Tales & Trails of a Traveling Wiseguy

Voters in Ohio went to the polls yesterday in a special election for "Issue 1", a state constitutional amendment to change the process for amending the state constitution. The measure would increase the threshold required to enact constitutional amendments from a simple majority of the popular vote to a 60% supermajority. Preliminary results have the measure losing 57-43.

Why does this matter? The most immediate reason is that it's a proxy fight for abortion rights. Pro-choice supporters have qualified a state constitutional amendment for the November election. Republicans in state government are terrified that it will win in a simple-majority vote. The Republican supermajority wants to ban abortion even though polling shows a clear majority favors keeping it legal. Now they're trying to change the political rules to stop it.

Why am I fingering Republicans on this? Because they're monkeying with the rules of politics. They can't win under the current rules so they're changing the rules. They already used their supermajority control in the state legislature to eliminate special elections— arguing, with some merit IMO, that they're too expensive and generate such low turnout that the results are not fair representations of the voters' will— then created a special special election to try forcing this issue through.

BTW, last year's special election got just 8% turnout. It's clear Ohio Republicans were hoping to sneak through a major change to voting rights with a tiny number of voters. Surprise for them with rules-monkeying on the ballot: this year the special election drew at least 5x the turnout.

Interesting note for policy wonks: Ohio's process for constitutional amendment via ballot proposition is similar in part to California's system of ballot propositions (link to my blog on the topic a year ago). Both date to the same era and for the same reason. In the early 1910s people looked to reform politics to curb the excesses of the Gilded Age, when big-money interests and politicians themselves made state legislation unrepresentative of the will of the majority of the voters. Ballot propositions were a way for voters to work around unresponsive legislatures to push through laws and additional reforms that had broad popular support.

On that topic let me reiterate something I've noted before. Voters voting in favor of protecting abortion rights is not just a thing in left-leaning "blue" states like California where voters are protecting abortion; it's red states, too. Last year 6 red states put abortion restrictions on the ballot and they lost in all 6. Ohio Republicans are similarly out of step with what voters in their own state, including voters in their own party, want. They tried jamming the process to avoid another loss. They lost.