The Ohio Senate approved a couple of bills on Wednesday that Signal has been following.
One was Senate Bill 158, which prohibits almost all cell-phone use by students during the school day. It passed the Senate nearly unanimously with members of both political parties lamenting the constant distraction of phones for students and what that might do to their developing psyches.
The bill passed 30-2, with two Democrats in opposition. You can read my colleague Jake Zuckerman’s article about the vote here.
The other bill was Senate Bill 63, which would punish cities and villages that adopt ranked-choice voting in their local elections by stripping them of a key source of state funding called the Local Government Fund. (This fund directs around $500 million to local governments annually.)
Ranked-choice voting involves having voters rank political candidates in their order of preference. If no candidates get a majority of votes, the last-place candidate is eliminated and their votes are reallocated to the other candidates. This continues until someone wins a majority of votes.
The bill’s sponsors, Republican Sen. Theresa Gavarone and Democratic Sen. Bill DeMora, say ranked-choice voting is confusing to voters and burdensome for elections administrators. In a floor speech, DeMora pointed to low turnout in last year’s municipal elections in Portland, which uses RCV and saw dozens of candidates.
“That’s not voter empowerment, it’s voter overload,” DeMora said. The bill passed with bipartisan support, although a handful of Democrats voted “no.”
Supporters say the ranked-choice method helps candidates who have the broadest appeal win, not just those with the most passionate base of support. Only two states allow voters to rank their candidates: Alaska and Maine. Shortly after Alaska adopted the method, voters elected a Democrat as their at-large congress member for the first time in 50 years. This outcome attracted more interest in the voting method from both major political parties.
No cities currently use ranked-choice voting systems. But Cleveland Heights is likely to place a ranked-choice amendment on the November ballot, according to Denise Riley, executive director of Ranked Choice Ohio. Other communities are considering them, including Cincinnati and several Northeast Ohio cities: Hudson, Lakewood, Kent and Stow.
Now that they’ve cleared the state Senate, both bills now head to the House for consideration. If the House approves them, they’d head to Gov. Mike DeWine’s desk for his signature.
Tax protest advances
Petitions for another citizen-proposed constitutional amendment could be in the field soon following a Wednesday vote in Columbus.
The Ohio Ballot Board, a panel led by Republican Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose, in a unanimous vote determined that the amendment proposed by a group called Citizens for Property Tax Reform deals with a single issue. This means the amendment’s backers only have to circulate one set of petitions to get it on the ballot. The proposal would abolish all property taxes, which would be financially devastating to schools and other local governments and force major hikes to other forms of taxes, major cuts to local governments, or a combination of both.
But the group is a long way from a victory lap. It must collect 413,487 valid voter signatures, including a minimum number from half of Ohio’s 88 counties, to get the measure up for a statewide vote. The process is grueling and expensive, and usually only available to deep-pocketed groups or those with huge membership bases, such as labor unions. To help visualize how hard this is, 400,000-plus signatures is a minimum of 22,000 pages of paper, which, when loaded into boxes, would fill multiple U-Haul trucks.
That’s why in my coverage of these issues during their early phases, I focus heavily on determining if a ballot-issue campaign has the resources and sophistication needed to qualify for the ballot.
And it sounds like Citizens for Property Tax Reform at this point doesn’t have the resources. A group organizer, Brian Massey, used his public comment time during the meeting to ask state officials where to get the petition forms voters must sign. Another organizer, John Marra, told reporters following the meeting that the group isn’t sure how it might qualify. Organizers said they’re at least hoping their petition drive motivates lawmakers to act.
“I’m a man of faith, and I believe that with God, all things are possible,” said Marra, the mayor of Timberland, a village in Geauga County. “Right now, we’ve gotten this far with the help of the Holy Spirit. And you know what? We’re gonna keep going. We’re gonna shoot for the stars.”
House Speaker Matt Huffman, a Lima Republican, told reporters Wednesday he hopes lawmakers view the amendment as a “wake-up call.” Over the past year or so, state lawmakers have considered numerous bills making tweaks and/or more significant overhauls to the state’s property tax system, but none have made it into law yet.
“Perhaps reasonable minds can try to do something here in the next six weeks on the issue,” Huffman said.
Police amendment generating political fodder
Another proposed ballot measure would make it easier for citizens to sue police for misconduct. But right now it seems like an extra longshot to make it before voters for similar reasons. It nonetheless is providing political fodder for state Republicans.
State Auditor Keith Faber called the proposed amendment “a clear and present danger” in a brief address last Friday to the Ohio Republican Party’s central committee. Faber, who’s running next year to be the state’s next attorney general, said he plans to spend the next six months trying to make sure it doesn’t qualify for the ballot and, if it does, he said he’d lead the effort to defeat it.
“It is a clear attack on law enforcement,” Faber said.
The campaign backing the amendment, Ohioans Against Qualified Immunity, won a drawn-out legal battle last month with the current attorney general, Dave Yost. A Republican, Yost repeatedly rejected the mandatory paperwork the group filed, calling its language misleading. The legal victory allows the group to begin collecting voter signatures to get the measure on the ballot. If the amendment gets before voters, it would allow voters to decide whether to eliminate qualified immunity – a legal concept that protects police officers and other government officials from being sued unless they violate a clearly established constitutional right.
Like the property tax amendment, the qualified immunity amendment won’t get on the ballot unless the campaign gets a huge influx of cash. So far, I’ve seen no signs of that happening.
It still could play a role in the 2026 election regardless, by giving Republicans something to campaign against.
In an interview, Faber said he “isn’t in the business of making assessments at how good the other side is at doing its job.”
“It’s closer than it’s ever been. And I think it’s such a bad policy that we have to let people know about it and not let it be a stealth campaign,” Faber said.
All bets are on – your phone?
In 1973, Ohio voters began a 50-year march of liberalizing the state’s gambling laws, a trek poised for another big step forward. On Wednesday afternoon, Sen. Nathan Manning, a Lorain County Republican, introduced a bill that unlocks a new world of gambling from your phone. You can read more about that move in Jake’s story here.
Cuyahoga County Dem chair staying put
The process is ongoing to find a new leader for the Ohio Democratic Party after Chairwoman Liz Walters announced her resignation earlier this month.
The field now has one less candidate: Cuyahoga County Democratic Party Chairman Dave Brock announced Wednesday that he won’t be seeking the job. He told me in an interview he seriously considered running, but there are multiple factors contributing to his decision to pass.
“The pathway to victory is there, but it’s not clear cut,” Brock said. “At the end of the day, it seemed right to stay here because there’s so much we want to do.”
Brock’s departure came a few days before the first ODP chair candidate forum. You can read more here.
Florida man visits
The latest in a string of potential 2028 presidential candidates swung through Ohio this week. This time it was a Republican: Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.
The official reason behind DeSantis’ visit was to plug Ohio House Joint Resolution 5, which would add Ohio to the list of states calling for a federal constitutional convention to consider adding term limits for Congress members. DeSantis said during a press conference that Ohio would be the 12th state to do so if HJ5 were to pass. The measure requires support from 60% of both the House and the Senate to be approved.
But it’s hard to overlook how DeSantis just spent much of 2023 running for president. He similarly appeared in Ohio the previous year, stumping for Ohio candidates such as JD Vance ahead in the 2022 midterm elections.
Former Gov. John Kasich used a different constitutional amendment proposal a decade ago as a platform to travel nationally and eventually launch an unsuccessful campaign for president.
But in response to a reporter’s question, DeSantis said there’s nothing deeper behind his visit, other than his deep passion for congressional term limits. Before his press conference officially began, he also mentioned having his staff try to find Skyline Chili.
“This has nothing to do with running for anything…. I wouldn’t read anything into it in terms of political,” he said.
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Note: An earlier version of this story incorrectly stated Alaska and Utah are the two states that use ranked-choice voting. It has been corrected.