Issue 3 campaign employs used car salesman tactics to duplicate rules already in Ohio law

It is almost a cliché. The sleazy used car salesman. The high-pressure sales tactic to buy extra stuff you don’t need. Worn-down car buyers give in and pay more for junk add-ons like fabric protection, rustproofing, overpriced gap insurance, extended warranties, etc. It is a game of manipulation done to jack up dealership profits. Unnecessary extras mean higher out-the door costs. The ruse fools gullible customers for company gain.

The same kind of ploy can be pulled on the public for political gain. Take Ohio Issue 3, a proposed constitutional amendment to give Ohio voters extra insurance for election security — on top of the extensive, systemic security coverage that has kept Ohio elections safe, secure, and highly accurate for decades without incident.

The GOP legislative initiative would put a state photo ID law — that Republican legislators also insisted voters needed in 2022 — in the state constitution as a partisan add-on. The law, rammed through the gerrymandered Republican super-majority in the Statehouse required a photo ID before in-person voting. It was considered one of the most restrictive photo identification laws in the country. Ohioans adapted to the gratuitous GOP hurdle to voting and waited for the next one. Many will be puzzled to see a statewide amendment on the November ballot requiring the same photo ID restrictions on voting that were implemented three years ago.

The same party that sold that extreme measure, for no evidence-based, rampant voting fraud reason, now wants gullible voters to buy duplicate insurance on established state law via the constitution. But the sales pitch from Republicans about why a redundant constitutional amendment is a must-have for voters was suspect from the start.

First, the the Republican nominee for governor, tech billionaire Vivek Ramaswamy, dropped an op-ed calling on the state legislature to fast track Ohio’s photo ID law into the constitution as a midterm election referendum. Not coincidentally, the issue polls well with voters and might boost turnout in the fall election, a possible gain for the Ramaswamy campaign. The day after the op-ed ran, Republicans rushed identical resolutions in the Ohio Senate (presided over by Ramaswamy’s running mate and Senate President Rob McColley) and the Ohio House to enshrine photo ID for voting in the constitution with statewide ballot Issue 3. Republican lawmakers said amending the constitution with voting restrictions was necessary to ensure election integrity — a favorite “Chicken Little,” sky-is-falling refrain Republicans repeat when they’re not boasting about Ohio’s failsafe, gold standard elections.

Issue 3 is also intended to block any future tinkering with the GOP measure if hell freezes over and controlling Democrats move to expand, not restrict, voting rights. Changing a constitutional amendment on photo ID would be much harder than revising a statute on the books.

Ohio Treasurer Robert Sprague, who is running for Ohio Secretary of State, parroted the party spiel about a locked-in photo ID amendment being fundamental to secure elections in a recent speech.

“We have to have photo ID in the state of Ohio,” he said. (Again, we do)

“We have to have it for in-person voting. (Check)

We need to add that to the Ohio Constitution.” (Because we’re doing Ramaswamy a solid?)

Not exactly a dealmaker. Unexplained is why the hurry to cement voting restrictions instead of, say, voting access in the Ohio Constitution? The “default premise of a constitution is to protect rights and Ohio Issue 3 is a constitutional amendment to enshrine a limitation of rights,” said University of Cincinnati political scientist David Niven.

“It is enshrining into binding permanence a limitation on voting, one that is already law and for which adding this to the constitution does nothing in practical terms,” Niven said.

But Sprague suggested the binding permanence of the Republican photo ID law was chiefly about “making sure that the other party or other people that want to deconstruct these institutions, like our election system, aren’t able to take that (photo ID law) away from the people of the state of Ohio.”

I suspect weaving wild conspiracy theories into a redundancy argument for amending the Ohio Constitution won’t clinch the deal, either.

But manipulating voters with a popular ballot issue to impact election outcomes certainly has precedence in the state. The closest parallel to Ohio Issue 3, said Niven, was the 2004 constitutional amendment that banned same-sex marriage (currently unenforceable). Ohio Republicans had also passed a statutory ban earlier that did the same thing as the anti-gay amendment. The Republican nominee for president campaigned hard on the issue, overwhelmingly supported by voters, which ultimately allowed former President George W. Bush to eke out a win in Ohio by roughly 2 percentage points.

“I think that very much like their work on marriage in 2004, Issue 3 is like steroids for turnout,” Niven concluded. “Republicans aren’t sure they can excite people on the strength of their candidates and campaigns so let’s try to stimulate things with a valid question.”

But the political scientist doesn’t believe the tactic will work in 2026.

“It just doesn’t have the excitement, you know, especially when it doesn’t do anything. I think you need to offer folks something a little bit more exciting if they’re going to drag themselves to the polls when they don’t really like the candidates,” the UC professor said.

Still, Niven predicts the ballot issue will pass.

“From the average voter’s perspective, I think they’ll scratch their heads, say ‘don’t we already have this?’ and then assume we’re doing some kind of voting do-over.”

Pols pushing binding constitutional permanency to voters, who broadly back photo IDs, aim to juice turnout for partisan advantage. The political game, agreed Niven, “has a sleaze to it that would make a used car salesman blush.”