Ohio voters just took firm positions on abortion and reproductive rights and adult-use recreational marijuana Tuesday, but gerrymandered Ohio lawmakers are already planning to flout, ignore, challenge, and abuse the voters’ wishes. This is what gerrymandering brings. This is why it’s a fundamental poison in the lifeblood of our republic.
Mere hours after Ohio voters passed the Issue 1 reproductive rights amendment with 56.62%, according to unofficial results, and the Issue 2 recreational marijuana law with 57% (both getting nearly 2.2 million votes), Ohio Republican legislative leaders signaled they would not respect the will of the people.
My whole argument has been that more people should vote. That more people should engage politically. Meaning they educate themselves and they vote in every election they can. Do you sincerely think that if voter participation rose from 2022’s 46% to 60 or 70% that we would have better politicians or worse politicians? I think we’d have better people running for office and being elected to office. That’s the bottom line of my argument.
And the bottom line of MY argument is that, while we should definitely vote, voting alone doesn’t fix the broken system that lead to the perpetual lesser evil choices in most general elections.