Black Ohio Leaders Urge No Vote on Issue 1

Two words.

Racial gerrymander.

Reliable, fixed, percentage based outcomes.

“It’s important to point out that Issue 1 is founded in the concept of proportionality,” said Senator Michele Reynolds, “which is just another term for gerrymandering.”

Issue 1 disenfranchises the Black voter.

This week, Black leaders blasted the disaster that Issue 1 would bring, and they brought the proof.

The former Chairperson of the Michigan Independent Citizens Redistricting Panel, Rebecca Szetela, joined Senator Michele Reynolds, R-Canal Winchester, and Representative John Barnes, D-Cleveland, who served a decade in the Ohio General Assembly, for a news conference at the Ohio Statehouse.

Szetela talked about the insulated nature of the Michigan panel, that ignored pleas from Detroit citizens to keep their neighborhoods together.

“They are immune from being removed, and they can do what the want to do,” said Chairwoman Szetela. “I would strongly encourage people to vote no for that reason. You do not want to create an undemocratic body.”

The unaccountable panel, very similar to Issue 1 in Ohio, was embarrassed by a federal court ruling that determined their Congressional map was a racial gerrymander. Detroit was divided more than 20 times, and for the first time in 70 years, the city does not have a Black member of Congress. That’s for a city that is 78% Black.

Issue 1, much like the process in Detroit, would slice and dice communities and stretch districts from the inner city far into and outside the suburbs. All for proportionality and predetermined outcomes. Not for effective representation.

“Quite frankly I find these facts to be concerning and unacceptable,” said Senator Reynolds.

Representative Barnes called Issue 1, “bad public policy,” and went onto to say, “…you are undermining the most basic, the most vulnerable, the most impoverished people in the state of Ohio, that’s wrong, and that’s why I’m traveling all over the State of Ohio to ask citizens to vote no on Issue 1.”

Make no mistake, Issue 1 is a secretly funded $25 million dollar power grab from out-of-state special interests that don’t care about minorities, or the Black vote. They only care about political power for the Washington D.C. Deep State.

Issue 1 subtracts all of the anti-gerrymandering protections passed by more than 70% of the voters in 2015, and 75% in 2018, and adds gerrymandering into the Ohio Constitution.

This week the Wall Street Journal also urged Ohioans to vote no, with a column from its Editorial Board titled, "Ohio's Redistricting Ballot Trick."

Last fall Ohio’s Redistricting Commission passed a set of maps for the General Assembly with a unanimous, bipartisan vote. The system worked.

This week Senator Reynolds, Representative Barnes, Rebecca Szetela, and Cleveland State University Student Tahgi Turner stand up for the Black community that has been sold out to a secretly funded campaign driven by Washington, D.C. special interests.

Watch them expose the dangers concealed by the Issue 1 campaign in a must watch President's Podcast.