If every state representative or state senator in Ohio had to receive more than 50% of all votes cast in an election to win, would the General Assembly have gutted a voter-approved marijuana law, outlawed diversity efforts in higher education, waged unrelenting war against LGBTQ+ Ohioans, or defiled Ohio’s state parks with pollution-generating oil and gas drillers?
I could go on. But think about it.
If Ohio’s gerrymandered lawmakers could no longer skate into office on a plurality/winner-takes-all vote (with all-but-certain election results) and instead needed the majority support of the voting population to assume power under ranked choice voting, would that change the political calculus of legislative clowns impervious to the will of the people?
A voting reform proposal that requires a winning candidate to be acceptable to at least 50% of voters — recently blocked by skittish state lawmakers — might mean less job security for politicians who regularly ignore clear public wishes on legalized recreational weed, abortion rights, academic freedom, environmental protection, commonsense gun reform, etc.
Representational indifference may be shrugged off by a fraction of a fraction of diehard partisans in contorted districts where they have outsized leverage by design, but not a broader base of the electorate enraged by oblivious office holders.
If reelection in Ohio depended on receiving more than half of the total votes cast, instead a small percentage of the overall vote in elections decided in primaries, would culture war grandstanding in the Ohio Statehouse lose to outcome-based policymaking?
Would ranked choice voting — a modest, procedural upgrade in the election system that allows voters to rank candidates for office in order of their preferences — strengthen the quality of candidates running while also centering voters?
Ohioans may never know. Why? Because the possibility of ranked choice voting being used in statewide elections has been preemptively banned in Ohio to protect the aforementioned gerrymandered lawmakers.
Ohio Senate Bill 63, passed in the Ohio Senate last May and last week by the Ohio House, barred ranked ranked choice voting in statewide elections and threatened to withhold funding from any Ohio city that dare implement it under its home rule prerogative — which several municipalities are considering.
Former Democratic state senator and Ohio attorney general Marc Dann promoted the change in Lakewood.
“If you want a government that’s more inclusive and less vitriolic, this (ranked choice voting) is a solution that can be used to get there,” he said.
Under ranked choice voting, people pick their favorite candidate knowing that if he or she doesn’t gather enough votes to win, their vote will count toward their second favorite or third until one candidate has a majority of top rankings.
The voting model to encourage more voter engagement, more diverse candidates, and more policy-focused campaigns to generate broad-based appeal, has been around for over a century and was once widely used in Ohio from Ashtabula to Cincinnati.
It is how Americans vote today in some cities and states.
“Most people like ranked choice voting once they use it,” said Denise Riley who heads the nonpartisan Rank the Vote Ohio nonprofit.
“That’s why we would love to see our cities use it so the public can see how it works. I’m sure that’s why state lawmakers wanted to ban it in the cities” before it gets a foothold in communities that recognize its benefits over the status quo election system.
The registered Republican noted that ranked choice voting favors moderate candidates over polarizing ones that just sling mud.
It also fosters a wide-ranging candidate pool to bring new perspectives to a race and reinvigorate competition with ideas that actually resonate with a majority of voters.
But reform that gives voters “a greater choice, a stronger voice, and a representative democracy for all Ohioans,” can unseat entrenched partisans clinging to “safe seats” on a limited base of support.
So, of course, those entrenched partisans in the legislature squashed ranked choice voting in the state before it could start.
The prospects of foregone conclusions in elections being replaced by competitive races decided by the entire electorate — not just a passionate base — could ruin everything gerrymandering has done to seal control.
Ohio Republicans owe their dominion in the legislature to rigged redistricting. Ranked choice voting is a threat to their engineered supermajorities in the Ohio Senate and Ohio House.
The go-to GOP flack in the Senate for disempowering and disenfranchising Ohio voters, Bowling Green Republican Theresa Gavarone, helped neutralize that threat with Senate Bill 63.
She gave the party’s ranked choice voting ban a bipartisan sheen by enlisting feckless Columbus Democrat Bill DeMora as co-sponsor.
A smattering of spineless Democrats in both chambers followed suit, choosing self-preservation over an arguably more representative voting process not even in use in Ohio.
They discarded opposition testimony on S.B. 63 that overwhelmed out-of-state proponents aligned with the Heritage Foundation.
That’s how much insulated politicos feared losing power to more broadly popular competitors preferred by majority consensus.
“Wherever ranked choice is proposed,” said Riley, “the party in power, whether Republican or Democrat, is opposed to it because it gives voters power and not the parties.” \
Politicians whine about ranked choice voting being too complicated or confusing as a smokescreen to conceal the truth, she continued.
“Ranked choice voting takes away some of their power to do whatever they want” and “Ohio is ripe for (ranked choice voting),” Riley predicted.
A state government willfully and repeatedly blind to the demands of the governed will compel change.
This story is republished from the Ohio Capital Journal. View the original article.
