Ohio voters add abortion rights to state constitution
Ohio voters add abortion rights to state constitution
In a major victory for abortion-rights advocates, Issue 1 enshrines the right to the procedure into the constitution
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And this is after they tried very very hard to rig the election to put obstacles in the way of people voting for the measure.
Actually getting abortion bans in place is the "dog that caught the car" moment for Republicans. The world is so complicated and people have so little attention to spare, that the GOP can get away with blaming "the economy" or "jobs" or "crime" on the Democrats, and for the most part, people who support them will go with it, even though they spend most of their time being in power making the problems worse and stealing money for themselves and their friends.
Abortion is dead simple. If people know someone who's suffering in a terrifying way, and it's because of something the Republicans have been banging their fists on the table about how bad they want to do it for the last fifty years, it becomes a lot harder to shift the blame.
Edit: I backwards
You mean the part where they held a special election in August after writing rules to BAN special elections in August (unless they involved budget crises)? The supermajority 60% of the Aug Issue 1 would've tanked this if they had their way (or kept it from hitting the ballot with the 80~ county petition requirement).
THEN they had the gall to change the language on today's Issue 1 text.
I'm so proud right now, big win for a state that's had a lot of fails lately (i.e. literal train wrecks that got swept under the rug).
Also: how well do you all think the inclusion of Issue 2 here REALLY brought out the voters? I heard a lot of pot smokers got out of bed early today for it - had to add some extra push for Issue 1.
Why would Democrats want to defeat the measure?
They are talking about an earlier, even more out of cycle ohio constitutional amendment that would have made it much, much harder to pass any amendments. They force marched it into its own election as soon as the abortion and weed amendments hit the necessary thresholds to be on the upcoming November ballot. It would have gone into affect immediately. It was a very transparent attempt to derail abortion rights by the state GOP.
It had its own special election, after they banned the exact type of election a year earlier. It shifted the burden of "yes" from 50% +1 vote to 60%, and most nefariously, shifted the requirments to get an amendment on the ballot form "X voters in half of all districts (44 of 88) to "X voters in all 88 districts," i.e even the tiny 1k ones that lean 90% Republican. They tried to basically give veto power over all future constitutional amendments to tiny, very, very conservative counties.
Voters rejected it 57% to 43%, which ironically would not have passed it under its own requirements, but would have under the current requirements if the numbers were inverted. If they had a legit bone in their body, they would have imposed a one time "60%" threshold for it as that's what they were forcing all future votes to, but we all know their bulllshit.
This happened in early August 2023, for anyone trying to follow along. The last few months have been a hell of a ride in Ohio.
I got it backwards as regards this election for some reason. Fixed, thank you.