Payton Smith contributed to this column.
The Ohio Referendum has been portrayed as a win for the Democrats, and a loss for Republicans, as it could pave the way for abortion rights to be expanded in The Buckeye State.
But in reality, it’s a win for citizen democracy, and not a particular party. That’s because Democrats and Republicans have been undermining citizen initiatives and referenda for years, and this landslide win confirms the people will vote for their right to have a say, instead of always leaving it up to their representatives.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, my students never quit churning out some amazing work. One of the best research papers came from a LaGrange College undergraduate, Payton Smith, whose coursework was in Engineering and Political Science, all while playing softball. And her Senior Seminar research paper covered citizen initiatives and how both parties have tried to roll them back or walk back the results.
One of the myths I get from folks is that democracy means socialism or taking away the rights of everyone, and republics are the only guarantors of freedom, often with a partisan tilt in the definition. But democracy means people directly have a say on policy, and republics mean representative government, where people may (in some cases) have the freedom to choose their representatives. Not all websites get this right, unfortunately.
Unlike many free countries, we don’t have a national referendum. But we do have state and local referenda, or at least a number of states give that right to their people to introduce, and vote on policy. That’s why they call the states “laboratories of democracy.”
Yet as Ms. Smith discovered, those citizenship initiatives are increasingly under siege.
“This is not a procedure for which one political party can be held responsible. Through my findings, I determined that legislatures of the Democratic Party and legislatures of the Republican Party are guilty of walking back these ballot initiatives. Overturned citizen initiatives can be found in states that have recently voted primarily for the Democratic Party and states that have recently voted primarily for the Republican Party. This is not a case of one political party against the other, but rather an instance of elected representatives directly pushing back against their electors.”
Smith, who went on to law school at Faulkner University in Alabama, added more results.
“I discovered that out of the 22 states that allow citizen-initiated statutes, only 6 have not repealed or altered a [citizen-approved] statute between the years of 2008 and 2019. This means that 73% of state legislatures [in the sample] exercised their ability to annul or alter laws passed by the majority of their constituents.
“I was also able to detect that initiatives regarding elections comprised was one of the categories that endured the most repeals or alterations by lawmakers. Alarmingly, my research also made it apparent that there has been a recent spike in legislatures putting to use their abilities to overturn direct democracy. I discovered that 70% of the retractions or modifications of citizen initiatives occurred within the last four years. These push-backs of democracy are on an upward trajectory.”
So Ohioans voted by a wide margin, perhaps as much as 60%, against a plan to make it harder to pass state initiatives in Ohio in the future. It’s painted as a Democratic Party win, and that may be the case, just this time, for pro-choice advocates. But voters of all different ideologies have to work hard to protect that freedom to have a say on policy at the state and local level, and not just leave every decision up to their legislators, and not have those politicians find a way to emasculate the results…
…and they are likely to try that in Ohio, in fact.
These landslide results in Ohio, however, are good for democracy.
Payton Smith is a graduate of Jones School of Law, Faulkner University (Class of 2023).
John A. Tures is Professor of Political Science and Coordinator of the Political Science Program at LaGrange College, in LaGrange, Georgia.