Tag: elections

Ohio Senate Urges Voters To Oppose Marijuana Legalization On The Ballot, Citing Anti-Drug Talking Points

As early voting kicked off in Ohio on Wednesday, the state Senate passed a GOP-led resolution urging voters to reject a marijuana legalization measure that’s on the ballot.

Introduced by Sens. Mark Romanchuk (R) and Terry Johnson (R), and cosponsored by 14 other Senate Republicans, SR 216 lists a parade of horribles that lawmakers say would befall the state if the cannabis ballot initiative known as Issue 2 becomes law.

“The proposed statute authored by the commercial marijuana industry,” it says, “does not serve the best interests of the people of Ohio, will bring unacceptable threats and risks to the health of all Ohioans, especially children, will create dangers in the workplace and unacceptable challenges and costs to employers, will make Ohio’s roads more dangerous, will impose significant new, unfunded costs to Ohio’s public social services, and serves only to advance the financial interests of the commercial marijuana industry and its investors.”

Nearly three in five state voters said they support adult-use legalization in a poll commissioned by the campaign and published late last month. That’s consistent with the results of other recent independent surveys.

The Senate’s dire warnings, which do not cite any supporting data, represent a selective reading of the available evidence around marijuana legalization.

The resolution asserts, for example, that marijuana “is a ‘gateway’ drug, and research shows that four out of ten regular marijuana users go on to experiment with other drugs,” claiming—apparently inaccurately—that drug overdoses “have been the leading cause of injury and death in Ohio” since 2007. It says that “33,000 Ohioans have died of drug overdoses between 2011 and 2020.”

According to Ohio’s Department of Health, however, COVID-19 has so far killed more than 42,000 people in the state.

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Ohio Secretary Of State Forces County To Allow Local Marijuana Vote Despite Prosecutor’s Objection

Ohio’s secretary of state has ordered a county election board to certify a local marijuana decriminalization initiative for the November ballot—meaning that three Ohio localities will be deciding on the reform at the same time voters across the state will have the chance to pass a full legalization measure.

Early voting for military and overseas voters began on Friday. And, on top of statewide legalization on the ballot, voters in the villages of Harbor View, Risingsun and Sugar Grove will also see local initiatives to decriminalize possession of up to 200 grams of cannabis for personal use. That’s a higher possession limit than what would be permitted under the statewide legalization initiative, which would allow adults to have up to 2.5 ounces (about 70 grams).

Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose (R) intervened to ensure that Harbor View would see decriminalization on the ballot after the Lucas County Board of Elections voted not to certify the activist-led cannabis measure in light of a local prosecutor’s concerns. After a review, he ordered the board to reverse its decision and qualify what is titled “The OG Wild Bill Marihuana Ordinance.”

Chad Thompson, executive director of the Sensible Movement Coalition (SMC) that has worked to qualify local decriminalization measures in dozens of Ohio cities over recent election cycles, told Marijuana Moment that the board’s initial vote “caught us by complete surprise and we didn’t see it coming.”

Lucas County has historically had a “very supportive” election board that “followed the law,” he said. “Thankfully [LaRose] stepped in and corrected them.”

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Bernie Sanders funneled $200K in campaign cash to wife and stepson’s nonprofit institute, records reveal

Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders quietly funneled $200,000 from his campaign’s coffers to his wife’s nonprofit institute, which appears to do very little work and pays six figures’ worth of compensation to her son, Fox News Digital has found.

The independent senator’s committee cut two $100,000 checks to the Sanders Institute for reported charitable contributions in January and March, its Federal Election Commission records show. The expenditures are the largest from the Sanders campaign to any entity this election cycle.

The senator’s wife, Jane O’Meara Sanders, and stepson, David Driscoll, co-established the Sanders Institute in 2017 to act as a think tank to promote progressive voices, The Washington Post wrote at its launch. 

“The purpose is to revitalize democracy in the support of progressive institutions,” Jane Sanders told the Post. “Our feeling is at our point in time, our country is at a crossroads, and people are engaged in a political process that can be opaque.”

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Ecuador presidential candidate assassinated: Fernando Villavicencio is shot dead while leaving a political rally less than two weeks before the vote

Gunmen in Ecuador shot dead presidential candidate Fernando Villavicencio as he was leaving a rally on Wednesday night, with less than two weeks to go until a bitterly contested election.

Footage shared on social media showed Villavicencio, 59, being escorted out of the rally venue at 6:20pm local time and into a waiting car. He was climbing into the back seat when gunfire rang out. The windows did not appear to be bulletproof.

One suspect was shot dead in crossfire with security services, the country’s attorney general said, adding that nine people were injured – among them a female candidate for the National Assembly and two police officers. 

Last week Villavicencio, a former journalist known for tackling corruption, said he and his team had been threatened by the leader of a gang linked to drug trafficking. 

In May, announcing his candidacy, he declared that he intended to ‘take on and defeat the mafias which have coopted the state and have society on its knees.’

He was behind at least two other candidates, but had been gaining support in recent days, and was seen as the toughest candidate on organized crime.

General Manuel Iniguez, a deputy commander of the Ecuadoran national police, said a police officer was also injured in the attack, which happened outside a college in the north of Quito.  The hit men launched a grenade toward Villavicencio’s group, but it did not explode.

He was taken to a nearby clinic and pronounced dead in hospital. Shocking video showed the moment he arrived, slumped in a wheelchair and pushed by men in army fatigues. They tried to lift him out the wheelchair and up the steps but were unable to do so, and wheeled him up the ramp as a medical employee rushed out.

The country’s President, Guillermo Lasso, confirmed the assassination of Villavicencio and suggested organized crime was behind his slaying. He later declared a state of emergency in response to the killing. 

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Florida Supreme Court Gives Attorney General More Time To Argue Why Marijuana Legalization Should Be Blocked From 2024 Ballot

The Florida Supreme Court on Monday granted the state attorney general’s request for more time to file a brief arguing why voters should not get a chance to decide on a marijuana legalization initiative on the 2024 ballot.

On the same day that Attorney General Ashely Moody (R)—whose office is seeking to invalidate the cannabis measure—filed a motion seeking the one-week extension, the court agreed to the delay.

The attorney general—as well as the Florida Chamber of Commerce and the Drug Free America Foundation—told the court that they had “numerous other responsibilities during the relevant period.” The official also previously requested a two-week deadline extension for initial briefs that the court granted.

Moody’s latest request noted that her office is tied up with fundamental administrative tasks, as well as filing briefs in two other unrelated court cases. Also, it pointed out that the court allowed ACLU of Florida to file its own brief two days after the last response deadline for supporters of the legalization measure.

“As a result, the current deadline gives the opponents just three business days to respond to the arguments in that brief,” the motion said.

Overall, Moody is arguing that the way the initiative’s ballot summary is written is affirmatively misleading to voters on several grounds, which she says is grounds to invalidate the proposal

The attorney general’s office said that they discussed the deadline extension request with the Smart & Safe Florida campaign, which opposed a one-week extension but would accept a shorter two-day delay. Instead, the court granted the full request, making the deadline for a reply brief August 2.

“Multiple extensions of time for the same filing are discouraged,” the court said on Monday. “Absent extenuating circumstances, subsequent requests may be denied.”

State officials have already affirmed that the campaign collected enough valid signatures to secure ballot placement.

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How Democrats & Republicans ‘Stole’ Votes From the Greens, Libertarians in 2020

Many things that everyone knows, are not true. Sometimes, quite rarely, one of those widely-believed falsehoods not only turns out not to be true, but obscures the fact that the exact opposite is true.

Most people believe that small political parties siphon off votes from one of the two major parties. Mainstream media repeatedly declares, without bothering to cite evidence because its obviousness rises to the level of self-evident, that Ralph Nader cost Al Gore the 2000 election (not true) and Jill Stein sucked away enough Democratic votes from Hillary Clinton to put Donald Trump in the White House (also not true).

Let us, for the purpose of this essay, set aside the usual counterarguments to the claim that you shouldn’t vote Green they’re just spoilers: no presidential election is decided by a single vote so you can’t possibly individually change any outcome, people who don’t live in swing states really have no reason to worry about tipping an election, parties ought to have to earn votes, voting for a lesser evil is still voting for evil, a little party will never become bigger until we stop overthinking our tactical voting and simply support that candidate and the party we like best.

But—are small parties really electoral succubi? First, a look at Republican losers who blamed third parties for their losses.

Running as a Progressive in 1912, a vengeful Teddy Roosevelt out to punish his former protege for deviating from progressive Republicanism is alleged to have sucked away votes from William Howard Taft. We did wind up with President Woodrow Wilson, a Democrat—a result cited as the ultimate example of a third-party candidate splitting a party.

But historians forget to mention that it was a four-way race. Wilson faced his own “spoiler,” from his left: Eugene Debs of the Socialist Party, who got six percent of the popular vote. Taft was such a weak candidate that neither Teddy nor Debs made a difference; Wilson would have won no matter what.

Pundits say Ross Perot created a big enough sucking sound of votes from George H.W. Bush in 1992 to hand the race to Bill Clinton. Pundits are mistaken: Perot pulled equally from the Democrats and the Republicans. Libertarian Gary Johnson is unfairly blamed for contributing to Trump’s defeat in 2020.

Similarly, left-leaning third-parties—since 2000, this has meant the Greens—have never poached from Democrats in big enough numbers to change the outcome. Green Party supporters tend to be leftists like me, who would otherwise not vote at all. If the only two parties on the ballot were the Democrats and Republicans, we’d sit on our hands.

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