Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost announced Thursday his rejection of a proposed constitutional amendment that would amend Ohio’s constitution by rewriting election rules.
The proposed constitutional amendment, titled “Secure and Fair Elections,” would have amended Article V and Sections 1, 2, and 6 of the Ohio Constitution.
Yost’s role in the petition process was to determine whether the proposed amendment summary was “fair and truthful.”
In a response letter to petitioners who submitted the proposal, Yost (pictured above) explained that he was “unable to certify the summary as a fair and truthful statement of the proposed amendment.”
“Having reviewed the renewed submission, I am unable to certify the summary as a fair and truthful representation of the proposed amendment. We identified omissions and misstatements that, as a whole, would mislead a potential signer as to the actual scope and effect of the proposed amendment,” Yost’s office wrote in the response letter.
The proposed constitutional amendment would have added the following list of “rights” in regards to voting:
- Automatic voter registration;
- Unchecked same-day voter registration and voting;
- A signed declaration of identity to replace a voter’s photo identification;
- Multiple unregulated drop boxes and early voting locations throughout a county;
- An extended post-election ballot return period;
- Unregulated expansion of early voting hours by county;
- State-funded prepaid return postage for all absentee ballot applications and absentee ballots; and
- A ban on the removal of inactive voter registration records, as required under current state and federal law, resulting in these registrations remaining on the rolls despite the voter having moved or died.
The proposal was recently denounced by Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose, who called it a “direct assault on the integrity of our voting process and the safeguards we’ve put in place to hold that process accountable,” as previously reported by The Ohio Star.
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Kaitlin Housler is a reporter at The Ohio Star and The Star News Network. Follow Kaitlin on X / Twitter.
Photo “Dave Yost” by Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost.
