Opinion: Republicans seek to reverse election results they do not like
Here in Hamilton County and for that matter nationwide, Republicans did not have a very good November election. But their statewide Ohio candidates sure did, and they deserve congratulations for that. But they deserve no praise for the debacle of the congressional or state legislative gerrymandering enabled by their ignoring the will of the voters of Ohio who amended the Ohio Constitution to provide for fairer more competitive districts.
Nor should we hail those who now seek to rewrite various laws to reverse election results they do not like. The Hamilton County Court of Appeals will, for the first time in history, have a 5-to-1 Democratic majority. In response, some in Columbus propose to add Butler and Clermont counties to the jurisdiction of the appellate court in hopes that the new voters will return the makeup of the court to its Republican domination. They ignore, among other things, what that will do to the volume and pace of the court or the need to add additional judges.
The recent election changed the State Board of Education, creating a majority uninterested in continuing the cultural wars of the current board. The new majority wants to concentrate on education and educational equality. In response, the Republican majority proposes to strip the new board of its power if they allow it to survive at all.
They fear that a likely to come citizen proposed state constitutional amendment to protect the freedom of choice would meet with voter approval. They should. In every state where it has been considered by the voters since Roe was overturned, freedom of choice has won and efforts to curtail it have been defeated. So now those same Republicans propose to rush to the ballot a state constitution amendment that would require future citizen initiated constitutional amendments to have a 60% majority vote to be effective instead of the historically required 50%. In spite of their recent successes of their statewide candidates, these Republicans fear Ohio’s voters.
And of course, they will now make a lie of their mantra "easy to vote but hard to cheat." Still having discovered no evidence of any significant illegal voting (because there is none), they will seek to reduce the days and hours of in-person early and mail-in absentee voting, add more complications to voter ID requirements and reduce opportunities to return or correct absentee ballots.
This is what has become of a Republican state legislature so one-sided that there are no checks on its power and not a hint of badly needed bipartisanship.
Tim Burke lives in Mt. Lookout and is the former longtime chair of the Hamilton County Democratic Party and the Hamilton County Board of Elections.
This article originally appeared on Cincinnati Enquirer: Opinion: Republicans seek to reverse election results they do not like
