To Be or Not to Be: Election 2023

Unless a lawsuit stops it, we expect to have a special election on August 8 with just one issue on the ballot. State Issue 1 would make it much harder to amend Ohio’s constitution, just in time to prevent a change that would protect personal freedom in making health care decisions.

There is al­ready a com­pli­cated pro­cess in place in Ohio. Hun­dreds of thou­sands of sig­na­tures rep­re­sent­ing at least 44 coun­ties have to be col­lected and ver­i­fied. The lan­guage of the pro­posed amend­ment goes through care­ful le­gal re­view by the at­tor­ney gen­eral and the state bal­lot board.

These pro­cesses frus­trate many pro­posed bal­lot amend­ment drives. And even when they make it to the bal­lot, pas­sage is far from guar­an­teed. Since 1912 there have been just 71 bal­lot is­sues and only 19 passed.

You can use this online absentee ballot application –  — that already has the special election filled in. Fill it out, print it, and out and get it to the Board of Elections as soon as possible.

Please also let your friends, family, and neighbors know that if they are not registered to vote yet, there’s still time! The voter registration deadline for the August special election is July 10.

Register to vote.