Two-faced Ohio Democrats need 60 percent to change their party’s constitution; just like Issue 1 they’re criticizing

It's the wealthy and billionaires like Dan Gilbert, not the grass roots, who are funding statewide constitutional initiatives in Ohio and elsewhere

CLEVELAND, OH – The two-faced Ohio Democratic Party, and its affiliate left wing groups, are hoping our state’s voters don’t look beyond what they’re being told about how wrong Republicans are for wanting a 60 percent vote to change the state’s constitution.   It’s currently 50 percent plus one vote to amend the Constitution of Ohio.  Ohio Republicans are asking voters on August 8, 2023 if the threshold to amending the Constitution of Ohio should be raised to 60 percent.

A look at the Ohio Democratic Party’s constitution and bylaws reveals party leader Elizabeth Walters is running a con game on even her own members to promote a baby killing agenda.  Pursuant to Article 4 of the Ohio Democratic Party’s Constitution, a 60 percent vote of delegates is required to amend the political organization’s constitution.  That’s not all.

The Ohio Democratic Party’s Constitution & Bylaws has its own 60 percent voting requirements.

Every Ohio Democratic Party candidate for statewide office needs a 60 percent endorsement vote of the Executive Committee to be approved as endorsed pursuant to Chapter 9 of its bylaws.  Chapter 9 of the Ohio Democratic Party’s Bylaws further explains that a 60 percent vote of executive committee members is needed to overturn a statewide candidate’s endorsement.  So much for “one person one vote” and protecting the rights of the simple, “plus one,” majority.

The 60 percent majority rule is not so anti-Democratic when it comes to amending the Ohio Democratic Party’s constitution, and endorsing its candidates, and it’s not just them.  The Ohio League of Women Voters is also an Issue 1 opponent.  Article XV of its bylaws requires a two-thirds supermajority vote to amend them.

Pursuant to Chapter 7, Section 1 of the Ohio Democratic Party’s bylaws, each of the county Democratic Party organizations is required to adopt the state party’s constitution and bylaws.  This means Democrats in all 88 of the state’s counties are required to operate under the same 60 percent constitutional language; and know their party’s anti-60 percent position is hypocritical.  Democrats want 60 percent for themselves; and 50 percent plus one for everyone else.

Cuyahoga County Democrats are so in favor of deck stacking they’ve added an amendment that requires party officials to support endorsed incumbent candidates over a fellow Democratic challenger.  This is even if the endorsed Democrat is a horrible public official and the challenger is more fit for competent public service.

American Negroes could not speak for themselves in elections; just like Ohio’s unborn children. Section 6 of the 1851 Constitution of Ohio could have easily been edited to read, “There shall be slavery in this state, and involuntary servitude for the punishment of crime.” The only voters, then, were white males. They voted for freedom and abolition. Ohioans will have two elections this year to protect the lives of unborn children from being killed by their mothers.

To make their anti-60 percent case, Democrats are arguing that a 60 percent vote to change the Constitution of Ohio is undemocratic.  They say 60 percent threatens democracy.  They complain 60 percent shouldn’t be the standard that gets in the way of their desire to take the lives of unborn children who can’t vote to save themselves.  They claim to believe Ohio’s constitution should be changed when the 50 percent threshold, plus one vote, is reached during a constitutional amender’s campaign.

Democrats ignore how 50-percent-plus-one is the same threshold multibillionaire Dan Gilbert used in 2009 to pass a constitutional amendment that led to his owning all of Ohio’s casinos. This was before he sold them to his Jack Entertainment management company in 2021 after suffering a stroke in 2019.

Gilbert funded a personal constitutional amendment, Issue 6, to legalize casino gaming in Ohio that won on November 4, 2009 with 52 percent of the vote.  The billionaire’s constitutional amendment limited casinos to only four cities.  Cleveland, Cincinnati, Columbus and Toledo.  Even if another city’s voters wanted one they couldn’t have it.

The Ohio Constitution of 1851 granted voting rights to only white males who had resided in the state for one year. Ohioans were prohibited from being arrested while they went to and returned from voting. Idiots and the insane were not given voting privileges.

In Cuyahoga County, ex-prosecuting attorney William D. Mason, a Democrat, interpreted Gilbert’s constitutional amendment to be a ban on internet cafes in the Ohio cities that wanted them as a revenue enhancing alternative to casinos.  Gilbert’s constitutional amendment was even an impediment to internet casinos operating in the state; as his Issue 6 was intended to give him a statewide casino gambling monopoly.  Ohio couldn’t become an online gaming state until Gilbert got a cut.

Today it is people with business interests like Gilbert, not grass roots citizens, who are funding Ohio’s constitutional changes.  They are altering political landscapes for greed and political whims; and not because they’ve been asked for help by the state’s voiceless “little people.”  Referendum and initiative petition circulators are often out-of-state workers being paid to promote a special interest’s campaign thanks to a 2015 federal court ruling, Citizens in Charge, Inc. v. Husted, S.D.Ohio No. 2:13-cv-935, 2015 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 184669, at *10 (Mar. 16, 2015).  The federal court ruling invalidated Section 3503.06(C)(1)(a) of the Ohio Revised Code that required petition circulators to be residents of the state.

Greed-motivated billionaires like Gilbert were not a factor in 1912 when Ohio’s Republican and Democratic progressives convened a constitutional assembly to amend the state’s constitution for a third time since 1802.  East Cleveland resident and Standard Oil founder John D. Rockefeller had been the world’s only billionaire since 1904; and was still the world’s only billionaire on September 3, 1912 when Ohio voters voted to adopt 34 out of 42 of Issue 23’s amendments to the Constitution of Ohio.  Even as late as 1918, Forbes magazine listed Rockefeller as the world’s only billionaire.

52 percent was all the vote billionaire Dan Gilbert needed to get a personal constitutional amendment to legalize casino gaming that added to his wealth.

As of April 2023, 105 years later, Forbes magazine identifies 2640 billionaires throughout the world.  That’s the number of people with the wealth to singularly fund changes to state and federal constitutions locally and globally; to influence presidential, senatorial and congressional outcomes; to influence the balance of power in general assemblies and control who enters the governor’s mansion.  The statistic doesn’t include politically-motivated multimillionaires with election influencing wealth in each state.

One of the 1912 amendments gave Ohio’s male voting population the power to initiate their own amendments to the state constitution; and to introduce or repeal state laws through initiatives and referendums. The 1851 constitutional convention had given only the General Assembly the power to introduce state constitutional amendments.  In 1851 white males who’d been residents of an Ohio county for a year were the only Ohioans with the right to vote in federal, state and local elections or hold elected office.  Those under 45 were the only Ohioans authorized to serve in militias.

White male Ohio voters prohibited slavery, lotteries and the transportation of liquor.  They prohibited men who had engaged in duels from holding elected office.  Issue 1’s opponents have made references to the 1912 constitutional convention without referencing what progressives on both sides were discussing.  The color of the real time conversations in 1912 is long gone from the public consciousness.

American Negroes were granted voting rights with the 15th Amendment’s enactment to the Constitution of the United States of America on February 26, 1869.  Changes to the federal constitution bypassed the state’s voting limitations to white males.  The federal constitutional amendment, however, did not help women.  It wasn’t until the federal 19th Amendment’s enactment on August 18, 1920 that women were given full voting rights or suffrage.  Women’s voices were not heard on September 3, 1912 when a state constitutional amendment was offered to let them vote.  57 percent of Ohio voters voted no.

From 1894 until 1916, the only office Ohio women could vote for, or seek to hold elected office, was for municipal school board.  In 1916, East Cleveland’s city council became the first city east of the Mississippi River to enact a charter change to let women vote and seek office in municipal elections.  It’s all about women in 2023 as Ohio voters from both sexes will decide if a 60 percent threshold will be needed in November to kill an unborn child and legalize marijuana.

Make no mistake about it.  The only reason Walters and her Ohio Democrats are saying “no” on Issue 1 is they want to pass a child killing constitutional amendment in November 2023.  They don’t want Democratic voters to know they require 60 percent votes for amendments and endorsements in their party’s internal constitution and bylaws.  They don’t want Democratic voters thinking of greed motivated billionaires like Gilbert.

Democratic voters, who are Americans, are expected by the party’s leaders to mindlessly support any un-American position they spew into the public arena as long as they vote to oppose other Americans who happen to be Republicans.  The Democratic Party’s baby killing and alternative lifestyle agenda is also making them extinct.  Promoting an anti-life, zero birth rate consciousness is wiping out a pro-Democratic voting base for the future.

Curve grading has not benefited Ohio.

Eric Jonathan Brewer

Cleveland's most influential journalist and East Cleveland's most successful mayor is an East Saint Louis, Illinois native whose father led the city's petition drive in 1969 to elect the first black mayor in 1971. Eric is an old-school investigative reporter whose 40-year body of editorial work has been demonstrably effective. No local journalist is feared or respected more.

Trained in newspaper publishing by the legendary Call & Post Publisher William Otis Walker in 1978 when it was the nation's 5th largest Black-owned publication, Eric has published and edited 13 local, regional and statewide publications across Ohio. Adding to his publishing and reporting resume is Eric's career in government. Eric served as the city's highest paid part-time Special Assistant to ex-Cleveland Mayor Michael R. White. He served as Chief of Staff to ex-East Cleveland Mayor Emmanuel Onunwor; and Chief of Communications to the late George James in his capacity as the Cuyahoga Metropolitan Housing Authority's first Black executive director. Eric was appointed to serve as a member of the state's Financial Planning & Supervision Commission to guide the East Cleveland school district out of fiscal emergency and $20 million deficit. Former U.S. HUD Secretary Alphonso Jackson told Eric in his D.C. office he was the only mayor in the nation simultaneously-managing a municipal block grant program. Eric wrote the city's $2.2 million Neighborhood Stabilization Program grant application. A HUD Inspector General audit of his management of the block grant program resulted in "zero" audit findings.

As a newspaper publisher, Eric has used his insider's detailed knowledge of government and his publications to lead the FBI and state prosecutors to investigations that resulted in criminal prosecutions of well-known elected officials in Ohio; and have helped realign Cleveland's political landscape with the defeat of candidates and issues he's exposed. Eric's stories led to the indictments of the late Governor George Voinovich's brother, Paul Voinovich of the V Group, and four associates. He asked the FBI to investigate the mayor he'd served as chief of staff for public corruption; and testified in three federal trials for the prosecution. He forced former Cuyahoga County Coroner Dr. Elizabeth Balraj to admit her investigations of police killings were fraudulent; and to issue notices to local police that her investigators would control police killing investigations. Eric's current work has resulted in Cuyahoga County Judge John Russo accepting the criminal complaint he guided an activist to file against 24 civil rights-violating police officers in the city he once led for operating without valid peace officer credentials. USA Today reporters picked up on Eric's police credentials reporting from his social media page and made it national.

Eric is the author of of his first book, "Fight Police License Plate Spying," which examines the FBI and local police misuse of the National Crime Information Center criminal records history database. An accomplished trumpet player and singer whose friendship with Duke Fakir of the Four Tops resulted in his singing the show's closing song, "Can't Help Myself": Curtis Sliwa of New York's Guardian Angels counts Eric among his founding chapter leaders from the early 1980's role as an Ohio organizer of over 300 volunteer crime fighters in Cleveland, Columbus and Youngstown, Ohio. For his work as a young man Eric was recognized by Cleveland's Urban League as it's 1983 Young Man of the Year.

Known in Cleveland for his encyclopedic knowledge of government and history, and intimately-connected with the region's players, every local major media outlet in Cleveland has picked up on one of Eric's stories since 1979. There is no mainstream newspaper, television or radio outlet in Cleveland that does not include an interview with Eric Jonathan Brewer in its archives over the past 40 years.

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