![]() As in Kansas a year ago, the Republican majority in the state legislature scheduled the referendum for August-a time when the party assumed turnout would be low and favorable to their cause. ![]() ![]() “I don’t think I’ve seen such a naked attempt to stay in power,” a former Democratic governor of Ohio, Dick Celeste, told the church crowd in Toledo. For Republicans to propose raising the threshold three months before the abortion vote in November looks like a transparent bid to move the proverbial goalposts right when their opponents are about to score. Polls show that in Ohio, the abortion-rights amendment is likely to win more than 50 percent of the vote, as have similar ballot measures in other states. But to Democrats in Ohio and beyond, the August special election is perhaps the most brazen effort yet by Republicans to subvert the will of voters. Similar efforts are under way or have already won approval in states including Florida, Missouri, North Dakota, and Idaho. To prevent Democratic attempts to circumvent conservative state legislatures, Republican lawmakers have sought to restrict ballot initiatives across the country. The abortion-rights movement is trying to replicate the success it found last summer in another red state, Kansas, where voters decisively rejected an amendment that would have allowed the legislature to ban abortion, presaging a midterm election in which Democrats performed better than expected in states where abortion rights were under threat. If the abortion-rights side wins next week and in November, Ohio would become the largest GOP-controlled state to enshrine abortion protections into law. Wade, the back-to-back votes will also test whether abortion as an issue can still propel voters to the polls in support of Democratic candidates and causes. But the Republican-controlled legislature clearly timed this referendum to intercept a progressive march on one issue in particular: Ohioans will decide in November whether to make access to abortion a constitutional right, and the outcome of next week’s vote could mean the difference between victory and defeat for backers of abortion rights.Ī year after the fall of Roe v. Conservatives have argued that making the constitution harder to amend would protect Ohio from liberal efforts to raise the minimum wage, tighten gun laws, and fight climate change. But next week’s referendum has galvanized Democratic opposition inside and outside Ohio, turning what the GOP had hoped would be a sleepy summertime election into an expensive partisan proxy battle. In other years, a rules tweak like this one might pass without much notice. Currently, constitutional amendments in Ohio-including the one on next week’s ballot-need only a bare majority of voters to pass the proposal seeks to make the threshold a 60-percent supermajority. If enacted, the Republican-backed proposal known as Issue 1 would raise the bar for any future changes to the state constitution. ![]() Many of those in the boisterous crowd were experiencing a feeling unfamiliar to Democrats in the state over the past decade: optimism. They had gathered at the Warren AME Church, in Toledo, to voice their opposition to a constitutional amendment that Ohio voters will approve or reject in a statewide referendum on August 8. Montgomery is a Republican, which gave the largely Democratic audience even more reason to roar with approval. “With all due respect, pastor, hell no!” shouted Betty Montgomery, a former Ohio attorney general. F or the 150 or so people who filled a church hall in Toledo, Ohio, for a Thursday-night campaign rally last week, the chant of the evening featured a profanity usually discouraged in a house of God.
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