“Ohioans for Humane (Society) Farms” is a political front group established and controlled by Wayne Pacelle’s activist fundraising factory HSUS. Created specifically to push a radical vegan agenda through the Ohio ballot box, the group is circulating petitions to run a ballot initiative in the state this fall mirroring the travesty known as Proposition 2 in California two years ago.

Ostensibly drafted to ban specific food animal production practices from California law, Prop 2 was instead written in such vague fashion that two years later, state authorities have been unable to determine what the Proposition really even means, let alone how best to enable it through the legislative/regulatory process.

This type of chaos is exactly what HSUS and its political allies intended. While California struggles to figure out what exactly HSUS forced it to adopt, neighboring states are luring California’s lucrative poultry business into more farm-friendly environs. By exploiting the draconian regulatory measures likely to arise from the Prop 2 rubble, states from Idaho to Nevada are working to pull egg production out of California and into their own tax base.

This will ultimately mean more expense to consumers in California who will have to import their eggs from other parts of the country, as well as additional carbon emissions from the additional trucking of these eggs back to the Golden State.

Wayne Pacelle once again tipped his hand in Ohio this week by suing to declare a specific piece of Ohio election law as unconstitutional. Current election law and policy dictates that persons paid to circulate petitions for ballot referenda in Ohio must be Ohio residents. To those of us who reside in the state, this makes perfect sense: we don’t need paid political agents canvassing our streets in the absence of actual residents committed to a given issue. Pacelle, however, is baffled by the Buckeye State. After suffering a surprising (to HSUS’ radical activist base and staff of lawyers and lobbyists) defeat in last fall’s Issue 2 campaign, Pacelle realizes he needs all his paid political muscle to dupe Ohio’s electorate.

According to HSUS’ paid campaign staff on the ground, they’ve collected less than one third of the signatures needed to place their initiative on the ballot with less than a month before the petitions are due. With that in mind, Pacelle and company are sweating bullets: they have so few actual Ohioans interested in running farm families out of the state that in order to avoid a huge embarrassing electoral failure, they need paid petition circulators.

Without the inconvenience of Ohio elections law to stop them, Pacelle can airlift in a SWAT team of political mercenaries to coerce and intimidate folks into signing these petitions.

The United States District Court for Southeastern Ohio will decide if Ohioans can retain their sovereignty by maintaining prudent limits on who can circulate petitions for statewide ballot measures, or if Wayne Pacelle can once again buy his way onto the November ballot.

The interesting thing about this suit and the staff of 30 attorneys employed by HSUS is the frequent and obvious examples of HSUS baiting consumers into donating under the false pretenses of saving the animals, while actually spending the money on their radical vegan political agenda.