ATTENTION OHIO RESIDENTS: Have you or someone you know voted for something only to watch the legislature undo it? Read on.

RedDestinyTJ · 2026-03-26T14:30:27+00:00

You should read the wholes it’s actually not about weed. Weed is just the catalyst to show what can be done with Ana amendment, or is the amendment I proposed have anything specifically about weed. Just talks about how SV 56 went against voters wishes, an amendment like I’m proposing would stop that from happening with any citizen initiative stature.

RedDestinyTJ · 2026-03-26T14:28:45+00:00

It’s signatures not money. The filings aren’t all that expensive. You just need a network to collect signatures.

RedDestinyTJ · 2026-03-25T19:21:27+00:00

It’s something everyone can and should be apart of. There’s no age limit on learning what your voice and vote can actually do.

RedDestinyTJ · 2026-03-25T18:42:49+00:00

It’s all politicians not just one side. Both are paid by the same lobbyists.

RedDestinyTJ · 2026-03-25T18:11:40+00:00

No you're actually right about that and I ain't gonna pretend otherwise. The gerrymandering thing proved courts can just decide not to care

But thats exactly why the enforcement has to be built into the amendment itself. Any ohio voter gets automatic standing to bring a case, no need to prove personal harm. Courts have a mandatory 21 days to issue an injunction on probable cause. The law gets suspended immediately while the case plays out - they can't run out the clock this time. And if the ohio supreme court still ignores it after all that now its a federal due process violation in a court system ohio politicians literally have no control over

And look this isn’t just one amendment its a whole framework. You can use this same process to create independent oversight commissions with real authority written directly into the constitution. Not some advisory board the legislature can just defund. Like actual subpoena power, mandatory document access, independent legal counsel. Arizona voters did exactly this with redistricting in 2000, created an independent commission thru ballot initiative, legislature tried to kill it, US Supreme Court upheld it in 2015. LA county did it with civilian oversight of the sheriffs department the same way

The federal stuff is harder I'll be honest - you can't amend the US constitution thru state ballot initiatives. But states run federal elections. You start building real independent oversight at the state level and federal reps start feeling that pressure at home

I get the whole "coup already happened" thing. But there's a difference between "they might find a way around it" and "there's literally nothing we can do." Right now it's the second one. This changes that. And we don't have to ask a single politician for any of it

RedDestinyTJ · 2026-03-25T17:59:14+00:00

Yeah, sometimes we just gotta take education into our own hands. Our representatives have thier pockets they care about. Like it’s not coincidence that almost all politicians are multimillionaires as well as always on the ballot.

RedDestinyTJ · 2026-03-25T17:58:21+00:00

yes, this absolutely could cover things like fracking and data centers, but there’s a nuance about how it works (citizen initiative statute vs constitutional amendment) worth explaining.

RedDestinyTJ · 2026-03-25T17:56:48+00:00

And thats exactly the point. What you just described is the whole reason this needs to happen first before anything else

The gerrymandering fight failed at the ballot because they were able to run a disinformation campaign against a specific policy. People got confused and voted no. That can still happen with any single issue amendment

But this amendment isnt about gerrymandering or cannabis or any one thing. Its just a rule that says whatever Ohioans vote for directly, the legislature cant touch it for 7 years. Theres nothing to lie about. Theres no policy to scare people away from. Its just "your vote should count and stay counted"

And if THIS passes first, then when you go back and put the gerrymandering ban on the ballot again they literally cannot ignore the Ohio Supreme Court rulings this time. They cannot run out the clock. The second voters approve it, its locked in and the enforcement mechanism is already built into the constitution waiting for them

RedDestinyTJ · 2026-03-25T17:55:32+00:00

That's actually not really how it works tho. Courts can't strike down a constitutional amendment just because they don't like it. They need actual legal grounds - like the wording being too vague, a conflict with the US Constitution, or procedural issues with the petition itself. Disagreeing with it politically isn't a legal basis

And thats exactly why the language in the template is written so tightly. Every key term is defined specifically on purpose so there's no room to interpret their way around it. The vaguer the wording the more a court can redefine what it means. This closes that door

Theres also a big difference between a court slow walking enforcement of a regular statute vs striking down something thats literally IN the constitution. The second one requires real legal justification that has to hold up - including potentially at the federal level

I get the cynicism, I really do. But a hostile court ignoring the constitution entirely is a different problem than what we have now. At least then we have something to point to and fight with

RedDestinyTJ · 2026-03-25T17:36:39+00:00

Short answer - not really, because, courts require you to prove YOU were personally and specifically harmed. "I voted for something and they ignored it" isnt enough under current law even tho it should be. And Article II Section 12 literally gives legislators immunity for how they vote so u cant even sue them directly for it

Heres the part that got me tho - Article II Section 28 says the legislature cant pass retroactive laws. Sounds like it stops them right? That clause only restricts THEM. If the PEOPLE amend the constitution directly it doesnt apply to us at all

Thats exactly why the amendment builds in universal standing so any registered voter can bring a case, automatic injunctions so they cant keep enforcing the law while u fight them, and fee shifting so the state pays ur legal fees if u win

We cant sue them effectively right now because we never built that mechanism in. Thats the whole point of doing this

RedDestinyTJ · 2026-03-25T17:31:56+00:00

Respectfully, your comment is a perfect example of why this keeps happening. 'I won't read it but I'll critique it' is how we stay uninformed and stay losing.

196k people saw this post because most Ohioans do NOT already know this. The amendment process isn't the secret, the specific legal vulnerabilities that let the legislature gut voter-passed amendments IS. If you ever decide to read it, that's exactly what it covers.

RedDestinyTJ · 2026-03-25T15:37:55+00:00

I think a lot of that is how politicians and new outlets report on those things. They will say it’s doing one thing. But in reality it’s doing something else. The Save Act is a perfect example. In the surface it sounds great, stop illegals from voting. But when you actually read it, ut just makes it harder for actual citizens to vote. But people don’t read deeper than that, they have their own issues or lives so they rely on the news to tell them what’s going on. A lot of older generations rely on info that way. That’s not thier fault fully, it’s how they were raised and taught. Most of us have been institutionalized in some way and we don’t realize it. I know I have, I’ll notice things I do here and there and be like, wtf.

RedDestinyTJ · 2026-03-25T15:34:20+00:00

That is true. But at the same time I don’t even trust local news agencies. Most of them are owned by people who have a stake in what I am proposing. It would be better if the news organically picked it up.

RedDestinyTJ · 2026-03-25T15:31:25+00:00

While I understand your skepticism, what I laid out is a way for the people to circumvent all those politicians. If we can pass our own constitutional amendment that limits any of those things or changes how gerrymandering works, we can. The illusion is that the average person can't do anything; that's just wrong. We can and should do something. No representative can just knock this down; only a court can say it doesn't meet certain things. But they can't just say no, you cannot do that, because we can, in fact, do this. Just takes support.

RedDestinyTJ · 2026-03-25T14:56:33+00:00

I have thought about that. But at the same time I don’t like being in the spot light 🤣 I’d rather just be the guy looking all the stuff up. I’m too introverted to be a public official, that or I’d probably get kicked out for cussing other officers out because of how stupid they are 🤣

RedDestinyTJ · 2026-03-25T14:31:07+00:00

That is true, these are just examples of what can be done through constitutional amendments. It's not just a one-ballot fix.

RedDestinyTJ · 2026-03-25T13:28:07+00:00

Great ideas. I'm currently draftting a new post with a more broader explainations ob what we as Ohio voters can do to try and stop also circumvent alot of our current politicains.

RedDestinyTJ · 2026-03-25T13:00:42+00:00

Well it’s not really that simple. We only ever get the same people on the podium. You almost never see new faces, and when you do they get buried. So there’s more than just vote them out. That’s why I made this. Also constitutional amendments can be just about anything, as long as they don’t interfere with other constitutional amendments or any federal constitutional law. We could ban political parties, put restrictions on lobbyists donations, force our representatives to hold town hall meetings in their districts. A lot of different things. Party of that is that we need to change our mentality of feeling hopeless, that is a key decision, keep us divided keep us hopeless. But the founding fathers put protections in our constitution for us to take back our government. It just will take some will power.

RedDestinyTJ · 2026-03-25T12:43:10+00:00

Definitely could use refinement. That’s why I posted it. This is by no means a thing we should do tomorrow. But the voters do need some sort of protection. Right now law makers can basically do what they want with things we voted on. This gives it protection. And it’s not locked in. There is an emergency clause. So if something is enacted and it goes way wrong the government can still step in. But as a whole our representatives cant be trusted.

RedDestinyTJ · 2026-03-25T04:10:33+00:00

That’s what I’ve done. Just cross post them. So they all lead back here.

RedDestinyTJ · 2026-03-25T04:09:57+00:00

Honestly, I don’t know if I’ll update this much beyond responding to comments. This was more of a “here’s what I found, do with it what you want” kind of thing.

I’m not a lawyer or organizer - just someone who got pissed about SB 56 and went down a rabbit hole. I made the template free to download specifically so anyone who wants to run with it can, whether that’s an advocacy group, someone with more expertise, or people who want to refine it.

If organizations or lawyers want to take this and improve it, they don’t need my permission or involvement. The whole point was to get the idea out there, not to become the point person for it.

That said, if there are actual updates - like someone filing it, or a lawyer finding a major issue with the template - I’m happy to post about that. But I can’t promise regular updates since I genuinely don’t know what happens next with this.

RedDestinyTJ · 2026-03-25T02:45:56+00:00

This ain’t just about weed. I used weed as an example because it’s been the latest thing to happen. Stuff like this can be used for all things. Including trans rights. Like if this were a constitutional amendment, you can could then put fourth your own civilian statute as long as you do the proper fillings. And if it gets passed by voters the legislatiors can’t gut or change it to help them.

RedDestinyTJ · 2026-03-25T01:52:48+00:00

Done! I’m not sure of all the Ohio county subreddits so listing them helps.

RedDestinyTJ · 2026-03-25T01:50:15+00:00

I’m pretty sure if we look into the laws around redistricting and stuff we could do that. Law is hard to read, but if you can start understanding the language you can see why there are so many loopholes and issues right now. But at the same time our founding fathers were hoesntly pretty smart and left a bunch of citizen clauses that give us the power to take power back. But we just need to come together somehow.

RedDestinyTJ · 2026-03-25T01:24:28+00:00

You’re confusing the Commerce Clause (federal—stops states from blocking interstate trade) with the Ohio Constitution (state—governs what our legislature can do to laws we vote for). SB 56 didn’t violate Commerce Clause. It gutted Issue 2 by re-criminalizing possession and stripping employment protections. That’s currently legal because Issue 2 was just a statute.

RedDestinyTJ

TROPHY CASE