August 09, 2023 11:07 AM UTC

The Stove is Hot; Stop Touching the Stove

•  
• by: Colorado Pols

Republicans are still not learning their lesson on the issue of abortion rights.

The big political news on Tuesday came out of Ohio, where voters overwhelmingly rejected a ballot measure — dubbed “Issue 1” — that was a not-very-subtle attempt by right-wing interests to make it harder for abortion rights advocates to pass their own ballot measure in November. As The Washington Post reports:

For more than a century, Ohioans have been able to amend the state constitution with a simple majority. The failed measure would have changed that threshold to 60 percent.

With about 88 percent of votes counted Tuesday night, 56.5 percent voted against the proposal, while 43.5 percent supported it. The Associated Press projected the measure would fail.

Republican state lawmakers decided to try to make it tougher to amend the constitution as reproductive rights advocates gathered signatures of support this spring for a November measure that would guarantee access to abortion. Because of those stakes, Tuesday’s election became a proxy fight over abortion, which is expected to again be a defining issue in the 2024 election.

As the Post notes, Ohio Republicans were clear from the outset that “Issue 1” was an attempt to prevent the passage of a separate abortion rights proposal that is almost certain to receive a majority of YES votes in November. Republican Secretary of State Frank LaRose was a vocal supporters of the idea, using it to drum up conservative support for his bid to challenge incumbent Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown in 2024. LaRose may have helped himself with the MAGA crowd, but not with the majority of Ohio voters; “Issue 1” didn’t just lose — it was CRUSHED.

As Aaron Blake writes in a separate commentary for The Washington Post, the demise of “Issue 1” is “another sizable loss for antiabortion forces in the ballot wars”:

The abortion rights position had won in all six states that featured such ballot measures after Roe was overturned last summer, including taking between 52 percent and 59 percent in a trio of red states. So with a constitutional amendment guaranteeing abortion rights set for Ohio’s ballot this November, Republicans tried to preemptively raise the threshold for passing it and other measures to 60 percent.

They came up very short, leaving Ohio much more likely to soon join those six states in having voters side with abortion rights post-Roe. (The other six: California, Kansas, Kentucky, Michigan, Montana and Vermont.) [Pols emphasis]

Given how those states voted — the measures in Kansas, Michigan and Kentucky dealt specifically with constitutional rights to abortion — it seems logical that between 50 and 60 percent of Ohio voters will favor the November amendment.

In 2024, voters in Maryland and New York will probably approve ballot measures to increase access to abortion rights in those states. Several other states — including Florida, Iowa, Missouri, Nebraska, and South Dakota — are in the process of placing abortion-related measures on the ballot in 2024. In Colorado, abortion rights are expected to be on the ballot in 2024 with a constitutional measure upholding them as well as ensuring abortion insurance coverage for public employees.

Colorado might yet see another attempt to ban abortion if this poorly-worded garbage is approved by a title board and supporters are able to collect enough signatures to get it on the 2024 ballot. To the extent that smart Republicans still exist here, they should absolutely do everything in their power to make sure that another anti-abortion measure does NOT appear in Colorado, where Democrats could use it to drum up turnout that benefits candidates up and down the ticket. Since 2000, every single abortion restriction proposal in Colorado has been thrashed at the polls; that trend would undoubtedly continue in 2024.

But if past is prologue, Republicans will keep reaching out and touching that hot stove…and keep coming away with burns.