Opinion: Think what Tennesse lawmakers did is bad. Scared Ohio GOP up to frightening ruse.

J. Bennett Guess of Cleveland is executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Ohio.  

The entire nation has been taken with Tennessee as the supermajority party of its House of Representatives showcased brazen legislative overreach, expelling two of its duly elected members for joining a peaceful protest in the House chamber after a recent mass shooting at a Christian school in Nashville left six dead.

Both expelled legislators were Black men, young, and newly elected. A third more-senior legislator, a white woman, was spared expulsion by just a few votes.

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Four days later, the Nashville Metropolitan Council, empowered to fill the vacancy, unanimously picked ousted Rep. Justin Jones (D-Nashville) to be reinstated.

"I want to welcome democracy back to the people's house," Jones said upon his return to the House floor. “I want to thank you… for awakening the people of this state, particularly the young people. Thank you for reminding us that the struggle for justice is fought and won in every generation."

Similarly, ousted Rep. Justin Pearson (D-Memphis) was chosen by the Shelby County Board of Commissioners on Wednesday to return to his seat. Pearson said before his reinstatement, “You might try and silence it. You might try and expel it, but the people’s power will not be stopped.”

Yes, the power of everyday people, the wheels of our democracy, cannot be allowed to be dismantled. And that’s why Tennessee so captured the public’s collective attention and political imaginations, because all around us we’re seeing coordinated attempts in gerrymandered supermajority states, be it politically red or blue, to squash democratic processes and erase meaningful citizen participation.

What about Ohio?

Here in Ohio, the exact same type of government overreach is on full display, where a supermajority is prioritizing, even seemingly fast-tracking, efforts to effectively end citizen-initiated state constitutional amendments.

House Joint Resolution 1 would require measures led by community groups, but notably not the legislature, to surpass nearly insurmountable hurdles to qualify for the ballot and then exceed a 60 percent voter threshold.

Its companion version, Senate Joint Resolution 2, similarly limits our nation’s “one person, one vote” founding principles by locking in minority rule.

Portending without evidence that the Ohio Constitution somehow needs “protection” from outside billionaire-led special interests, legislators only reveal the extent of their contempt for voters.

In reality, under their proposed new rules, only billionaires — and billionaires only — could possibly afford to mount such herculean efforts to qualify an issue for the ballot. Making it all worse, however, self-serving legislators would retain their authority to place any measure on the ballot, at any time and at taxpayers’ expense, while retaining just the 50 percent threshold for their initiated amendments.

It’s pure hypocrisy, and it’s frightening.

This means that in grossly gerrymandered Ohio, where almost no legislator is held accountable to voters in truly competitive districts, members of the General Assembly are moving to make it impossible for citizens to fight back, in any systemic way, against legislators’ increasing tyranny. They want to place this constitutional measure before voters in a special single-issue election this August, when almost no one votes, at a $20 million price tag for taxpayers.

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If passed, under the insulting ruse of protecting us, they can then continue to pass laws, craft budgets, restrict freedoms, and create tax structures completely unreflective of Ohioans’ true will, needs, and values.

So why is this happening now?

Because citizen-led advocacy groups are looking at various much-needed policy changes and protections that would never pass through this unresponsive, unaccountable legislature, like protecting the right to reproductive freedom, ending partisan gerrymandering, legalizing marijuana, raising the minimum wage, ensuring accessible elections, and protecting workers’ rights.

Most of these measures, and more, are extremely popular with a majority of Ohio voters, and the current legislature is afraid of us, afraid of the people’s power.

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When Justin Jones speaks movingly about the new “awakening” of people in his home state of Tennessee, he is also speaking to us in Ohio, to people in any and every state where and when the government is retaliating against its citizens, limiting recourse, and squashing democracy.

Already, more than 200 organizations have come together, across political perspectives, to say HJR 1 and SJR 2 fundamentally undermine citizen engagement and must be stopped. Let’s all rise up, speak out, and stop this travesty in the making. It’s our Ohio.

J. Bennett Guess of Cleveland is executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Ohio.  

This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: Frightened Ohio, Tennessee lawmakers stopping at nothing for control