After failed Ohio vote, will Republicans finally get the hint on abortion? | Opinion

Abortion wasn’t directly on the ballot in Tuesday’s special election in Ohio, but it might as well have been. Voters resoundingly rejected a proposal that would have changed the requirements for amending the state constitution, raising the threshold from a simple majority to a 60% supermajority. If successful, the Issue 1 measure would have made it more difficult to protect abortion rights, since Ohio will vote on a constitutional amendment to protect abortion access in November.

Despite the fact that the vote occurred during an otherwise sleepy election in the middle of summer, twice as many people voted on Tuesday’s measure than cast ballots in primaries for governor, Senate and other major statewide races last year, The New York Times reported. The election results underscored a common theme: the desire to preserve bodily autonomy transcends partisanship. Several suburban and blue-collar counties that have become safe GOP territory opposed the measure by a wide margin.

Will Republicans finally get the hint?

Ohio showed, once again, that voters will not go quietly when it comes to fighting for their fundamental rights. Since the U.S. Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade was handed down last year, Republicans have learned - or should have learned - that restricting access to abortion is not the winning issue they hoped it might be.

Just over a year ago, in conservative Kansas, voters shot down a constitutional amendment that would have allowed lawmakers to further restrict or ban abortion in the state. Fallout from the Supreme Court’s decision tempered expectations of a red wave in the 2022 midterms. Yet that still didn’t seem to get the message across.

Make no mistake, though — Tuesday’s vote was also about democracy. Many voters saw the proposed ballot measure as a power grab, as it would have made it more difficult for the people to make their voices heard through majority rule. Were Republicans really expecting voters to voluntarily give up their own power?

It’s not that Republicans are ignoring the signals that voters have been sending on abortion. The fact that the measure made it onto the Ohio ballot at all suggests that Republicans are already afraid of how their anti-abortion policies are landing with voters. They know their policies are unpopular with a simple majority of voters, so they want to change the rules of the game. It’s the same reason why they tried to frame themselves as “moderate” on abortion during the midterms, and it’s why Republicans in North Carolina opted for a 12-week ban instead of something stricter.

After all, polling on abortion consistently shows that most voters do not support restricting access to abortion, regardless of how Republicans try to frame it. A recent CNN poll found that opposition to the Supreme Court’s decision hasn’t waned since last year, and a record-high share of the public says they’re likely to take a candidate’s stance on abortion into consideration when voting. A New York Times/Siena poll indicated that a 15-week federal ban on abortion isn’t much more popular than a six-week ban, despite GOP attempts to sell a 15-week ban as a “compromise.”

Like North Carolina, Ohio is considered a swing state, but it’s one that Republicans have mostly dominated in recent years. But there is a key difference: unlike Ohio, North Carolina does not allow citizen-initiated ballot measures. Constitutional amendments can only be put on the ballot by a three-fifths vote of the legislature. We’ve said before that North Carolina lawmakers should put abortion on the ballot and allow voters to decide for themselves, as opposed to drafting abortion legislation behind closed doors.

Perhaps they’re just too afraid to do so when polling has told them exactly where North Carolinians stand.

Republicans across the country, and in North Carolina, should see Tuesday’s vote for what it is: a warning. They ballot-tested their message in a competitive swing state, and it failed. Voters aren’t willing to cede their power — and they aren’t willing to give up their rights.

This story was originally published August 9, 2023 at 9:22 AM.