SJR2 proposed an amendment to the Ohio Constitution that would have required any future constitutional amendment to be approved by at least 60% of the voters.
The House adopted SJR2 on May 10, 2023, by a vote of 62 to 37. We have assigned pluses to the yeas because a supermajority of the electorate—not the current threshold of only more than 50 percent of voters—should be required to approve of any legitimate changes to the Ohio Constitution. While the American Founders believed that government derives its just powers from the consent of the governed, they understood that a simple majority is insufficient to protecting the individual rights and liberty of the people from the “dangers of democracy,” which threaten to result in a “tyranny of the majority” or “elective despotism.” This explains why the U.S. Constitution, in Article IV, Section 4, explicitly guarantees to “every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government.” It provides that government be limited to the ‘rule of law,’ as opposed to mere ‘majority rule’ in a democracy.