Well, I see that Ohioans have overwhelmingly rejected the right-wing attempt to change referendums from simple majority vote to needing 60% to pass. This means that November's abortion rights referendum will be decided by a normal majority vote.
So why the huge rejection? Is it a harbinger of the abortion vote? Or is it just that most Ohioans like their referendums and don't want them effectively taken away since almost nothing can get attract 60% support?
Anyway, good news. Nice work, Ohio people.
Partly abortion, partly a reaction to really ham-handed tactics, is my guess.
I get to have my own little diner moment, I guess. I'm from Ohio, most of my family is still there. They range from more conservative to much more conservative than me, and the ones I've talked to about this thought it was sleazy and desperate.
And it certainly isn't bad news for Democrats.
The measure was defeated 56.7% to 43.3% (97% of the votes counted), which means the large majority of voters would have lost under the proposed new rule. Apart from its effect on abortion rights, this will lead to redistricting by a nonpartisan commission to undo the grossly unfair Republican gerrymander. Today’s Republican Party is really into cheating. I can’t think why this is so, because their policies are so popular…
RE: non-partisan redistricting commission, I sure hope you're right. Serves the loser Reps right.
The independent redistricting commission is just an idea for the 2024 ballot right now. It is not in place. But it's a lot more likely to win next November than it would have been had Issue 1 passed.
Cue..."Space Lasers Rigged it!!!" in 3....2....
Actually it was the Italian spy satellites communicating with the Ohio voting machines via the Chinese thermostats to change huge numbers of Yes votes to No votes.
It was about abortion - nobody turns out in August for some abstract constitutional principle.
I'm happy with this result, but in other contexts I'm not sure a simple majority should always be determinative when major and permanent policy changes are involved. For example, I really think David Cameron should have insisted on a 60 percent result to reject EU membership in the 2016 Brexit vote.
I used to live in MA, and there one could change the State Constitution with a majority vote, but what it took *time*. I forget the exact details, but it took a few sessions of the legislature to go by (and vote on the measure( before it could be then put on the ballot for majority vote. It was a 2 or 2 and a half year process.
This came into play when MA legalized same sex marriage by court order. There was an immediate cry to put a ballot measure to undo that. But, miraculously enough, two and a half years later, the Sun was still coming up in the East, and setting in the West. Heterosexual marriages weren't destroyed by gay marriages. And people just kind of relented.
60% is hard to achieve. But asking the legislature to approve ballot language a couple of times in a row, and then letting majority rule decide, I'm OK with that.
Pennsylvania is similar — two separate consecutive legislative sessions, followed by a vote by the public . An anti choice measure passed once, but after Demos took over state house, they were sunk.
Smart people told us they were going to stop anyway because the actual ballot measure would have come out in a normal election year and if pro choice voters were mobilized by the amendment, Republicans would have suffered across the board.
“I'm not sure a simple majority should always be determinative when major and permanent policy changes are involved.”
That’s fine but it would need to be universally applied. For example, in most states, a vote to eliminate all taxes (and ultimately bankrupt the state) only requires 50%+1 votes in both houses and the governor’s signature. That would seem to me to be a “major and (quasi) permanent* policy change,” yet it’s not subject to any extra hurdles. Not sure why abortion or anything else should thus face extra hurdles for being “major” or “permanent.”
*Permanent is never permanent in politics or law. Policies morph over time, regardless of whether they’re considered “permanent.” The idea that anything is ever taken off the table after a single act of legislature or the electorate is foolish.
I predict that Ohio will join the ranks of states with constitutional protections for reproductive rights in November. Everywhere it gets put to the voters, they vote for their rights. It will take time, but many of the hostile/illegal states will fall.
We'll see how it impacts 2024 and potentially puts Ohio back in play.
Fingers crossed. After the forced-birthers won all the statewide races last year, I started thinking about moving. If abortion rights fail in November, I'll keep on thinking about moving. My wife wants it warmer in winter, and I don't want any more heat in the summer.
It's kind of sad that abortion rights are apparently supported by less than 60% of the Ohio population. Of course, in states where support exceeds 60%, the state government also supports abortion rights so there isn't an issue.
Republicans will pass a federal law making abortion illegal nationwide, right after they control both chambers and the White House.
That's the real threat *every* female in America faces, as a result of the overturning of Roe. It will happen. There isn't a lot of time -- 2024 might be the one last opportunity.
I don’t doubt that Republicans will attempt to do this after they get their trifecta again. But, it could easily turn out to be like Obamacare repeal, which ultimately failed even with a Republican trifecta, because the People Who Hold All The Money didn’t care enough about it to push it through (like they did their ruinous tax cuts).
And even if they do manage to push a national ban through, it could easily turn out to be The Event that turns a vast number of comfortable middle class women against the Republican Party for the rest of their lives. Especially when the stories of “(white rich) woman bleeds out on the ER floor before she can be helicoptered to Canada” or “baby born without vital organs dies after a week of suffering” or “most cities now without ob-gyns after a generation decides nope to delivering deformed babies” becomes daily headlines in blue and purple state media. (That shit does not play well outside of the reddest states. Nobody cares what happens in Idaho, West Virginia, etc. but they do care when it’s happening to People They Know in their neighborhoods.)
The Republican attempt to repeal the ACA failed by a single vote in the Senate. Way too close for comfort.
John McCain was an asshole but he did the right thing in that instance.
They'd have to get a 60-vote majority in the Senate to overcome a certain Democratic filibuster -- but I get your point.
You assume they don't change the rules just for an anti-abortion vote, though. I think they would.
I think the Rs would change the rules for something they really wanted ($$$) but not this. Enough of them know it would be bad politics.
I'm skeptical about that. They may try but if Trump is president he will likely not be on board (he appointed the judges, but he is not pro-Life). Also, not every GOP senator or congresscritter would be on board either, just as the ACA repeal met rejection because some Republicans refused to vote for it.
"I'm skeptical about that. They may try but if Trump is president he will likely not be on board"
Oh ffs, Trump is not going to veto anything that comes out of a Republican Congress to restrict abortion. Trump's motivations are getting applause at rallies from conservatives, thinking that he's succeeded in making liberals mad, and not working very hard. All of that points in the direction of signing whatever comes across his desk.
The margin of victory combined with all the other datapoints we have on abortion rights related voting make it pretty clear to me that this was about abortion. I find it highly unlikely a bunch of ohioans were driven to the polls over the % of vote required for theoretical referendums to pass.
The 60% supermajority, while not wonderful, wasn't the worst of it at all.
First, to get on the ballot under Issue One, you'd need to get signatures from residents equal to 5% of the last gubernatorial election's voters, in EVERY ONE of Ohio's 88 counties. The current requirement is 44% of counties.
Second, the current requirement is that if you have any invalid signatures, you get a 10-day grace period to "cure" them by collecting valid signatures to replace them.
Under Issue One, any single invalid signature on your petition would require you to go back and start collecting signatures from zero, with no grace period.
These two items clearly showed the legislature's intention to freeze out the majority of Ohio voters, who are already frozen out of legislative elections.
Definitely. You can't gerrymander a statewide vote, so you have to move the goalposts. Minority rule! ... that is, up until Democrats are reduced to the minority. Then it'll be back to "simple majority."
There's the stuff that matters, in the fine print. I hadn't known it was that awful, thanks for the info.
Not quite on the signatures. You can always turn in more signatures than is necessary, because some will always be thrown out. The marijuana legalization people submitted half-again more signatures than they needed, but more than a third were thrown out, so they ended up 679 signatures short. They had 10 days to come up with 679, so they turned in 6,545 more signatures.
Had Issue One passed, and a constitutional amendment was in the same situation, they would be done. No attempt to fill in the gap, no way to get on the ballot except collecting all of the signatures again next time.
Thanks for the correction.
About time we updated the US Constitution to require (less of) a supermajority to amend IT. And XX humans! If you want some kind of "Equal Rights Amendment", then update the wording for the 21st century and start all over again.
Our little HOA has the 60% rule. Yes, none of the rules written 50 years ago can be changed. Requires 60% of the owners to vote, but only 50% of the owner even vote.
Same here, except not even 50% vote.
Do you still ban black folks? (Asking for a friend...)
OT: A spectacularly massive, as in a couple of kilometers high, explosion at a factory northeast of Moscow that apparently made artillery shells. Aside from atomic bomb blasts, you've never seen a larger explosion. Search for Sergiev Posad. the city where the explosion occurred.
"The incident happened around 10:40 a.m. local time (3:40 a.m. ET) in a pyrotechnics warehouse rented on the territory of the plant by a "private company," Moscow Region Governor Andrei Vorobyov said on Telegram."
Not sure where the idea that the plant made artillery shells comes from.
"At least 56 people were hurt with six in intensive care. . . "
Somehow, I think bigger blasts happened during WWII. It's impressive, but let's not hyperventilate.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/explosion-mechanical-plant-moscow-region-sergiev-posad-rcna98944
Pretty big explosion for a plant that made "medical and optical equipment".
The famous Halifax explosion of WWII involved 8,000 tons of ammunition; I don't know how much of that total was shell casings and such but it must have been at least 4,000 tons of explosives. It wrecked a fair chunk of the city.
FTR, there are photos of empty shells and brick walls damaged by an object that resembles artillery shells.
Worse than the one in Lebanon a few years back?
Way worse.
House Dems should all start wearing blue baseball hats with FAFO on the front and Pro Choice on the back.
In Ohio, the cities voted (what might as well have been) unanimously against Issue 1, and the rural areas voted (what might as well have been) unanimously for it. So now we may see their respective numerical strength: 57:43 sounds about right. In all other things, for the past ~30 years, the rural areas have stomped viciously on the cities; for once, only once, they get a taste of their own medicine, and they will call it the end of the world.
Right. Issue 1 passed in 66 of Ohio's 88 counties. But not in the six counties with the most registered voters, and only in 2 of the top 10.
John Scalzi, noted SF author and an Ohioan, comments at length today:
https://whatever.scalzi.com/2023/08/09/post-mortem-on-ohio-issue-1/
Among other points he notes that the GOP ploy "might have worked, too, if the Ohio GOP hadn’t done what shitty people who want to take away rights always do, which was to almost comically overreach."
I just, a few mijnutes ago, finished reading Scalzi's "The Kaiju Preservation Society." It's up for a Hugo this year. Just wanted to note that I enjoyed it -- it's a lot of fun and has intriguing concepts.
-- a big Godzilla fan
Getting a referendum passed does not mean the victory is complete. Remember Florida and the referendum allowing former felons to vote... the GOP-dominated legislature added a number of fine points to it to make it effectively ineffective.
When you are fuzzy on ethics, a lot of things that healthy people wouldn't think of doing become options...
You're a little off with your assessment of the Florida referendum to allow felon to vote. The referendum stated felons (except for rapists and murderers) could vote after all the terms of their sentence were completed. After the referendum passed, some democrats tried to say that "all terms" didn't include monetary fines. Since they tried to change the intent of the referendum, republicans needed to add new legislation to uphold what the voters approved.
Here is the actual referendum as it appeared on the ballot:
No. 4 Constitutional Amendment Article VI, Section 4. Voting Restoration Amendment
This amendment restores the voting rights of Floridians with felony convictions after they complete all terms of their sentence including parole or probation. The amendment would not apply to those convicted of murder or sexual offenses, who would continue to be permanently barred from voting unless the Governor and Cabinet vote to restore their voting rights on a case by case basis.