States have been doing a lot of thinking about what they want their residents to access. As such, Ohio has decided to put the abortion rights debate at the center of a special election, which was held on Tuesday.
If you saw the ballot, you wouldn’t have seen abortion directly on it. Instead, it was a question known as “Issue 1.”
Issue 1 asked if Ohio voters should be “able to change the constitution with a simple majority vote or whether it should take a higher, 60% majority threshold.”
It’s important to see how Ohio voters responded because abortion rights will be a part of the ballot in November.
Abortion rights advocates wanted issue 1 to fail. Anti-abortion advocates were looking for it to pass so that a simple majority would allow for things to happen.
The special election took place on August 8, and the Associated Press was able to call it that same night. The vote was to reject issue 1. This means that the way the state amends the constitution will remain the same as it has over the past 100 years.
Over 700,000 voters turned out for the votes, and both sides said that the state’s constitution and democracy as a whole was at stake.
There was no question about how the vote went. It failed at a vote of 57% to 43%.
Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown celebrated the vote on Twitter by commenting, “By rejecting Issue 1, Ohioans rejected special interests and demanded that democracy remain where it belongs — in the hands of voters, not the rich and powerful. That is what has always guided me. I am proud to stand with Ohioans in this fight.”
Now that Ohioans have made it clear that they don’t want special interests to rule their version of “democracy,” we may see many more states take a similar approach.
The goal is for the voters to decide what is right and wrong, not those who are in power with their own versions of right and wrong.
