Hardly a week goes by when Republican Frank LaRose, Ohio’s secretary of state, doesn’t issue a press release about his devotion to “election integrity” and how, thanks to him, Ohio’s elections are fair and square.
The chief elections officer of Ohio always talks the talk but doesn’t always walk the walk.
Case in point:
Last week’s meeting of the Ohio Ballot Board, chaired by LaRose, had one job and one job only: to approve language to appear on the ballot in November for the Citizens Not Politicians constitutional amendment.
And he felt the need to put his thumb on the scale to adopt ballot language that is three pages long and clearly meant to influence voters to vote against the issue.
LaRose’s text is 900 words long, with 10 bullet points — far longer than the typical state ballot issue, and the language Citizens Not Politicians submitted.
It is rife with references backers of the amendment find prejudicial.
RELATED: Lawsuit coming over ballot language adopted by Republican-led panel
To start, the title says the amendment would “create an appointed redistricting commission not elected by or subject to removal by the voters of the state.”
Citizens Not Politicians titled its amendment — which Republican Attorney General Dave Yost approved — as "an amendment to replace the current politician-run redistricting process with a citizen-led commission required to create fair state legislative and congressional districts through a more open and independent system."
LaRose’s ballot language says the amendment would eliminate “the longstanding ability of Ohio citizens to hold their representatives accountable for establishing fair state legislative and congressional districts,” and would “repeal constitutional protections against gerrymandering approved by nearly three-quarters of Ohio electors participating in the statewide elections of 2015 and 2018.”
This is what the proposed language submitted by Citizens Not Politicians actually says.
LaRose could get away with all of this because the deck is stacked on the five-member Ohio Ballot Board for Republicans.
He has two other reliable Republican board members who do his bidding — State Sen. Theresa Gavarone of Bowling Green, the self-styled election law expert of the legislature; and 88-year-old retired lobbyist William N. Morgan of Stoutsville, a bump in the road in Fairfield County, home to 579 souls.
I’ve seen a lot of ballot board meetings, but I have yet to see one where Morgan — the third and deciding vote for the GOP — has asked a question of witnesses or made a statement, other than to say “yes” when LaRose proposes something and “no” when the board’s two Democrats have a proposal.
That was the case last week when LaRose and his allies on the board approved ballot language which the two Democrats, State Sen. Paula Hicks-Hudson of Toledo and State Rep. Terrence Upchurch of Cleveland, said was thoroughly prejudicial to the Citizens Not Politicians ballot issue and written to persuade voters to vote against the proposal.
By adopting LaRose’s ballot language, Upchurch said, “we will be putting language before the voters for an amendment that does not exist.”
The Citizens Not Politicians constitutional amendment is not particularly complicated.
It would take elected officials entirely out of the process of re-drawing state legislative and congressional district lines after each U.S. Census.
A 15-member redistricting commission — five registered Democrats, five registered Republicans, and five unaffiliated voters — would be created. It would hold public hearings and take input from the public before deciding on maps.
It’s the part that says no elected officials will be involved in the process that sticks in the craw of LaRose and the Ohio GOP leadership.
Controlling the redistricting process is the magic potion that has enabled the Republicans to have a veto-proof supermajority in the Ohio General Assembly. And they are scared to death of losing it.
Under the present system of redistricting, approved by voters in 2015 and 2018, the Republicans have a hard 5-2 majority on the Ohio Redistricting Commission because of their control of statewide offices.
In 2022, LaRose and his fellow Republicans on the commission voted seven times for maps that were declared unconstitutional by an Ohio Supreme Court majority of three Democrats and the then-chief justice, Republican Maureen O’Connor.
Once O’Connor was forced out by Ohio’s judicial age limits law, the GOP majority got its way.
RELATED: A timeline of Ohio's 2022 redistricting saga
And O’Connor has become the public face and chief supporter of Citizens Not Politicians.
“The self-dealing politicians who have rigged the legislative maps now want to rig the Nov. 5 election by illegally manipulating the ballot language,” O’Connor said last week.
LaRose defended the language in his summary by saying the Citizens Not Politicians would “limit the right of Ohio citizens to freely express their opinions to members of the commission or to commission staff regarding the redistricting process or proposed redistricting plan.”
On Monday, Citizens Not Politicians filed suit in the Ohio Supreme Court, asking for an expedited review of LaRose’s ballot language. The clock is ticking — ballots are being printed and Ohio’s early voting period begins Oct. 8.
LaRose has tried this before
LaRose does not have a very good track record when it comes to his attempts to put his thumb on the scale of elections.
Last August, he was one of the principal backers of a constitutional amendment that would have required future amendments to pass with 60% of the vote instead of a simple majority.
That was aimed at the abortion rights amendment that LaRose and other GOP leaders knew would be on the ballot last November; and the 60% rule, they thought, would tank it.
Wrong. Ohio voters overwhelmingly rejected LaRose’s 60% plan.
In November, they went on to approve the abortion rights amendment — and in spite of the altered language inserted by LaRose and the ballot board. It passed with 57% of the vote.
RELATED: See how each Ohio county voted on abortion rights amendment
LaRose seems to be trying to go for the trifecta of defeat with his plan to confuse voters about Citizens Not Politicians.
As Rep. Upchurch said in Friday’s ballot board meeting, “a day of reckoning is coming and the people of Ohio are going to speak.”
