Ohioans vote Tuesday on a measure that would make it harder to pass future changes to the state constitution. Ideastream’s Karen Kasler explains the possible implications for abortion access in Ohio.
Sources:
NPR: A look ahead at the Ohio special election
Five Thirty Eight: Everything You Need To Know About The Ohio Ballot Measure That Could Block Abortion Rights
CNN: Ohio special election becomes proxy for abortion rights fight
PBS News Hour: Ohio voters to decide on constitutional change before determining abortion rights
The Guardian: Republicans pushed a special election in Ohio – what does it mean for abortion rights?
AP: Voters in Ohio reject GOP-backed proposal that would have made it tougher to protect abortion rights
NY Times: Ohio Voters Reject Constitutional Change Intended to Thwart Abortion Amendment
If there is interest we can add the Mississippi, Missouri, and Michigan election news here as well. They are state and local primary elections but I’ve not seen much interest by the community.
Edit: Looks like there isn’t.
Well the point of a constitution is to bind the future majority, so it makes sense to require significant/overwhelming majority of counties to support it.
Wanting to raise the threshold isn’t inherently bad. But from what I’ve read on this their legislature previously banned August elections like this because of poor turnout and they’re also trying to make it effectively impossible to even put a measure like this on the ballot to get that increased majority by requiring a large amount of signatures from every county in the state. Meaning it would only take one county to not get enough people and it theoretically wouldn’t matter if literally every single other person in the state signed onto the petition; It wouldn’t get in the ballot.
It seems like the 60% rather than 50% is just to try and hide the ball so they can effectively outlaw popular grassroots action going directly to the ballot.
I actually think you should make it somewhat difficult to do direct democracy votes. There was a crisis in California a while back because the voters decided to mandate taxes don’t go up, and also spending does go up substantially. As separate propositions, both things sound good, but the reason for little-r republican representation is that if your legislator did both those things and caused a crisis you would vote them out. People in charge of institutions have longer term responsibility.
Or look at Brexit where a slight majority voted for it and a majority now regret it since it caused all the economic pain and political chaos everyone was saying it would.
So I think there is an argument for the threshold being above 50%, I think 60% is pretty high but you can make the argument, maybe something in the middle is reasonable. Preferable to me is something like a double approval process…any amendment needs to get approved by 50%+, followed by a mandatory vote in the legislature and if confirmed it would become law, but if it fails it would get another public vote where it would need to get 50%+ and if it got it, become law.
All that said, I don’t want abortion banned in Ohio, I know that’s pretty heavily a part of this vote in particular but just wanted to talk about the actual argument for a bit.
That’s not an unreasonable reaction but this one in Ohio is different in several ways.
1 The GOP super majority passed a lady abolishing August special elections that went into effect on January 2023. They are immediately ignoring this law and had to create a loophole to even hold this election.
2 It does not just raise the passing vote threshold. It mandates signatures from 100% of Ohio counties to even place a measure on the ballot. And it’s not just 1 signature is a proportion of the counties population. Idk how well you know Ohio but that is almost effectively impossible.
3 The GOP are blatantly short cutting the November election and chose 60% because polling places support for the amendment enshrining abortion rights at about 58%.
4 This is a simple majority to pass but raises it for everything else which is hypocritical. Amendments of this Nature should have to pass at the threshold they are attempting to set.
Is this the same referendum format requiring half the votes +1 to pass? The exact thing they’re trying to kill off?
EDIT: The measure should have to be supported by the same vote threshold to pass that it seeks to impose.
Sort of the ironic soft underbelly of small-d democratic institutions. You overthrow them by winning power democratically and keeping it by force, whereas if someone wants to take it back for democracy they have to then take it by force and keep it democratically, the harder proposition.
The irony is even dumber since they already passed HB 458 which forbids such an election in August.
They broke their own rule, a rule that they themselves pushed through.
Don’t ever pretend that the GOP cares about rules or laws. They will literally do whatever they must to remain in power.
Thank you for this. I live in Ohio and did not know this law existed. I have not heard it brought up in any discussion or news coverage (although I admit my decision was made early and have not spent much time listening to the ‘debates’). Did LaRose and company offer any reason as to why they think HB 458 does not apply in this case?
[“As a course of action, normal course of doing business, yes, I do not believe in having elections in August as a normal way of holding elections,” he explained.
“But if the state legislature decides to hold an election in August, it’s not unusual,” said LaRose.] (https://www.npr.org/2023/08/08/1192550481/ohio-issue-1-ballot-special-election-abortion-constitutional-amendment)
Let’s vote Ohio! I am in Alabama but I am very interested in this.
