This press release by the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund was published on November 4th, 2019.
It is known that corporations use massive campaign spending to try to influence how people vote. But it gets worse: they are also determining what gets voted on altogether.
This summer, Williams County, Ohio, residents gathered sufficient signatures to place a new county charter – or local “constitution” – on the November 5, 2019 ballot. The charter would stop efforts to privatize the Michindoh Aquifer, recognize rights of the aquifer, rights of local residents to clean water, and elevate those rights above the “rights” of corporations. However, based on an arbitrary technicality, the Ohio Supreme Court took the side of the Ohio Farm Bureau and the local board of elections, and refused to put the measure on the ballot.
Such gate keeping is not unique to Williams County. Similar dynamics are unfolding across the nation.
Last year, a statewide “millionaire’s tax” to fund public education and transportation was not allowed a vote in Massachusetts, after a lawsuit was filed by the Massachusetts High Technology Council. An Arizona ballot measure to raise taxes on the wealthy to fund public education was also removed from the November 2018 ballot, after a lawsuit was filed by a member of the Arizona Chamber of Commerce board of directors. Both ballot initiatives had gathered sufficient signatures.
(To read the rest of this press release at its original source please click HERE.)