Two of the Supreme Court’s worst assaults against democracy have been its decisions to allow unfettered corporate money into the system (Citizens United vs FEC in 2010) and to allow partisan gerrymandering to stand (Rucho vs Common Cause + Lamone vs Benisek, both in 2019).
The Citizens United ruling opened the floodgates to unlimited and undisclosed corporate spending in political campaigns allowing wealthy special interests to distort the country’s politics by wielding disproportionate influence over the electoral process, undermining the voices of individual citizens. The Republicans feel they have to hold onto power, not so much because they have policies they want to enact as much as... well they have business they want to purse-- like Trump and Giuliani offering to sell presidential pardons for $2 million a pop.
The two gerrymandering decisions effectively shut the door on federal challenges to partisan gerrymandering, stating— absurdly, entrenching the power of political parties and making it nearly impossible for voters to hold elected officials accountable— that the issue is one that should be addressed by state legislatures, rather than the courts.
In effect, the Supreme Court’s very far right majority has given the super-rich the power to buy the legislators to draw districts that will keep conservatives in power regardless of what the voters want. It’s at the crux of America’s dysfunctional politics. Voters in swing states like Wisconsin and North Carolina have been most adversely impacted, although these decisions have already turned former swing states like Florida and Ohio into blood red bastions of reactionary politics. And it doesn’t end with these two horrible decisions by the Supreme Court.
Yesterday, Julie Carr Smyth, reporting for the Associated Press, wrote about how Ohio is joining “a growing number of Republican-leaning states that are moving to undermine direct democracy by restricting citizens’ ability to bypass lawmakers through ballot initiatives and constitutional amendments. The Ohio proposal will ask voters during an August special election to boost the threshold for passing constitutional amendments to 60% rather than a simple majority. It also would double the number of counties where signatures must be collected, adding an extra layer of difficulty to qualifying initiatives for the ballot.”
The Missouri Legislature failed to approve a similar measure on Friday, but Republicans vowed to bring the issue back in 2024 in an attempt to head off a citizens’ attempt to restore abortion rights in the state through a constitutional amendment.
A similar measure will be on North Dakota’s ballot next year, while one in the works in Idaho would ask voters to increase signature requirements imposed on petition gatherers. In Wisconsin, which does not allow statewide citizen initiatives, Republicans who control the Legislature have proposed prohibiting local governments from placing advisory questions on ballots. Such referenda are sometimes used to boost voter turnout, though results don’t carry the weight of law. Florida Republicans added new hurdles to that state’s constitutional amendment process in 2020.
The trend has taken off as Democrats and left-leaning groups frustrated by legislative gerrymandering that locks them out of power in state legislatures are increasingly turning to the initiative process to force public votes on issues that are opposed by Republican lawmakers yet popular among voters. Only about half the states, mostly in the Western U.S., allow some form of citizen ballot initiative.
In Ohio, voters have proposed using the initiative process to enshrine abortion rights in the state constitution this November, as well as to increase the minimum wage, to legalize recreational marijuana and to reform a redistricting system that has produced persistently unconstitutional political maps favoring Republicans.
Arkansas Sen. Bryan King, a Republican who has joined the League of Women Voters in a lawsuit challenging his state’s latest initiative restriction, said he views efforts to undermine the initiative process as anti-democratic.
A measure approved earlier this year by Arkansas’ majority-GOP Legislature and signed by Republican Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders makes it harder to get initiatives on the ballot by raising the number of counties where signatures must be gathered from 15 to 50.
“I think one of the things it does is, no matter what party is in power, when you start trying to make it harder for citizens to challenge what their government does or make changes, then it just makes people not have faith in the process,” King said. “So I do think that making it harder is wrong.”
In Ohio, former governors and attorneys general of both major parties have lined up against the proposed constitutional amendment that would alter the simple majority threshold for passing citizen-led initiative that has been in place since 1912.
…Anti-abortion and pro-gun groups were the primary forces behind the push in favor of the proposed Ohio amendment. Since the Supreme Court’s decision las year overturning Roe v. Wade, voters in Michigan, Kentucky and Kansas have protected abortion rights through statewide votes.
... and another way your democraps are as useless as tits on a buick.
... and another way all who vote remain dumber than shit.
next!!