township Sen. Bill Blessing’s Senate Joint Resolution 5, which didn’t get a vote by the end of the last General Assembly, would make it easier to put a state law change on the ballot by reducing the number of signatures reformers need to collect. The proposal would require 3% of votes cast in the most recent governor’s election (currently 132,887 signatures) rather than 6%.
Another change would prohibit lawmakers from repealing or changing what voters approved − unless they had support from 60% of legislators.
Ohio Republicans will hold 73% of seats in the Senate and 66% of seats in the House starting in 2025, so that threshold might not be the check Blessing envisioned. However, the Republican lawmaker said he could increase it to two-thirds or more to require bipartisan buy-in for changes.
“A lot of reformers take the constitutional amendment route because there is that protection from the General Assembly,” Blessing said. “This is a nice intermediate path between what initiated statute is right now, which admittedly the General Assembly can just say we’re going to change literally everything right after the election.”
Opponents of constitutional amendments say these votes have cluttered the document with rules that are nearly impossible to change even if problems arise. For example, moving the location of the Columbus casino required a second statewide vote.
“Nobody wants to see things constantly going into the Constitution,” Blessing said.
And many GOP lawmakers don’t like the end-around their legislative power. One proposed solution − making it harder to amend the state constitution − went down in flames last year. Voters saw the August amendment as a thinly veiled attempt to block a reproductive rights measure that ultimately passed in November 2023.
Would reformers use this new option?
Blessing said reformers could still choose the constitutional amendment route if they wanted. For Abortion Forward executive director Kellie Copeland, a constitutional amendment to protect abortion access was the only path that made sense.
“Our campaign only considered a constitutional amendment because our goal was to permanently enshrine the right to access abortion,” Copeland said.
Ohio’s GOP-dominated Legislature couldn’t be trusted on the issue of abortion access and reproductive rights, Copeland said. “Ohio’s legislature is so gerrymandered that we can never trust these politicians with regulating abortion. No amount of time − not the proposed two years, not five years, or 10 − will change the need for abortion access.”
But retired Ohio Supreme Court Chief Justice Maureen O’Connor, who led a failed effort to create a citizen redistricting commission this year, said Blessing’s idea has merit.
“This proposed legislation has the potential to be a step in the right direction to safeguard the will of the people and ensure that citizen-initiated reforms cannot be overturned by politicians with competing agendas,” O’Connor said in a statement. “The ability to protect citizens from legislative interference that would undo the will of the people reinforces the principles of fair representation and trust in our democratic process.”
Jessie Balmert covers state government and politics for the USA TODAY Network Ohio Bureau, which serves the Columbus Dispatch, Cincinnati Enquirer, Akron Beacon Journal and 18 other affiliated news organizations across Ohio.
This article originally appeared on Cincinnati Enquirer: GOP lawmaker has an idea to protect voters’ reform from his colleagues