Citizens Not Politicians is an independent, non-partisan, grass roots organization that collected enough signatures to place an issue on the ballot on Nov. 5, 2024 to put the people in charge of drawing legislative districts.
This is the most important issue to protect our freedom and the power of our vote that we will face in our lifetime and that is not an exaggeration.
Because of hard working people like you, who play by the rules, We Are Ohio has successfully fought to protect collective bargaining rights and kept right to work is wrong laws out of our state.
But it has been a constant battle for a decade against extreme lawmakers in Columbus who are out of touch with the will of working people and continue to try to pass anti-labor laws.
These extremists continue to get reelected because under the current scheme they draw their own legislative districts in a process known as gerrymandering.
That’s right. Politicians pick their own voters instead of voters like us choosing who should represent us and our interests in Columbus.
With your help, we’re going to change all that. We have a proven solution.
This November, you and all Ohioans will have the chance to vote on a constitutional amendment to create a 15-member Ohio Citizens Redistricting Commission made up of Republicans, Democrats, and Independents representing all corners of the state.
You know who isn’t on the commission? Politicians. Current politicians, former politicians, and political party officials are banned from the Citizens Commission.
You know who else isn’t getting a seat on the Citizens Commission? Lobbyists! That’s right, lobbyists are banned too.
The Citizens Commission will draw fair and impartial districts that don’t favor one party over the other or one elected politician over the other.
People running for office will have to earn our vote. That’s what Democracy looks like.
Drawing fair districts isn’t hard or rocket science. For the past quarter century, citizens have submitted fair maps to the legislature that would have ended gerrymandering, but the politicians rejected those fair maps and drew their own to protect themselves and their friends.
You can’t trust politicians to do the right thing when the wrong thing protects those politicians.
They went even further to protect themselves when they lied to Ohioans and said it was in our best interest to make it harder to amend our Ohio Constitution by raising the threshold from a simple majority to 60 percent.
We didn’t buy that nonsense and voted against Issue 1 in August to protect one person, one vote and to preserve a right we’ve had for more than 112 years to change our Constitution with a simple 50-plus one majority.;