Ohio Republican attempt to trick voters into giving their authority back to a gerrymandered legislature so they can keep their horrible abortion law a massive fail
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They scheduled it to minimize turnout and lied about it constantly, and it still didn’t work:
I've seen enough: in a major victory for the pro-choice side, Ohio Issue 1 (a measure to raise the threshold to pass a state constitutional amendment to 60%) fails.— Dave Wasserman (@Redistrict) August 8, 2023
With more than a quarter of the vote in, the Calvinball amendment currently has 33% of the voters. Heckuva job! The “schedule the vote in the dead of summer to minimize turnout” gambit doesn’t really work when the other side is more motivated, but at this point being anti-democracy is more of a way of life for Ohio Republicans.
A reminder of what they were trying to pull off:
Backed by prominent Republicans and their patrons in the business community — particularly, the Ohio Chamber of Commerce — the initiative would raise the bar required to secure amendments to the state constitution. Since 1912, when Ohio joined other states in adopting the referendum system, voters have been able to bypass the state Legislature and amend the constitution by a simple majority. The new measure would require 60 percent support.
It’s little mystery why Ohio Republicans snuck a late initiative onto the ballot, just months after the GOP-dominated Legislature passed a law banning August referenda at the local level, on the reasonable grounds that voter participation rates are lower during the dog days of summer. In 2019, the heavily gerrymandered Legislature passed a deeply unpopular bill prohibiting abortions after six weeks of pregnancy — before many women know they are pregnant — without exceptions for rape or incest. The law is currently on hold, pending judicial review. In response, reproductive rights advocates secured enough petition signatures to put a referendum before the voters this November; if it passes, abortion rights will be enshrined in the Constitution, beyond the Legislature’s ability to meddle.
Given current polling, Republicans are expected to lose the November vote, so they’re trying to change the rules mid-game. The gambit is so transparent that even two former GOP governors, Robert Taft and John Kasich, have come out in opposition.
The struggle over popular governance is an old one. As is the case today, many state legislatures in the early 20th century had grown unrepresentative, through a combination of malapportionment and gerrymandering. During the Progressive Era, states like Ohio adopted new political instruments, including popular referenda and ballot initiatives, to circumvent legislatures that no longer reflected the will of the voters.
I’m sure Jonathan Mitchell is already furiously figuring out how the constitutional amendment making abortion legal that will pass in November can be nullified, but good news for now.