Should Ohio be more democratic?

Should we make it more difficult to pass a citizen referendum to amend the Ohio Constitution?

Let’s start out with a sometimes inconvenient truth. We are not a democracy.

Many people do not realize that our Founders intentionally and categorically rejected a democracy as our form of government. They instead selected a Constitutional Republic. That same Republican form of government is guaranteed by the Constitution (Article IV Section 4) to every State. There are good reasons why they rejected a simple democracy in favor of a Constitutional Republic. Those same reasons extend to why we do not want it to be too easy for the citizenry to directly change their State Constitution.

First, they recognized that a pure democracy would be subject to influences on a citizenry who may be easily swayed by current events and personal proclivities which may not be in the best interests of all the people. Today, we have wealthy influencers who throw many millions of dollars at their pet issues, drowning out the voices of those who may have well-reasoned opinions on an issue at hand. As we have seen in other States, many of these wealthy influencers would be from outside of Ohio, and therefore, by definition, would not reflect Ohio values or even the best interests of Ohio voters. Whoever spends the most money on influencing the citizenry usually wins. We would prefer a more deliberative process, not the brute force of a flood of money from other States.

Second, they recognized that a simple majority of voters could impose their will, or even take away the rights of nearly the same number of disagreeing peers- our Founders sometimes referred to a pure democracy as ”mob rule", where 51% of the people may take away the rights of the other 49%,” and Benjamin Franklin has been attributed with comparing it to two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for lunch.

Our Founders created a government where elected Representatives of the people made laws and included a system of checks and balances to ensure fairness and compliance with the rule of law. As James Madison wrote in Federalist 10, one of the key advantages of a Republican form of government is “to refine the public views by passing them through the medium of a chosen body of citizens whose wisdom may best discern the true interests of the country.”

As was stated by Representative Stewart, our State Constitution is even more important than simple legislation and deserves special protections just as our United States Constitution has. Our Founders would have never approved of a simple majority of voters changing our Ohio Constitution, as noted above. As he also pointed out, they chose to protect the Amendment process by requiring 2/3 of both Houses of Congress to agree on Amendments, and an even stricter requirement for ratification. By Constitutional standards, any Amendment should require 3/4 of the people to vote to “ratify” it, just as the ratification of a Constitutional Amendment would require 3/4 of the States.

When most States do not even allow such a public referendum, neither does the U.S. Constitution- it relies on Representatives of the States for ratification- either Legislators or delegates to a State Convention. Changing the requirement for ratifying an Amendment to the Ohio Constitution to something significantly less than the requirement in the United States Constitution is hardly unreasonable and will merely help protect the integrity of the process designed by our Founders. This Amendment does not favor either political party. It does not deviate from standard practice or convention, but it protects and promotes the effectiveness of our form of government.

As the dangers of big money from outside influencers increase, HJR6 promotes our Republican form of government an

d reduces the potential for the dangers of a pure democracy. I am asking you to protect our Constitutional Republic from the encroachment of the very democratic system that was expressly rejected by our Founders. As Benjamin Franklin famously said when exiting the Convention in 1787, “We have a Republic, madam, if we can keep it.”