This upcoming Tuesday, Ohio has an election with one issue on it. The proposal, if it receives over 50% Yes votes, will make it so proposals to amend the Ohio Constitution would require 60% or more votes in favor as opposed to the "50% + 1" that is needed now.
It is a bit more complicated than that, but in essence the proposal would make it more difficult to amend the constitution. Of course, anyone who thinks about it for more than 5 seconds in good faith would arrive at the conclusion that a simple majority vote is way too low to amend the Constitution. It starts to get ridiculous when you have over 100 amendments.
Now, you would think, with Ohio becoming more red, leftoids would actually like a proposal that makes the constitution a bit less susceptable to the popular will, right? Wrong. It turns out, in November, they are trying to ram through an amendment that would enshrine abortion into the constitution and basically give a blank check for 9 month aboritions.
As such, the entire propaganda machine has been mobilized against the proposal to raise the bar for amending the state Constitution. Big groups that take money from all over the country, such as the ACLU, have gotten invloved and handed out free signs like candy. So now people are bombarded with "Vote NO" signs everywhere along with commercials and mail insinuating that "they" are trying to "take our democracy" and that voting no is the patriotic thing to do.
Until recently, I thought it was a lost cause. But I have reason to believe it will actually be quite close next Tuesday.
Point of this post being, anyone in Ohio, or anyone who knows people in Ohio, please tell friends and family to get their asses out and vote Yes on the proposal on August 8th. Even if it fails, we still have a very good shot at defeating the abortion amendment in november, but this proposal passing would be very good for the long term health of the state. The constitution should just not be able to be amended so easily.
Sorry for the wall of text but I figure if it reaches even a few potential voters it is worth it.
I had thought it was a lost cause, but a recent poll I saw actually had Yes being ahead by a point which shocked me. I know polling is dubious, but in my experience for Ohio, polling bias tends to be in the other direction by a few points.
I heard about the abortion measures in other states, but were these all constitutional amendments? And my understanding is that in at least some of the cases, the wording was intentionally misleading and the pro life people were terrible at getting the word out to combat that. Also, this would theoretically give a blank check for 9 month abortions.
So I think all of the following would be in favor of it failing in November:
-It is a constitutional amendment and not just a law. Some people may look askance to enshrining abortion into the constitution even if they don't really care about it that much (like myself)
-The wording is pretty clear in my opinion. One readthrough takes about a minute and it is pretty clear what you need to vote to get which outcome
-There is a distinct lack of any limits within the measure. Even people who are lukewarm on abortion are usually not okay with 9 month shit
But some of that relies on voters not being retarded and actually reading what they're voting on. Very possible for it to pass still, but if issue 1 next week only fails by 5 points or so, I would be pretty optimistic. Worried, but optimistic.
The abortion referendums in Kansas and Kentucky were actually both constitutional amendments and they failed in states much redder than Ohio.
I am not too optimistic that restricting abortion access in Ohio will end up differently than what happened in Kansas or Kentucky but if it does then great!
We will see next week what happens to Prop 1.