Ohio Issue 1 Soundly Defeated
The Ohio state GOP went hard for Issue 1, a measure to raise the amendment threshold of the state’s constitution from simple majority to 60%, and were trounced for their trouble.
Punchbowl News:
Ohio voters resoundingly rejected a Republican-backed effort to raise the threshold to change the state’s constitution.
This is a major defeat for the state’s GOP elected officials, including Rep. Jim Jordan, who cut an ad pushing Issue 1, and Frank LaRose, the secretary of state who campaigned for the initiative. LaRose is seeking the GOP nomination in Ohio’s 2024 Senate race.
Passage of Issue 1 would’ve raised the threshold to amend the state’s constitution to 60% from a simple majority. The result increases the odds that an initiative codifying abortion rights in Ohio will pass in November.
Top Ohio Republicans had rallied to increase the threshold to amend the state constitution. The GOP had argued the move would prevent special interests and out-of-state-liberals from trying to influence Ohio’s laws.
But voters in the state sided with the Democratic position, setting the stage for yet another consequential election centered around abortion rights in the post-Roe era.
The victory for the “No” side on Issue 1 will also reverberate in the Ohio Senate Republican primary. LaRose is running in a crowded GOP field that includes Bernie Moreno and state Sen. Matt Dolan. In many ways, LaRose was the public face of the campaign and had explicitly tied the vote to abortion.
The November abortion vote will be fascinating to watch. Notably, Kansas rejected an abortion ballot initiative that would have curtailed abortion rights in 2022 — which some saw as a harbinger that the GOP red wave wouldn’t materialize in the midterms.
Ohio has trended to the right in recent elections and is no longer a presidential swing state. Former President Donald Trump won the state by eight points in 2016 and 2020.
“By rejecting State Issue 1, Ohioans rejected special interests and demanded that democracy remain where it belongs – in the hands of voters, not the rich and powerful,” Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) said in a statement. Brown still faces a very difficult path to reelection in 2024, but this was a good sign for him.
President Joe Biden also hailed the Democratic win: “This measure was a blatant attempt to weaken voters’ voices and further erode the freedom of women to make their own health care decisions. Ohioans spoke loud and clear, and tonight democracy won.”
The majority didn’t vote for minority rule? Shocker.Report
On the other hand, see Wisconsin.Report
Query if Wisconsinites understood that they were choosing permanent minority rule.Report
unlikely.Report
Live by the 50% die by the 50%.
But if the State Constitution was written to allow amendments at 50% (that strikes me as imprudent at the constitutional level) my principled position would be that any Constitution level change to the 50% threshold would require votes at the new threshold (no less than current threshold). So, if 50% is current, change to 60% would require 60% votes to pass.
Doesn’t change the outcome here and doesn’t fit into the Abortion narrative, but strikes me as unwise to allow 50% to increase the threshold to 60%. Just bad Constitutioning to 1) set it at 50% and 2) not put a provision protecting the threshold.Report
Several thoughts:
1. I assume you mean writing into the text of the proposed Constitutional amendment “Notwithstanding any other provision of law, this amendment shall require a threshold of 60% ‘yes’ votes to pass.” Which then is debatably unconstitutional.
2. I’m pleased with the outcome here, because it was clearly aimed at paving the way to restrict what I believe should properly be considered Federal rights and certainly is aimed at restricting rights of some kind. The law and the electorate ought to reject such efforts.
3. But with #2 noted, I generally agree with you that a 50% threshold of voters to pass a Constitutional amendment does pave the way to a lot of Constitutional things that really ought to be statutes and restricts the ability of legislatures and regulators to tune things that probably are going to need tuning
and then fine-tuning rather than being fully functional ab initio. Alsotoo it paves the way for the immediate passions of the moment contrary to long-term interests, or a highly mobilized minority to override a content-with-the-status-quo public, thanks to the vicissitudes of transitory public opinion. Prop. 13 in California and later Prop. 8 in California are examples of each of those.Report
The problem Ohio has – as do a lot of gerrymandered minority/supermajority states is that the legislature increasingly refuses to tune statutes, much less address real problems legislatively. Which makes citizen initiatives MORE important in that it allows citizens to remind the recalcitrant legislature of issues that need attending. It may be a kludge as a solution, but it’s better then any other alternative.Report
Good point.
+1Report
Yeah, I obviously seriously disagree w/ many of the laws passed in various states on abortion, and think if there were referendums, some of them were overturned, but at least in most of them, a majority of voters for candidates who were quite open they were anti-choice. In places like Ohio, it’d be much smaller Republican majority which means a not quite as extreme abortion bill would be passed in the first place, and Wisconsin’s legislative elections can barely be described as small-r ‘republican’ anymore.Report
I can accept “it’s less bad than any other alternative.” After all, at least the people are stating explicitly “We want this.”
But I despair that political chicanery like gerrymandering or parliamentary maneuvers can too often and too easily be used by a determined minority to simply thwart the expressed will of the voters.Report
Down here, we almost didn’t get medical marijuana legalized because it was approved as a citizen initiative, which was then tossed by the state supreme court because the state constitution required initiatives to have equal numbers of signatures in the state’s 5 federal congressional districts. Mississippi hasn’t had 5 congressional districts in over 20 years. Two years later the legislature has failed to pass a bill rectifying this, or creating a new initiative process.
We got medical marijuana because enough rich Mississippians figured out how much money they would loose and leaned on the legislature to approve it the year after the initiative fiasco.
So yes, it may be the less bad alternative, but at least its still an alternative in Ohio.Report
That still hasn’t been fixed? Is there a story behind that or is it just inertia?Report
Not fixed. Several of the GOP political leadership made a run at it in the senate, but the House Speaker (who is retiring this year) shot it down. SO its mostly personality driven.Report
https://mississippitoday.org/2023/04/09/ballot-initiative-chris-mcdaniel-abortion-rights/Report
I think this is basically right. And as long as the process doesn’t get out of control (as they say it has in CA for example) I think it’s an important means of deciding important issues that for whatever reason never seem to be hashed out by the 2 party system. Dobbs was pretty clearly wrong IMO but now that its happened I really don’t think there is any other reasonable way to decide the issue besides putting it directly to the voters. I think every state that wants to do something other than the Roe status quo should decide it that way. After all the decades of the culture warring anything else is shameful, and cowardly.Report
Also sheer length. The Colorado constitution, with modest historical annotations by Legislative Legal Services, runs to 206 single-spaced pages.Report
1. Ideally written into the text of the Constitution…IMO the point of the constitution is to be a framework that requires super-majorities to alter. Legislation within the framework is 50%+1.
2. I’m glad your pleased; but my point in commenting on something where ‘my side’ is wrong (on procedure) is to point out that what I’m suggesting is bad governance regardless the outcome.
3. Right, as clarified in #1 we’re in agreement here… Constitutional Frameworks are just that, frameworks that require broad consensus to pass or amend. They ought, by design, to be somewhat counter-majoritarian. As to how much? That’s a prudential matter, so I’m fine leaving thresholds open raising/lowering. But the principal ought to be: to raise, you’d have to pass the very threshold you’re proposing to raise it to — precisely to prevent amending the constitution then pulling up the ladder behind you.Report
Let’s call a spade a spade. This little bit of attempted constitutional chicanery was clearly in service of advancing an agenda that is patently, judging by the result of the vote, unpopular with the electorate.
If OH R’s were sincere in their efforts to change the threshold, they could have held the referendum in a year where the outcome would not have worked in their favor if passed. After all, it’s for good governance, right?Report
As far as I can tell, I’m the only one calling the spade a spade, everyone else is calling it a rose because they like the outcome.
What I’d like to bookmark for possible future reference is if/when the abortion amendment passes the threshold limit is ‘revisited’ and passed with a rider (or a second amendment) that increases the threshold based on a 50%+1 standard. At which point, all the rose people will continue to describe the spade as a rose.Report
That would be an interesting outcome.
Conversely, if the pro-life side wished to pass an amendment outlawing abortion, or codifying a date beyond which one could not be done they are free to make the attempt under the existing constitution. This would seem to be the most straightforward test of the will of the people on this issue. The political game playing that just went on kind of tips the pro-life hand as to their level of confidence in their position.Report
I think your point is strong at the federal level, and there’s very good reason the US constitution is hard to change, but a lot less so at the state. In practice I think all it really does is periodically punt highly specific policy questions to the public (legalization of marijuana or gambling for example). The only jurisdiction that I’ve ever heard of that has really fubarred itself is CA and that seems to be pretty specific to the eccentricities of the place.
And to your point, if the pro-life movement feels like it got an unfair shake at the referendum then it isn’t like revisiting is a mountain that can’t be climbed with a 50% + 1 threshold. I also hate to say it but I thought this was what they wanted. Maybe it’s just me being stupid enough (as usual) to have the courage of my convictions but part of democracy is taking the occasional L then maybe coming back to play another day.Report
Is there a reason why a State Constitution shouldn’t allow for a Legislative Referendum rather than Amending the Constitution?
That seems to me a distinction no one is making. I don’t care if States want to moot popular Legislative issues via referenda, but I disagree that Constitutional Frameworks at the State Level should be subject to 50% alterations.
Now, there might be a prudential argument against mooting Legislation via referenda, but who am I to judge?Report
I’m not sure there really is a great theory behind constitutional amendment versus ability to put questions to referendum. If I had to make a case for constitutional amendment I guess it would be that once something is submitted to the people then it must be decided by them, and not subject to the second guessing of legislators, as would be the case if the result of a referendum was a statute like any other. However I think that’s more of a rationalization of what’s happening than an explanation.Report
I see… you’re one of those contract lawyers that just Amends the Master Agreement for every new transaction rather than doing an Exhibit? 🙂Report
Heh, never by choice but sometimes it’s what you inherit. It can also be the most efficient option when you’ve got some sales guy yelling at you to do it yesterday so he can make his numbers! 🙂Report
As God intended.Report
Turns out that ending reproductive freedom and imposing permanent Republican Party rule is not popular with the American electorate.Report
The 50% vs. 60% was the headline, and reasonable people could disagree on the correct threshold for changing the constitution.
What got less ink was the requirement to obtain signatures from 5% of voters from all 88 counties, up from 5% of voters from 44 counties. This would have eliminated any possibility of Ohio’s constitution to be changed using this mechanism.
This would have cut both ways, of course. It is not clear what the GOP had in mind for when THEY wanted to push an amendment.Report
One point that I saw on the twitters that was made quite well was how Republicans had done a somewhat decent job of learning the meta-game of governance but, as they did so, they completely forgot the whole “narrative building thing”.
Most folks anymore wouldn’t be able to articulate the pro-life position. Their version of it is going to be a translated version of the left’s version of the pro-life position.Report
I’ve said before that in a lot of ways Roe was a gift to Republicans by allowing the rampant writing of checks they thought they’d never have to cash. It also facilitated a conspicuous lack of discussion on most of the biggest substantive policy questions.Report
Heh, was it me? Sounds like something I’d say. Not exactly, but yes… while overturning Roe is good [Full Stop] building a Pro-Life ‘narrative’ and culture has to a much bigger project than counting weeks. Going back decades, it was clear that Team Red was not interested in all the other things that would be necessary to reduce demand and strengthen a culture in favor of life, but all that was overlooked in favor of the SCOTUS route.
It’s not exactly that Team Red didn’t think Roe would ever be overturned, but to InMD’s point below [erm above], as long as it was in place they didn’t have to *do* anything on any other front to keep the votes/dollars in line.
As some of us like to say, the game is iterated… whether or not R’s really care and develop a full policy/platform/’narrative’ agenda post-SCOTUS/Roe? Possible, but I didn’t have confidence in the R’s 25-yrs ago, and have even less in it’s current form. But absent that, the iteration will favor any abortion over none… and if iterations continue, will settle at ‘first trimester’ 12-15 week policies with Medical approval thereafter.Report
“Culture of Life” is a religious ideal. It’s right there in the definition and comes from moral theology.
If the goal is to ‘convince everyone to follow my religious ideals” then that’s hard since the bulk of society doesn’t follow that religion.
For that matter a lot of people who claim to follow it in theory are going to disagree in practice.Report
More practically it takes in things like freely available birth control, low cost childcare, single payer health insurance and robust job training with living wages that a LOT of the “pro-life” crowd spurn.Report
Not true. This is equating the obvious black letter meaning of “culture of life” with the religious concept.
Culture of life, the religious concept, has internal contradictions. Yes, it’s opposed to most forms of birth control. The church decided that any use of birth control (other than rhythm) was anti-life, ergo by definition it can’t be part of a culture of life.
For the rest IDK if there are official church stances. If no then they probably aren’t part of culture of life either.
Politicians can’t impose all of this on a secular society for the same reason that church goers don’t pay attention to church edicts about their sex lives. The whole idea is stupid.
Culture of Life is supposed to only be used as a tool of power for the church to impose it’s views on you. It’s not a practical framework meant to be taken seriously much less create opposition to official church policy.Report
No it isn’t… I mean, it could be, but the way it is actually used is by Pro-Life folks who aren’t simply Republican Partisans is: “birth control, low cost childcare, single payer health insurance and robust job training with living wages”Report
And yet we see few policy proposals in legislative settings from allegedly prolife politicians to make these things reality. Go figure.Report
Right… break the duopoly. Solidarity ::fist::
Systemic failures, not just for lefties anymore.Report
Yes.
The marketing and common sense aspects of “pro-life culture” differ sharply from the religious concept.
The religious concept has support, the common sense aspect does not.
The phrase is a marketing way for the religiously motivated to take the ethical high ground.
It disguises that the reasoning is “god wants me to force you to do this”.Report
https://plus.thebulwark.com/p/why-the-ohio-special-election-backfired-for-gop
But back to that art teacher. She acknowledged she was concerned about the abortion factor in all this, but made it quite clear that abortion wasn’t the major reason she was voting no. Rather, she was mad about what she called Republicans “overstepping their bounds,” about their having “no respect for anything or anybody” and being willing to stomp on the rights of others “to get what they want.”
“It’s not that I expect them to act all nice and friendly while they are attempting to stab people in the back,” she told me. “But in this case, the feeling I am getting is that they thought most people were too dumb to figure out anything and that they could just walk all over all of us as if that is just how this world of politics works.”
I heard similar messages from the thirty-odd people I had conversations with at polling places in conservative outer-ring suburb Strongsville and liberal inner-ring suburb Shaker Heights, and at the rec center/polling place in inner-city Cleveland where 12-year-old Tamir Rice got killed in 2014 for holding a toy gun.
Hardly anyone said they were mainly there to vote because of abortion rights or being anti-Trump. Almost all indicated they felt that Issue 1 was an overreach of the highest order. One guy told me that “this is one of the lowest below-the-belt actions I’ve seen in politics ever.”Report
I feel in a lot of ways that a large part of the Republican leadership has lost sight of the need to obtain popular legitimacy to rule. So much of Republican electoral strategy seems to be about bending the rules to technically win regardless of votes, but this isn’t sustainable. Ultimately the public care less about whether the forms were observed than that their voice is heard, and if they don’t feel that it was then all the technicalities in the world won’t stop a government from falling.Report
In great irony a LOT of the MAGA GOP politicians have jobs because of a pervasive – and largely true – belief that the establishment GOP politicians who came before weren’t listening to them either.Report
The issue with true believers and ideologues is that they eventually get to dissolve the people and elect another. The Times article on the defeat featured a right-wing Republican who stated “evil never sleeps.” This is not someone primed to reflect on the legitimacy of the democratic process.Report
My ideas are correct and will be popular after they’re in place, or at a minimum not noticed.
Most policies aren’t designed to be popular, they’re designed to server very narrow special interests who care about them a lot while the vast majority cares about them very little.Report