Ohio voters on Tuesday rejected a proposal known as Issue 1 which sought to make it more difficult to amend the state constitution, handing a victory to pro-choice advocates before a vote in November that aims to enshrine abortion rights in the Ohio Constitution, according to reports.
The bill sought to raise the threshold for approving amendments to the state constitution from 50 percent plus one vote to 60 percent – which would have made November's change more difficult to achieve
Speaking to The New York Times, a registered Republican who voted against Issue 1 called the bill a "little bit of a magical trick."
“The people who engineered it have covered it so that you don’t really see the cards that are there," said 74-year-old Rebecca Ferris.
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“I’m 89 years old, and I’m fed up with old men telling women how to take care of their reproduction and their sex lives,” said voter Thomas McAninch. “If men was having babies, there wouldn’t be none of this nonsense."
The Times interviewed a bipartisan group of voters who felt the campaign for Issue 1 was “disingenuous,” a “game,” or a “sneaky tactic,” and that those who sponsored the bill were trying to “pull a fast one.”
Focus groups in solidly Republican regions conducted by Thomas Sutton, the director of Baldwin Wallace University’s Community Research Institute, found that party loyalty didn't do much to affect the distaste for Issue 1.
“People were concerned on a couple of different levels,” he said. “No. 1 was: You are diminishing my ability to vote on these constitutional issues. No. 2 was the way in which this was all done.”
As The Times' report points out, many voters were far more concerned about the measure's goal of making it harder to change the Constitution than the subject of abortion.
“Is the abortion issue important? Yes, but it’s more than that for me,” said Darla Carlson. “We are stopping this before it gets any further.”
Read more at The New York Times.