A winning streak |
| Once again, abortion access has won a victory at the polls. |
| Yes, last night’s victory was merely a procedural one. Voters in Ohio soundly rejected a Republican-backed attempt to raise the threshold for changing the state’s Constitution to 60 percent in a ballot initiative. A follow-up election will take place in November, in which Ohio voters will decide whether to establish a right to abortion in the state’s Constitution. A simple majority will decide the outcome. |
| But last night’s result was still significant. Ohio is an increasingly conservative state, which Donald Trump won by eight percentage points in 2020 and where state legislators voted to ban almost all abortions (a policy that a judge has blocked for now). And yet voters rejected a ballot proposal that everybody understood was meant to help restrict abortion. It wasn’t close, either. The proposal failed, 43 percent to 57 percent, according to the latest count. |
| Ohio becomes the fourth red state, along with Kansas, Kentucky and Montana, to have voted on the abortion-rights side of a referendum since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade last summer. |