1). “You did it, Ohio!: Republican efforts to raise ballot measure standards FAILS”, Aug 8, 2023, Jessica Valenti, Abortion Every Day, at < https://jessica.substack.com/p/you-did-it-ohio >
2). “Abortion Rights Get Lift in Ohio as G.O.P. Bid Fails.”, Aug. 9, 2023, Michael Wines, 1,203 words, New York Times.
~~ recommended by dmorista ~~
Introduction by dmorista:
As expected the voters in Ohio soundly defeated the Issue 1 Constitutional Amendment; that would have required a 60% margin to amend the state constitution by the citizen initiative route. The proposal would also have made it more difficult to amend the State Constitution in a variety of other ways.
The main immediate target of Issue 1 was the upcoming proposal to amend the State Constitution to maintain Reproductive Health Care rights for women. That proposal is leading by around 57% to 43%. The Forced-Birth cabal knows full well that the margin of support, for Reproductive Health Care rights for women, is well over 50% but falls a bit short of 60%. Thus the phony good government and the sanctity of the State Constitution and outside special interests blather falls flat, this was a bald power grab. However, like a similar move in Kansas and other initiatives and elections in Kentucky, Arkansas, Missouri, Mississippi, Wisconsin, Michigan, California, Vermont and Montana; the American populace has shown that they support maintaining abortion and other reproductive health care access at about the level that was guaranteed by Roe v. Wade for almost 50 years.
Ohio is a state where the Republican Party has seized nearly complete control of the State Government. They maintain that control by the use of heavily gerrymandered state legislative and congressional districts, as well as by a somewhat less overt version of voter suppression than that found in the Neo-Confederate states like Georgia and Florida. There are plans for proposals to amend the State Constitution to end the blanket control of legislative districting by the vicious right-wing Republicans. While it is relatively slow and cumbersome method, the Ohio State Government, acknowledged by many observers to be the most corrupt in the country, could be pulled away from the harsh control by the Forced-Birth NeoFascists Republicans who control it now. This is essential as the right-wing in the U.S. wants to end even the weak and limited democracy we currently have. Below is a map showing the size of the lead, for voting yes or no for each of Ohio’s counties. (See “Ohio government is already captured by radical special interests. State Issue 1 would make it worse”, June 29, 2023, David DeWitt, Ohio Capital Journal, at < https://ohiocapitaljournal.com/2023/06/29/ohio-government-is-already-captured-by-radical-special-interests-state-issue-1-would-make-it-worse/ >) for details on the massive corruption and corporate give-aways in Ohio.
The vote, as of early this morning with 97% of precincts reporting was
NO, 57%, 1,744,094 votes
YES, 43%, 1,315,346 votes
Of Course the Forced-Birth Movement has not given up they have: “ …. also sued, twice, to keep a pro-choice ballot measure away from voters. First, anti-abortion activists filed a suit claiming that the measure needed to be split into two questions—a tactic they hoped would force pro-choicers to collect twice as many signatures (and have to start their process over from the beginning). That suit failed. More recently, Republicans are arguing to the state Supreme Court that the ballot measure didn’t properly list the laws it would repeal if the measure was successful. That case is still in process.” (See, “Ohio votes on the future of ballot measures”, Aug 8, 2023, Jessica Valenti, Abortion, Every Day, at < https://jessica.substack.com/p/abortion-every-day-8823#%C2%A7in-the-states >)
Another source points out that:
“ …. a new lawsuit from Republicans asks the Ohio Supreme Court to block the measure.
“Filed on Friday, the challenge argues that the abortion rights petition did not identify which state laws would have to be repealed if the constitutional amendment were to be adopted.
“The lawsuit points out that the amendment would repeal parts (of) {SIC} existing Ohio laws, including the Human Rights and Heartbeat Protection Act adopted in 2019, which bans abortion in Ohio after any embryonic cardiac activity is detected.” (See. “Lawsuit asks Ohio Supreme Court to block abortion rights measure from November ballot”, July 29, 2023, Zachary Smith, Cleveland.com, at <https://www.cleveland.com/news/2023/07/lawsuit-asks-ohio-supreme-court-to-block-abortion-rights-measure-from-november-ballot.html>)
Despite the expected attacks on yesterday’s massive electoral win in Ohio, it was a major triumph for the people of the U.S., and Ohio especially. We should build on it and pin the outrages of the overturning of Roe v. Wade on every Republican, everytime we encounter them.
1). “You did it, Ohio!: Republican efforts to raise ballot measure standards FAILS”, Aug 8, 2023, Jessica Valenti, Abortion Every Day,
You did it, Ohio!
I could not be more thrilled to tell you all that Ohio voters have overwhelmingly rejected Issue 1! Today’s special election was an attempt by Republicans to raise the standard for ballot measures and make it harder for a pro-choice amendment to pass this November. (Despite months of GOP lawmakers claiming that Issue 1 and had nothing to do with reproductive rights, Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose eventually admitted that the move was “100%” about defeating the abortion rights amendment.)
And Issue 1 didn’t just fail—it failed fucking spectacularly: The New York Times reports that initial results showed Issue 1 losing by a roughly 3 to 2 margin. A spokesperson for Ohioans United for Reproductive Rights told NBC News, “Ohioans saw Issue 1 for what it was—an attempt to deny our families a voice, even when it comes to our most personal decisions.”
And Liz Walters, chair of the Ohio Democratic Party, said, “They put this issue on the August ballot kind of taking a bet that most Ohioans weren’t going to pay attention and weren’t going to see this as the naked power grab that it is.” But man oh man did voters see it exactly for what it was.
Tonight’s victory means that when Ohioans cast a vote on abortion rights this November, the issue will be decided by a simple majority. (Issue 1 would have required 60% of the vote.) Polling out of the state shows that about 58% of Ohio voters support enshrining abortion rights protections in the state constitution. And as we know from recent wins out of Kansas and Kentucky, when abortion rights are put directly to voters, abortion rights win. So this is super exciting and promising news.
Obviously, that doesn’t meant the road ahead is without hurdles. As I mentioned in today’s newsletter, conservative lawmakers and anti-abortion activists have already filed a lawsuit (the second of its kind) trying to keep the pro-choice amendment off the November ballot. So I don’t expect Republicans will stop their attacks on democracy anytime soon.
And if I’ve learned anything from writing about abortion every day since Roe was overturned, it’s that conservatives will do anything to keep this issue away from voters—because they know that they will lose. That’s why they’re resorting to attacks on trans people, and why they’re spreading lies and scare tactics invoking ‘parental rights’: abortion is too popular, and they’re desperate. And while that desperation makes conservatives weak, it also makes them incredibly dangerous.
There is no bottom of the barrel for them on this issue. There’s no rule they won’t break, no line they won’t cross. So we need to be ready; not just in Ohio, but everywhere.
Because at the end of the day, all abortion bans are anti-democratic: Americans want abortion to be legal, and restrictions are being passed against our wishes. That’s why I don’t worry about ‘preaching to the choir’ or changing hearts and minds on abortion. We have the votes and the support we need—this is not an issue of getting people over to our side! It’s about a small group of extremist legislators imposing abortion bans on the vast majority of voters who don’t want them.
But as Moira Donegan wrote at The Guardian today, what makes bans anti-democratic isn’t only that they’re being passed against voters’ wills:
“[T]hey are an insult to citizenship, depriving half of Americans the ability to live their lives with freedom, dignity, bodily integrity and self-determination—preconditions to any meaningful, equal status as citizens. It makes sense that Republicans would embark on sneaky, procedural efforts to undermine abortion in pursuit of this same project. They don’t want to allow women to live as full, equal citizens.”
While Republicans will continue to do anything they can to prevent us from living full and equal lives, tonight Ohio voters said absolutely not. So a huge congratulations to the activists and volunteers who got folks to the polls, and ensured democracy won another day. I’m in awe of you all.
For months, Abortion, Every Day kept you updated on the Republicans attacks on democracy in Ohio. Help the newsletter keep doing this vital work by signing up for a paid subscription tonight:
2). “Abortion Rights Get Lift in Ohio as G.O.P. Bid Fails.”, Aug. 9, 2023, Michael Wines, 1,203 words, New York Times.
The contest was seen as a test of efforts by Republicans nationwide to curb voters' use of ballot initiatives.
Ohio voters rejected a bid on Tuesday to make it harder to amend the State Constitution, according to The Associated Press, a significant victory for abortion-rights supporters trying to stop the Republican-controlled State Legislature from severely restricting the procedure.
The abortion question turned what would normally be a sleepy summer election in an off year into a highly visible dogfight that took on national importance and drew an unprecedented number of Ohio voters for an August election.
Late results showed the measure losing by 13 percentage points, 56.5 percent to 43.5 percent. The roughly 2.8 million votes cast dwarfed the 1.66 million ballots counted in the state's 2022 primary elections, in which races for governor, the U.S. Senate and the U.S. House were up for grabs.
The contest was widely seen as a test of Republicans' efforts nationwide to curb the use of ballot initiatives, and a potential barometer of the political climate going into the 2024 elections.
Organizations that opposed the proposal called the vote a decisive rebuff of the State Legislature, which had ordered the referendum in an attempt to derail a November vote on a constitutional amendment that would guarantee abortion rights.
''It was about a direct connection with the abortion issue for many voters,'' said Kelly Hall, the executive director of the Fairness Project, one of the leaders of the Ohio campaign against the proposal. ''But there were many others who saw it as a power grab by some legislators.
''The resounding rejection of their attempt means that voters know what's up when they're being asked to vote their rights away.''
The ballot measure would have required that amendments to the State Constitution gain approval by 60 percent of voters, up substantially from the current requirement of a simple majority. Republicans initially pitched that as an attempt to keep wealthy special interests from hijacking the amendment process for their own gain. The lawmakers voted largely along party lines in May to put the proposal on the ballot.
But from the start, that reasoning was overtaken by weightier arguments, led by -- but hardly confined to -- the abortion debate.
The Ohio Legislature passed some of the nation's strictest curbs on abortion last year, banning the procedure as early as six weeks into pregnancy, in the wake of the Supreme Court's decision to overturn Roe v. Wade. State courts have yet to rule on the constitutionality of those curbs, but the law's passage drove a successful grass-roots campaign this year to place an abortion-rights amendment on the November ballot.
That amendment would upend the new law by giving women legal control over reproductive decisions, allowing doctors to make medical judgments on the need for abortions, and restricting the state to regulating abortions only after a fetus is judged viable.
Raising the threshold for adopting an amendment to 60 percent of votes would have put the fate of the proposed amendment in greater doubt. In two polls, 58 percent and 59 percent of respondents supported granting a constitutional right to abortion access.
In the 111 years that Ohio voters have had the power to propose and vote on ballot initiatives, only about a third of constitutional amendments managed to exceed 60 percent, according to the political data website Ballotpedia.
Other provisions also rejected in the Tuesday referendum would have raised hurdles even to putting amendments on the ballot. One required backers of amendments to gather a minimum number of signatures from all 88 Ohio counties instead of the current 44 counties. Another eliminated their ability to correct errors in signatures that were rejected by state officials.
The Legislature's move to raise barriers to new amendments came weeks before abortion rights advocates delivered petitions with roughly a half million verified signatures to state offices, more than enough to force the November vote. Tuesday's election had become something of a proxy for the November election, with supporters of abortion access and anti-abortion forces waging a multimillion-dollar preview of the coming battle.
Ballotpedia estimated last week that at least $32.5 million had been spent on the battle, split roughly equally between the two sides. Eight in 10 dollars came from donors outside Ohio, that estimate said, including $4 million from a single donor, Richard Uihlein, the Illinois founder of a nationwide packing and shipping company, Uline Inc., who is one of the country's most prolific patrons of right-wing causes.
Other out-of-state donors to supporters of the legislature's proposal included Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, a Washington, D.C. anti-abortion advocacy group that contributed nearly $6.4 million. The Concord Fund, one of several organizations controlled by Leonard Leo, who has overseen campaigns to confirm Republican nominees to the U.S. Supreme Court, was another donor.
The leading out-of-state donors to opponents of the Legislature's proposal included the Sixteen Thirty Fund, a Washington D.C. supporter of progressive causes that gave $2.64 million; the Tides Foundation, another donor to progressive causes that gave $1.88 million; and Karla Jurvetson, a Palo Alto, Calif., doctor and Democratic Party donor who gave nearly $1 million.
Beyond the battle over abortion, it appeared that some voters were simply put off by the tactics the Legislature used to get the proposed restrictions before voters. Just last December, lawmakers outlawed almost all August elections, saying so few people voted in them that they had become easy prey for special interests with enough money to turn out their supporters.
The lawmakers reversed course in May when it became clear that a vote on an abortion rights amendment was likely in November. More than a few critics noted that Tuesday's referendum was, in essence, an election pushed by special interests with an abundance of money.
Among some who voted against the proposal, the anger over the Legislature's tactics was evident.
''This is one of the lowest, below-the-belt actions I've seen in politics ever,'' Jim Nicholas, a medicine major at Case Western Reserve University, said outside a polling place at a middle school in Shaker Heights, a doggedly liberal Cleveland suburb.
In Miami Township, a Cincinnati suburb that went strongly for Donald J. Trump in 2020, Tom Baker, 46, called the referendum a last-minute attempt by the State Legislature to tilt the playing field in favor of ''all of the touchstones the aging conservative population is trying to force on generations.''
''I don't like the idea of changing the mechanisms of government,'' he said, ''especially for an agenda.''
That kind of skepticism carried no weight with many backers of the Legislature's restrictions.
''Evil never sleeps,'' said Bill McClellan, 67, as he cast a ballot at a crowded polling place in Strongsville, on Cleveland's southwest side. ''The liberals don't like that Ohio is a red state, and they continue to attack us.''
Reporting was contributed by Daniel McGraw and Rachel Richardson.
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