Buckeyes Say Bullshit

Dirty Moderate with Adam Epstein

There’s an old saying in politics: As Ohio goes, so goes the nation.
Up until 2020, Ohio was a bellwether state in presidential elections voting for the winner every election cycle since 1960 except when John F. Kennedy won the general election, but Richard Nixon carried the state.
Donald Trump won Ohio twice, but 2020 was the first year where Buckeyes voted Republican even as Democrat Joe Biden was elected to the presidency.
Tuesday’s vote against Issue 1 , a ballot initiative spearheaded by Ohio’s deep red state legislature, would have raised the threshold to amend the state constitution from a simple majority of 50 % + 1 to 60%. But Ohioans resoundingly rejected this attack on democracy by a margin of 57.01% to 42.99%.
By roughly the same margin, Ohio voters support abortion rights, according to polls, and a pending ballot initiative, which would enshrine a woman’s right to choose into the state constitution is set to be on Ohio voters’s ballots this November.
This is the real reason this stealth attack on democracy ended up on a ballot in the dog days of August. The GOP wagered that a low turnout and a confusing, if deeply unsettling new law would make it all the more difficult for reproductive rights to be sanctioned by the Ohio electorate in a state which has passed more and more onerous restrictions limiting abortion rights since the Dobbs decision overturned Roe v Wade in June of 2022.
But the GOP was wrong. And the people spoke. Will they do the same again in November? And will Ohio mirror the several other red states whose voters have rejected attempts by right wing forces to deprive women of their bodily autonomy? Tuesday’s vote suggests yes, but the fight for democracy never sleeps.”

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