COLUMBUS, Ohio — An Ohio government panel has approved spending roughly $322,000 to advertise the upcoming Aug. 8 election that will decide State Issue 1, the proposal to make it harder to change the Ohio Constitution in the future.
The money will pay to publish legally mandated information about State Issue 1 for three consecutive weeks in one newspaper in all 88 Ohio counties starting on July 16. The information will include the ballot language summarizing the measure’s effects and official arguments for and against the measure.
Read more: Coverage of State Issue 1
State Issue 1, if voters approve it, would amend the state constitution to require future amendments to get a 60% supermajority in a statewide vote in order to pass. That’s compared to the current 50% simple majority standard that’s been in place for more than a century.
It also would make it significantly harder for potential ballot issues to qualify by expanding mandatory signature-gathering requirements for citizen-initiated amendment campaigns. It would require campaigns to collect a minimum number of signatures from all 88 counties to qualify for the ballot, compared to the current 44 counties.
An election will be held on Aug. 8 to decide the issue. A “yes” vote would approve the changes while a “no” vote would reject them.
State officials have debated making it harder to amend the state constitution for years. But Republicans fast-tracked State Issue 1 specifically to try to foil an expected November ballot measure that would add legal protections for abortion to the state constitution.
Need to Know: How to register, where to vote, when the polls are open
The Ohio Controlling Board, a panel of state lawmakers and officials in Gov. Mike DeWine’s office, approved spending the $322,000 earlier this week at the request of Secretary of State Frank LaRose.
The advertising process, including the type of information that must be published and the requirement that it appear in a newspaper in each county, is mandated by the Ohio Constitution under a provision voters approved in 1974 that lays out the process of proposing state constitutional amendments.
During the meeting, state Rep. Mary Lightbody, a Westerville Democrat, questioned whether LaRose’s office had considered advertising the election online.
“I would like to encourage modernization of the process,” Lightbody said. “I know very few people who subscribe, I’m sorry to say, to print newspapers. They may have digital copies, but they might miss this, and this is like, really important. So that’s a concern.”
Separately, state lawmakers are looking at how much they will earmark in the two-year state budget to pay to administer the election. The Ohio Senate included $15 million in its proposed budget introduced last week.
Andrew Tobias covers state politics and government for cleveland.com and The Plain Dealer