Ohio voters are about to seriously test the adage, “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.”

And the people who are trying, yet again, to do the fooling are the state’s election officials. They successfully used a bait-and-switch tactic to derail bona-fide gerrymandering reform a decade ago. Will the tactics that Gov. Mike DeWine launched this week to repeat the bamboozling work again?

I had hoped Ohio leaders learned a lesson last year when they tried to bamboozle voters into giving up their ability to change the state constitution. The voters body slammed the leaders pushing that false narrative, proving that Ohio is a centrist state with common-sense voters who resent being lied to.

Yet over the past week, Ohio leaders launched a new bamboozling campaign, and it promises to be torrid until Election Day.

With Issue 1 last August, elected leaders intent on amassing power tried to persuade voters to give up their ability to alter the Ohio constitution by increasing from 50 to 60 percent the votes need to adopt changes. People like Secretary of State Frank LaRose looked voters in the eye and told them it would be good for them to give up their power. It was a ridiculous lie, and voters firmly rejected it.

That effort was partly about abortion. Headed to the ballot in November was an amendment to enshrine abortion as a right in the Ohio constitution. Voters approved it in a landslide, but not by 60 percent. If the issue in August had passed, the minority would have dictated rules to the majority.

Issue 1 last August was also about gerrymandering, which is the subject of the new bamboozle. Republicans have used gerrymandering to create absurd super majorities in the Legislature, and they don’t want to lose them. They are desperate to keep gerrymandering.

Our newsroom will have its hands full for the next three months laying out all the ways Ohio leaders lie to voters to get them to vote against their own interests. And make no mistake about it: Gerrymandered super majorities are not in anyone’s best interest. The Ohio Legislature is loaded with fringe thinkers who do not represent us. We are repeatedly embarrassed on a national stage as our lawmakers try to outdo each other with increasingly absurd proposals.

The gerrymandering battle is almost a decade old now. Way back in 2015, citizens disgusted with gerrymandering launched a ballot initiative to end it. When lawmakers realized the initiative would be successful, they pulled their bait and switch. They proposed their own, albeit weaker, reforms, successfully persuading the citizens to drop their ballot initiative. Voters, believing the Legislature was acting in good faith, approved the so-called reforms in 2015 for the Legislature and 2018 for Congress.

The new system created a redistricting commission that included the governor, secretary of state, auditor, Senate president, House speaker and two members of the Legislature in the minority party. Voters set strict rules on how to draw lines.

We all know what happened. DeWine and company, who all swore an oath to the Ohio constitution, failed to do live up to the oath. Over and over, an Ohio Supreme Court with a Republican majority found the commission in violation of the constitution with its maps and ordered members to do their duty.

Over and over they refused.

It was a constitutional crisis so ugly that the chief justice, Maureen O’Connor, took the extraordinary step of writing a concurring opinion calling on voters to change the mapmaking system yet again, to remove elected officials from it. Then, when she was forced to retired by age limits, she made it her mission to fix the system.

She and other volunteers came up with a system that leaves out elected officials, much like the one that has worked to end gerrymandering in Michigan. Then those volunteers collected more than 700,000 signatures to put it on the ballot.

Before I get to the new bamboozling, a note about O’Connor. She is the epitome of what we want in public servants, having devoted her life to us. She served as a Summit County judge, Summit County prosecutor, lieutenant governor, head of Ohio’s Public Safety Department and chief justice. No woman in Ohio history held elective office longer.

Her reputation is unassailable, yet when she sided with the majority of justices in rejecting the unconstitutional work of the redistricting commission, a bunch of her fellow Republicans talked about impeaching her. Not because she broke laws. Not because of transgressions. No, they wanted to trash this storied public servant for ruling based on her conscience.

And now the latest bamboozling. First, a couple of weeks ago, we learned Republican lawmakers considered putting a competing initiative on the ballot, to confuse voters. They rightly realized that Ohio voters would see through such subterfuge and stood down.

But over the past week, people like DeWine, U.S. Rep. Max Miller and others began their campaign to persuade voters that O’Connor’s initiative is a bad one.

Never mind that DeWine, in failing to adhere to the constitution and do his job on the redistricting commission, long ago surrendered any credibility on this issue. But do recall that he is on the record saying that elected officials should not be part of the mapmaking process.

Today, he’s pushing for a system where citizens propose maps but elected officials make the decisions. No way. No how. Don’t buy it. The elected officials refused to serve us. Now, they just want to maintain power.

Who are you going to believe here? O’Connor, who spent a lifetime serving Ohioans without a hint of scandal and has nothing to gain personally? Or the latest bevy of elected leaders, hell-bent to increase their power, who have done everything possible to convince voters to willingly harm themselves?

This issue cannot get lost in the noise of the presidential election. Ohioans have the chance to take back control of their government from power-mad leaders who corrupted the system. O’Connor’s initiative would end the suffocating reign of megalomaniacs.

As we did last year with Issue 1 in August, we will do everything we can to explain what is at stake here. But last time around, you did the hard work. You saw what was at stake and contacted everyone you knew to make sure they understood.

Start spreading the word.

Again.

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