354 Comments

Speaking of minority rule: the electoral college.

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I can't even imagine how obnoxious it must've been to watch TV in Ohio during the run-up to all of this. The constant bombardment of ads must've seemed like the most deranged of mad-libs: "Vote to disenfranchise yourself and your fellow citizens or Californian drag queens will invade your kids' classrooms to read them And Tango Makes Three and trans them and 'bort them, also too." There are people raving on street corners who make more sense than this.

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Every time I see "Issue 1," I hear the voice of the late John McLaughlin.

In any case, if they're "living in sin with a safety pin" in Cleveland, at least it will be by choice. Cleveland, indeed, rocks.

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It's good that Ohio voters turned back this naked attempt to subvert the will of the people. Next Ohio, a constitutional amendment that turns the redistricting to an impartial third party panel. We did it in Michigan. You can do it too!

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We did it in 2018. 2022 was the first year it went into effect.

The Republicans decided they didn't have enough time to implement the provisions before the primaries and went with the old method. The Ohio Supreme Court declared their district maps unconstitutional four times, so they went judge shopping and found a Trump-appointed federal judge who basically said, "If this case lands in my docket after you fail to meet the state Supreme Court's deadline, I will rule in your favor, and I'll even let you know up front which of the four submitted maps I'll declare is the one that will have to be used for the midterms."

Guess what the Republicans did? Of course, they plan to get right on that third-party panel thing and expect to have it up and running by 2025.

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Reagan was at least smart enough to not brag too loud about all the fuckery was planning; not so much in the GOP these days.

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They still got away with their "Middle Class Tax Cut," which was in fact a very large middle class tax increase that gets worse and worse over time.

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To use an old-fashioned word, this outcome was <i>heartening.</i> The mustachio-twirling right-wingers tried to damage Ohio's democratic system by investing a minority of 40% with majority power. And they got gobsmackingly humiliated. They have trouble netting more than 40% of the vote, and this whole campaign was an admission of precisely that fact.

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Another blow to them. Their former speaker just started a 20-year gig as a guest of the feds for orchestrating a 60 million dollar bribery scheme that also resulted in one of the top Republican lobbyists in the state blowing his brains out as preferable to arrest and imprisonment.

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"In fact, Ohioans cast around 2.8 million votes for this August off-year election, far surpassing the 1.66 million votes in 2022’s primary election, which chose candidates for both parties for governor, US Senate, and the US House."

THAT is Astounding!

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founding

MURRIKA mad as hell and SHE ain't takin' it anymore!

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I'm a gonna be postin' this today, maybe in more than one post.

"And if they ever let me out, I'm gonna really let it out

When I decided to wage holy war

It looked very much like staring at my bedroom floor

But, oh God, you're gonna get it

You'll be sorry that you messed with me

And I know I may not look like much

Just another screaming speck of dust

But, oh God, you're gonna get it

You'll be sorry that you messed with us..."

--"Girls Against God," Florence and the Machine (track 5 on Dance Fever)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CoahSZdx-eA

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The minority leader in the Ohio House of Representatives did an interesting thing that didn't change the needle much, replaced one Retrumplican with another, but it was a nice dick move.

After the midterms, everyone knew who the new Speaker of the House was going to be. Sure thing. Dead bang. He spent the Christmas break measuring his office for new curtains.

Come the vote, an opponent with a handful of Republican votes and the entire Democratic caucus snatches that speakership away from Mr. Sure Thing. The state party howled. They issued statements that he wasn't the legitimate speaker because he didn't get a majority of Republican votes in a Republican majority house. They threatened to censure him and all the rest of the nonsense.

And, then, they did nothing. His tenure as Speaker, perhaps not as extreme as the Crown Prince's would have been, is still standard Republican governance.

It did fuck over the heir apparent, though. Rather uncivil, if you think about it.

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author

I fully expected them to try again immediately. I still fully expect them to challenge the votes, for reasons. The Ohio legislature is corrupt as hell.

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Hardly surprising, with these assholes

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Aug 9, 2023·edited Aug 9, 2023

Republicans want to "protect parents rights" by taking them away.

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I think republicans will live to regret the fall of Roe. People are pissed and they’re turning out to vote. Republicans really don’t like it when lots of people vote.

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It's too late for them. Two elections is all it takes to cement a person's voting behavior. '18, '20, '22, and now, '23. The behavior's clear.

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Classic “dog that caught the car”…

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I know - isn't it WONDERFUL??!!?!!?!?!!!??!!???

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I wrote on another site - Ohio Republicans' MOOOOVe forward bill to enfranchise bovine population in rural areas.

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Is this like, "One cow, one vote"?

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::Principal Skinner "Am I out of touch" meme::

"Are my beliefs unable to hold their own in a functioning democracy?

...

No, it's the voters who are wrong."

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"All overturning Roe does is send the decision back to the states."

*States vote pro-choice*

"No, not like that."

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The Dems need to put an abortion rights initiative on the ballot in 2024. That will be the reverse of what happened in 2004, when Karl Rove had an anti-same sex marriage initiative placed on the ballot. It boosted turnout by dredging up tens of thousands of first-time voters from every swamp and backwater cesspool across rural Ohio, and narrowly delivered the state to Dubya

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Fun fact. Karl Rove met with Ohio Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell concerning this matter. Blackwell had already made it known he planned to run for the open Governor's seat in 2006. Rove came away from that meeting and said, "He'll never be Governor."

Election night, the polls in Ohio closed at 7:30 PM ET, and CNN called the Governor's race for the Democrat at 7:35 PM ET.

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Why do you think we had Issue 1? The abortion amendment has already cleared all the hurdles and will be on the ballot this November. The marijuana legalization amendment came up 679 signatures short. They had 10 days to cure that (something Issue 1 would have eliminated). They came back with 6,000 additional signatures.

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Yep.and our initiative won’t be mean spirited bullshit, also , too.

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Seriously, on Election Day in 04 I saw a white middle aged couple ask for help because they said they had never voted before.

They looked like they had never walked on pavement before

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Next up, a constitutional amendment to ensure the drawing of district lines reflect the partisan makeup of the electorate, ie., forbid gerrymandering of districts in the state.

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Since winning through the courts was almost useless.

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