Ballot Board Boogie
Ballot Board Boogie
The most pathetic loser in state politics somehow hits a new low.
If you’d like to see your hobgoblin government in action, the Ohio Ballot Board meets today at 11:00 a.m. in the North Senate Hearing Room at the Statehouse.
The Ballot Board is one of those things that you don’t learn about in civics class, and most voters probably have never heard about.
But, like a lot of institutions in Ohio, it’s been corrupted by Republican power. In a completely unnecessary flex, the GOP allows some ancient, retired banking lobbyist from the metropolis of Stoutsville to sit on the Board and rubber-stamp whatever Republican ratfuckery rolls onto the docket.
We saw an example of that last year when the most pathetic loser in Ohio politics, Secretary of State Frank LaRose, inserted loaded language about “unborn children” into the ballot language of the abortion amendment at the behest of Holy Roller groups like the Center for Christian Virtue and Ohio Right to Life.
It was a disgrace. Thankfully, hog voters are adept at sensing a political hack’s tricks, and they reacted accordingly by dumping the Holy Rollers in the river in a decisive electoral victory.
LaRose didn’t learn a thing from that humbling loss. Instead, he doubled down on his delusions of grandeur by deluding himself into thinking that he’d be our next United States Senator.
He promptly ran one of the worst statewide campaigns in recent memory and finished third in his own precinct among Republican voters.
Frankly, I’m starting to suspect this bum has a humiliation fetish. Having his wife shit on his chest must not be as arousing as it used to be, because he’s back to his old antics as a partisan hack.
Yesterday, I sounded the alarm after a patriot sent me a report from a Republican staffer that LaRose had inserted new language into the proposed anti-gerrymandering amendment’s ballot language that left Republican staffers stunned at the audacity.
A couple of hours later, Jessie Balmert of cincinnati.com revealed the specifics:
The proposed ballot language for state Issue 1, distributed Thursday and obtained by the USA TODAY Network Ohio Bureau, paints a picture of a measure that encourages rather than curbs gerrymandering, defined as drawing lines to unfairly favor one political party over another.
[..]
The draft language begins: "The proposed amendment would: Repeal constitutional protections against gerrymandering approved by nearly three-quarters of Ohio electors participating in the statewide elections of 2015 and 2018, and eliminate the longstanding ability of Ohio citizens to hold their representatives accountable for establishing fair state legislative and congressional districts."
Funnily enough, LaRose won’t even be in attendance at the meeting to ordain this masterpiece. He’ll be training with his Army Reserves unit so he can brag about still being a troop when he runs for Auditor in 2026.
In his steed will be former State Senate President Larry Obhof, whom LaRose hired to the Secretary of State’s office as chief legal counsel for this specific fight. I texted Obhof yesterday to let him know that I’d prefer to do things the easy way and have a normal conversation with him at the Board meeting, as that’s more informative for the viewer.
But if he wants to run like a bug down the hallways of the Statehouse like a common criminal—that would also be good for The Business Line.
If you enjoy my antics with Ohio’s fabulously corrupt politicians, you can help sustain that work by joining the Patriots Caucus. After all, what makes me dangerous to them is that they can’t go crying to my boss to get me fired:
A couple of years ago, when I was an angry drunkard content with dying one double Tito and soda at a time, something like this would have filled me with the righteous fury of 10,000 suns. But thanks to my ongoing sobriety and the miracle of Zoloft, I can only laugh at LaRose’s latest feeble attempt to dupe voters against their own interests.
How many times are we going to teach this lesson to this weasel of a man?
These are the actions of a man who represents a side that is increasingly desperate to stave off hog justice. Just last night, I heard from a House Republican that Congressional Republicans were “starting to freak out” and attempting to raise money against the well-funded Citizens Not Politicians project.
Again, it shows you how lazy these guys are. This amendment has been in the works since January—with our side clearly motivated and financed—and they’re just now starting to pass the hat in a state featuring the most expensive Senate election in the country, along with a presidential race?
Not that I am complaining.
But they haven’t learned anything about messaging since their last two defeats. Just like last year, all they can do is cry about being outspent by “out-of-state interests” because they know how foolish it would be to argue that politicians should continue to pick their voters.
And at least some of those Republican operatives are smart enough to realize that most Ohioans aren’t partisan thinkers and thus aren’t interested in protecting ill-gotten Republican power, even if they are reliable Republican voters in elections.
That’s bad news for the GOP Junta, which will need every Republican vote and a sizable chunk of independents, too. That side obviously doesn’t feel good about their numbers, so all that’s left to do is cheap tricks to try to juice the margins.
Their feeble machinations will make victory that much sweeter. And it was already going to be a sweet, sweet taste.
But even though our side leads in the polls by a substantial margin, and even though our side includes Republican politicians who won’t speak publicly about their support, we should act as if we’re down in the polls and playing from behind.
Because if we do the work between now and November 5th, there is no amount of Republican hobgoblinery that can stop this train.
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