fbpx

Ohio Democrats

Fighting For Ohio Workers

Donate

News

ICYMI: Republicans Have Betrayed Ohioans, Now Ohioans Can Hold Them Accountable

April 26, 2022

For Immediate Release:
Tuesday, April 26, 2022
CONTACT: Cameron Keir, [email protected], 614-506-5413

ICYMI: Republicans Have Betrayed Ohioans, Now Ohioans Can Hold Them Accountable

“We were naïve to hope for better, for state leaders committed to fair play in redistricting. Instead, they flipped off voters and disobeyed the law.” 

Columbus, OH — In case you missed it, a new Ohio Capital Journal column outlines how Republicans have betrayed Ohioans time and time again, and now Ohioans have the opportunity to hold them accountable. OCJ’s Marilou Johanek is encouraging all Ohioans not to be dissuaded by the Republican mess created this primary election, and exercise their constitutional right to cast their ballots. The column highlights what we already know: Republicans are using scandal, corruption, and especially the redistricting mess costing you tens of millions of dollars in an effort to suppress the vote, but Ohioans have the opportunity for a better direction by exercising their right to vote.

“We all have skin in this struggle, which is why, despite the muddled Ohio midterm ballot foisted on us by self-serving Republican leaders, Ohio voters must show up in 2022. Too much is riding on this crucial referendum for state and federal leadership to sit it out,” writes Ohio Capital Journal’s Marilou Johanek. 

Read more from the Ohio Capital Journal here and below:

  • What a hot mess. Thanks to Ohio Republicans, enjoying a monopoly of power from the last redistricting sham they engineered after the 2010 Census, a critical election has been turned into a crapshoot. 
  • Thanks to one party, impervious to the needless chaos it created for voters, poll workers, and election administrators with lopsided district maps shot down by the state supreme court, Ohioans are confused, disgusted and done with the whole sordid affair.
  • Two weeks out of the May 3 primary, early voting by mail and in-person was down nearly 30% compared with the same period four years ago. If the Republican goal was to suppress the vote with protracted gamesmanship to turn redistricting reform on its head for partisan advantage — mission accomplished. 
  • We all have skin in this struggle, which is why, despite the muddled Ohio midterm ballot foisted on us by self-serving Republican leaders, Ohio voters must show up in 2022. Too much is riding on this crucial referendum for state and federal leadership to sit it out.
  • Let anger over the redistricting charade pulled on statewide voters — who twice amended the Ohio Constitution to inject fairness into the drawing of state district boundaries — motivate you to the polls next Tuesday. 
  • There’s plenty to be livid about with this unnecessary distraction of undetermined districts — including the hefty bill taxpayers will have to pay for the hot mess that state Republicans alone created.
  • The first primary election (yes, we are forced to have two, thanks to Team Gerrymander) will be missing all the state legislative races. That’s because Republican legislative leaders, and enabling statewide Republican officeholders, defied the law on drawing fair district maps for the Ohio Senate and the Ohio House. An exasperated Ohio Supreme Court rejected their unconstitutional handiwork. Four times. Maybe the fifth will be a charm but don’t bet on it. 
  • It’s no secret that state Republicans have been orchestrating a con to run out the clock on complying with the constitution. They brazenly acted above the law.
  • But Republican foot-dragging on redistricting was a calculated strategy from the beginning. The idea was to slow walk the mapmaking process until it bumped into 2022 election deadlines. 
  • Senate President Matt Huffman and House Speaker Bob Cupp, backed by Gov. Mike DeWine, Secretary of State Frank LaRose and State Auditor Keith Faber, stand to get away with district maps that plainly favor one party over another, a gross injustice manifestly prohibited by law.
  • We were naïve to hope for better, for state leaders committed to fair play in redistricting. Instead, they flipped off voters and disobeyed the law.
  • When the Republican duplicity on redistricting is a fait accompli, as seems likely, the anti-democratic party in Ohio will have succeeded not only in again rigging election outcomes to win by cheating but wasted $25 million or so of our hard-earned tax dollars on an extra election caused by months of one-sided subterfuge.
  • There is your motivation to vote in 2022. For accountability. For equal representation in voting. For candidates— gubernatorial, U.S. Senate and U.S. House — who honor the rule of law and put people over politics. Do it.

###