Ohio voters on Tuesday resoundingly rejected a Republican-backed measure that would have made it more difficult to change the state’s constitution, setting up a fall campaign that will become the nation’s latest referendum on abortion rights since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned nationwide protections last year.
The defeat of Issue 1 keeps in place a simple majority threshold for passing future constitutional amendments. It would have raised that to a 60% supermajority, which supporters said would protect the state’s foundational document from outside interest groups.
While abortion was not directly on the special election ballot, the result marks the latest setback for Republicans in a conservative-leaning state who favor imposing tough restrictions on the procedure. Ohio Republicans placed the question on the summer ballot in hopes of undercutting a citizen initiative voters will decide in November that seeks to enshrine abortion rights in the state.
The Republicans tried to pull a shitty and the voters of Ohio weren't having any of it. They not only tried to change the rules, they tried to do it via a special election in August, hoping for a low turnout. They tried to do this in violation of the rules they had the state adopt for August elections.
Ohio told them to go shit in their hats. Even a number of voters from the pro-forced-birth crowd wouldn't go along with this bit of bullshit.
A 60-40 win is a landslide.
The more interesting items within the Proposition were, in addition to a 60% Super Majority…
ReplyDelete1) Required signatures from all 88 Counties within Ohio, versus the current 44.
2) Removed the 10 day cure period for rejected signatures.
It was designed to allow rejection of citizens proposals by letting them reject a few signatures in the smaller/est county and kill it.
Now I want to see the November reproductive rights amendment win by more than 60%.
ReplyDelete-Doug in Sugar Pine
Ohio: trying very hard to be a four letter word. And that's a quote from my daughter who still lives there for reasons I cannot fathom.
ReplyDeleteOhio legislators and supporters of the change have said its coming again, voters were just confused and the Vote Yes campaign didn’t have enough time to explain it to people…oh, and you can get people to Vote No on anything with enough money…
ReplyDelete