Ohio's Constitution doesn't need to be harder to amend

Bad ideas never really disappear from the Ohio Statehouse. Instead, they lay low before resurfacing. For example, in August 2023, about 57 percent of voters rejected a proposed amendment to the Ohio Constitution that would have made future amendments harder to pass. Among other changes, the Republican-backed amendment would have raised the threshold for passage of future amendments from a simple majority to 60 percent. It also would have required groups seeking to put a citizen-initiated amendment on the ballot to gather signatures in all 88 Ohio counties instead of 44 counties. It was a terrible idea that would have limited the power of Ohio voters, who sometimes want to do things the Buckeye State's Republican overlords dislike. (Republicans hold all nonjudicial statewide offices and have supermajorities in both chambers of the state legislature.) We bring up this history because Ohio Sen. Jerry Cirino, R-Kirtland, recently told the Statehouse News Bureau that the state Constitution was too easy to change. "I think in Ohio, we should make it more difficult," Cirino said, "and I suspect, and I hope, before my time is up in the Senate, in two-and-a-half years, that we will once again be able to take this out to the public. And do it a little differently. I think we made some mistakes last time." Republican lawmakers put the amendment on the ballot in an expensive special election in August 2023. Such elections have notoriously low turnout, which is why state lawmakers had successfully pushed to do away with them the year before. (Turnout for the August 2023 special election, as it turned out, was higher than many expected, with more than 38 percent of registered voters casting a ballot.) To understand why Republicans were in such a hurry, remember the U.S. Supreme Court had overturned Roe v. Wade, the landmark decision that had long protected abortion rights, in 2022. Red states, including Ohio, were considering severely restricting abortions or even outlawing them entirely. In Ohio, that led to a citizen-initiated amendment designed to protect reproductive freedom, including abortion rights, that was expected to appear on the November 2023 ballot. Although some Republicans tried to obfuscate, it was always clear that the impetus for making the Constitution harder to amend was to prevent the abortion-rights amendment from passing a few months later, which it ultimately did with the support of around 57 percent of voters. "We made it a little more complicated than we needed to," Cirino said. "I think if we simplify it and make a stronger case for it, that I think that the voting public will agree with us that the Ohio Constitution is a sacred document, and it should be very difficult and challenging to change it." After voters rejected their proposal, Republicans discussed trying again, but the idea sort of faded into the background. At least until now. We suspect the reason the idea is making an unnecessary comeback has to do with two proposed amendments that are the subject of citizen-initiated petition drives, both of which Cirino opposes. One proposed amendment would ban large data centers across the state. The other proposed amendment would abolish property taxes, which would be catastrophic for local governments, including public schools, libraries, parks, social-service agencies, counties, cities and townships. It's unclear whether supporters of those proposals will be able to gather the more than 413,000 signatures from registered voters necessary to get their issues on the ballot. (Such petition drives always need to collect more signatures than they need to account for those that will be thrown out for various reasons.) Last week, the group behind abolishing property taxes suggested that it might not reach its minimum goal of 620,000 signatures by the deadline to make the November ballot. Proponents said they might delay putting the proposed amendment on the ballot until next year. We also wonder whether renewed interest in making it harder to amend the Constitution has something to do with a Trumbull County judge's recent legal challenge to the abortion-rights amendment. David Engler, a Republican, argued in court filings that the amendment interfered with his duties as a juvenile court judge to decide whether minors can get an abortion without parental permission. If Engler can persuade the GOP-dominated Ohio Supreme Court to overturn the amendment, Republicans could move to restrict abortions in Ohio. If that happened, abortion-rights proponents likely would need to go back to the ballot with another amendment to protect abortion access, something that would be much more challenging were Cirino to get his way. Whether it's protecting abortion rights, banning data centers or outlawing property taxes, disliking a proposed amendment is not a good reason to make it harder to pass. Voters recognized that in 2023. Cirino might not have liked their decision, but he should respect it.