(mellow bright music) (speech bubbles blip) (mellow bright music continues) - Hello and welcome to "Journal."

I'm Steve Kendall.

November 7th, Ohioans go to the polls to vote on a constitutional amendment dealing with reproductive healthcare.

Joining us in the studio are Dr. David Jackson, Dr. Nicole Kalaf-Hughes, and Dr. Melissa K. Miller from the Bowling Green State University Department of Political Science.

And from Columbus, the host of the state of Ohio, Karen Kasler.

So welcome, everybody, to "Journal."

We're back with another issue one election.

Seems like we just did one.

Nicole, talk about issue one and what it is and what it's not, because obviously there's a lot of contested discussion on both sides of this.

What is issue one supposed to do as a constitutional amendment?

- So issue one is about a constitutional amendment to guarantee access to reproductive healthcare, including abortion services, birth control, fertility treatment and miscarriage treatment.

And so, it would protect that in the Ohio Constitution and essentially take Ohio back to where Ohio was before the Dobbs decision on June 24th of last year.

That's what it would do.

It would not affect anything about Ohio's previous parental notification laws about abortion.

It would not do anything about parental rights or LGBTQ issues.

It has absolutely nothing to do with that.

It's purely around reproductive healthcare.

- Yeah and and one of the things you hear though, and obviously, advertising has begun to ramp up on this, is that those things you mentioned at the end, those items, that's being said, oh, those are also part of this.

And as you're saying, that's not what this language says, but obviously, messaging is out there now interpreting a lot of different things about this.

- Well, part of it is abortion rights are broadly popular across the country and in Ohio, and particularly things like access to birth control, or miscarriage treatment, or even access to fertility treatment to grow families.

And those things are broadly popular.

So if you are looking to advertise against issue one, you have to go with what doesn't have that popular support, regardless of whether it's actually salient to the legislation.

- Yeah, now Karen, obviously, down in Columbus, the legislature appears to have, you know, they tend to take tack that says they didn't really want this vote to come about.

They wanted to go to a 60% majority for constitutional amendments.

Is there any discussion, was there a rumbling down there about what would happen should issue one pass, how they're going to react to that down in the legislature?

- Well, Senate passed a resolution that would oppose, formerly oppose issues one and two.

Of course, it passed along party lines because it's Republicans who are opposed to issue one and Democrats who are supportive of issue one, at least in the legislature.

If issue one passes, it is a constitutional amendment.

And so, lawmakers can't change it.

They can't make any changes to that.

Whereas issue two, which we'll talk about later, is a statute, so that can be changed.

But yeah, there's a lot of Republican opposition to issue one.

There was a get out the vote rally just before early voting started that featured, at the Ohio Republican Party headquarters, that featured Governor Mike DeWine, Attorney General Dave Yost, and two of the three US Senate candidates.

So the Republican party is all in against issue one.

And of course, Democrats help gather signatures to put issue one on the ballot, so they're strongly for it.

- Now, when we talk about this issue one, I don't know, Melissa, obviously, the last time in August there was a coalition about that issue one, which is not this issue one.

Do we know if the same groups of people, 'cause this is a different issue.

Are we seeing a coalition, anything like that this time or not?

Or is it just dividing along, yes, I'm for reproductive healthcare, no, I don't think issue one is a good idea?

Is there a coming together of some of those same groups this time or not?

- Well, I think the hope certainly is for proponents of issue one that they'll see the kind of turnout and enthusiasm that issue one back in August did produce.

And it's difficult to tell exactly what turnout will be on either side.

But certainly, the proponents hope to see again what they saw in August.

What we can say is that both sides seem to be heated.

I know I've been in several different parts of the state just in the last few weeks, I love to see all the yard signs out.

They're a very rough indicator of where people stand.

They're also an indicator of how well organized each side is.

And so, it's not really a social science indicator.

- Yeah.

- But I like to, I think it does, it yields some information.

What I will say is that I think people are going to go into this election knowing which way they're going to vote.

I don't think that the campaigns on either side, the yard signs, what have you- - Are gonna change.

- Are going to change anyone's mind.

So it then becomes a turnout game.

It becomes who can get their supporters to the polls.

I will say one other comment would be, I've had a number of questions from people who seem to be on both sides of this issue saying I'm confused.

- [Steve] Hmm, okay.

- People want to know which way, what a yes vote means and what a no vote means.

And I think part of that goes back to what Nicky was talking about, which is we have the opposition to issue one sort of feeding into it some issues that, really, legal scholars believe would not be affected by issue one.

Things like gender assignment therapy, LGBTQ plus healthcare and so forth.

But I think that the no side is doing what it can to kind of muck up the waters.

And I think that has created some confusion.

But my guess is, folks will go in knowing how they're going to vote.

- Yeah because I know even back when you talked to people about issue one in August, that issue one, people were saying, "I don't, what is it, what is it?

How should I vote?

What does it mean, what does it not mean?"

So it's sort of unfortunate that, again, we've got this sort of not sure what this is about really.

David, when you look at what's going on, and obviously, there's some polling being done in the state about this, what does it look like right now, the polling that's available that says issue one, how does it stand at the moment?

- Well, Baldwin Wallace University has done a poll and so has Ohio Northern University and both show significant support for passing both issue one and issue two.

But there's a lot of complexities built into those polls.

So the Ohio Northern Poll did some interesting comparison work looking at where people stand based on the actual wording of the constitutional amendment itself versus the summary of the amendment as written by the ballot board.

And it was a substantially higher amount of support for the amendment as it was actually written than in the summary.

Now unfortunately, excuse me, in the subsamples, not to get too technical and political science, the margin of error goes up because the samples are much smaller.

So the people who did the poll down there are very, very good at this and cautioned people not to read too much into it.

- [Steve] Yeah.

- But it was a very large difference in terms of the amount of, that was a majority support issue one, both forms of wording.

But it was a lot higher in terms of the wording as the actual constitutional amendment itself was written than the version that's what people are going to see.

But of course, there's no measurement that I'm aware of, in terms of whether or not people actually read the language itself, either in the voting booth or before they go in.

Because the folks at Ohio Northern said as well that, and echoing some things that were just said here, the advertising, and campaigning, and yard signs probably aren't as influential as they would be on other issues where there isn't sort of baked in support and opposition for the question.

So I think people, you know, tell themselves, I'm going in to vote yes or I'm going in to vote no.

And I don't think a lot of people spend a lot of time standing in the voting booth reading the summary- - The whole- - Word for word.

- Yeah, the summary, right.

When we come back, we can talk a little more about that because obviously, when people walk in, they can see the entire language displayed as they go into a polling booth.

But how many people are gonna read past the summary, is a good question.

Back in just a moment here on "The Journal" we're talking about issue one, issue two and some other things related to politics in Ohio.

Back in just a moment here on "The Journal."

Thank you for staying with us here on "The Journal."

Our guests are Dr. David Jackson, Dr. Nicole Kalaf-Hughes, Dr. Melissa Miller from the Department of Political Science at Bowling Green State University, and the host of the state of Ohio, Karen Kasler.

Left the last segment, we were talking about issue one.

And I know that language summary versus ballot language.

Melissa, talk about how that comes about and the differences between the summary and the ballot language, and possibly why there are those differences between what people will read in the summary and some of the verbiage they'll see if they would actually read the full ballot language of the amendment.

- Sure and I think this is another reason why there seems to be a little confusion because it's not a perfect match between the text of the actual amendment versus the summary language.

So the text of the constitutional amendment, that was drafted by the supporters who circulated the petition and got sufficient number of signatures to put it on the ballot.

So if issue one takes effect, the wording of the amendment, that longer text, is what will go into effect and that's what will be legal in Ohio.

But in Ohio, we have a separate ballot board.

That ballot board, if an issue is put on the ballot, they write the language for the summary.

The ballot board has a majority of Republicans on it.

And so, it was somewhat controversial in the sense that when they wrote the ballot language, they used a term that's kind of a hot button for proponents of reproductive rights.

So the summary language refers to the unborn child.

That term unborn child does not appear actually anywhere in the actual amendment.

And proponents of the amendment were upset that that summary language used that hot button term.

In fact, the amendment itself refers neither to the unborn child nor the fetus, but instead refers to the viability, that a pregnancy could be terminated up until the point of viability.

- Viability.

- And so I think, again, we see a little bit of confusion there.

The last thing I'll say about it is we know from a lot of political science research over the years that has nothing even to do with statewide ballot issues.

But if you phrase a question about reproductive rights or abortion, and then even in one version of the question you say unborn child and the other say fetus, you get a difference in responses.

And the support for reproductive rights goes down just slightly if you refer to an unborn child.

- Yeah and we know that when we looked at the issue one with the 60% margin for constitutional amendments, that obviously, those increments could actually mean something.

And I know that we talked about 60% and then in other discussion as well, other states of looking at 57% or 53%, those sort of things.

Karen, when you look around, and I know that, obviously, we talked a little bit about turnout and what early voting looks like.

So talk a little about what you've seen with that and what's happening right now, basically, as we sit here, a little, a week, basically, before the election, before election day on November 7th.

- Well, turnout is definitely up from where it was in August, which, I mean, it was an August special election that was not scheduled until May.

So the fact that there was 38.5% turnout is pretty impressive.

And it's really hard to compare to other August statewide special elections 'cause there really aren't any to compare it to.

And that's the situation we're in too when it comes to the November statewide election.

We do have stats on odd year elections, which I say odd year rather than off-year because every year there's an election and you shouldn't have any off-year ideas.

So (laughing) yeah.

But over the last 18 elections going back to 1983, the average turnout has been about 41, just under 42%, 41.88%, with a high watermark of just over 60% in 1983.

So I would imagine that if the turnout exceeds 42%, that's gonna exceed the average.

And certainly, with all of the attention that's been paid, especially to issue one, but also to issue two as well, that number I would think could definitely be hit, if not exceeded.

- Yeah, yeah, now, it's interesting, we talk about this year as being an off-year election and we're talking about these two state issues, but of course, locally there are all kinds of issues which will bring people to the polls too.

I guess one of the questions we'll see as people research this after the fact is that those voters came to, say, to vote on a school levy, did they weigh in on issue one or issue two?

Is there a difference in the response to those basic things?

David, you talked a little bit about the polls, and some of the nuances, and some of the things we have to take in mind.

So talk a little bit more about that, about why we would see margins of errors that might create a different impression, maybe, if you look at a poll just on the surface and what's beneath it.

- Well, sure.

So since 2016 when polling indicated one potential result for the presidential election and it came out the other way, there's been a lot of criticism of political science polling, media polling, anybody who does surveys.

And the thing about that is there is both a science and an art to polling.

So the polls that have been done in Ohio, like any other survey about an upcoming election, their mission, their job is to create a sample that looks like the population.

And not the population of the state of Ohio.

The definition of the population, in this case, would be the people who are going to actually vote- - People who come out to vote.

- In November.

And that's a very difficult thing to do because you can ask screening questions about how likely you are to vote.

You can look at previous elections in terms of who voted.

You can weight the sample after you've gotten the sample to make it look like what you expect the results to look like, in terms of partisanship and demographics.

All of this is very scientific, but all of it also contains an element of art, an element of some guessing.

And so, I know for sure the Ohio Northern Pole and well, I'm pretty sure both the Ohio Northern Poll and the Baldwin Wallace poll are registered voter polls.

And so, that tells us then, as the people who did the polls suggest, that this sample that they've produced would be of all registered voters.

But we know that we have to account for what the actual voting group is going to look like on election day.

And so I think both of the faculty members who did those surveys suggest that it comes down to the question of turnout.

Who is going to be able to get their people out.

And so, I'm gonna defend the concept of political science- - [Steve] Sure.

- Surveying, while acknowledging that there's some art and some science involved in the process.

- Sure and it is funny because we use analytics in a lot of other things and live by them.

I mean, people make major decisions based on that.

And this is yet similar to that.

You're basically trying to analyze and predict things like that.

And yet, for some reason, well, we know that obviously people become more skeptical of polling in general.

But businesses, industries all use analytics to determine what they want to do in the future based on that sort of thing.

When we come back, we can talk a little bit more about that.

The other thing is too, I wonder, when we look at this, and turnout being what it is, because I know when I go in, when I watched people look at issue one back in August, there's a table when you walk in the polling place and all of that language there, page after, I mean, issue one was a pretty large document as well.

And some people do come in and look at that.

I'm always impressed by the fact that people want to come in and look at what they're gonna be voting on.

So we can see how that goes.

Back in just a moment.

We're talking about issue one and a little bit about issue two as well 'cause it's sort of flying below the radar in a lot of ways.

Back in just a moment here on "The Journal."

Thank you for staying with us on "The Journal."

Our guests are Dr. David Jackson, Karen Kasler, the host of the State of Ohio, Dr. Nicole Kalaf-Hughes, and Dr. Melissa K. Miller.

Nicole, we've talked about turnout, we've talked about ballot language, we've talked about a number of things.

Is there anything else about issue one that we should touch on before we maybe move on to something else?

- Well, yeah, I think the case of ballot issues and initiatives broadly, what the political science literature tells us is that if people are uncertain about an issue, if they're not sure what an issue is, or what it would do, and what it would change, the default tends to be no, because no is the status quo for almost every ballot issue.

And so, if you're uncertain about the cost, like, the actual literal fiscal cost of an issue, people tend to just vote no on those because they see the status quo as safe.

Issue one is a little bit different.

And so, I think that one is gonna track a little bit differently than what we would typically see, particularly because what had been the status quo for 50 years changed a year ago.

And so, I think it's a little bit different than a lot of other initiatives.

And even something like issue two, which would, as Karen mentioned, what isn't a constitutional amendment, but a statute, we know what the status quo of non-legal recreational use looks like.

- [Steve] Right.

- And so, I think that gives us a little bit of a different perspective.

I think the other thing to think about too with turnout is, particularly in our area, we have very contentious, for lack of a better word, school board races going on right now.

- Right.

- And school levy votes.

And so we're going to get a lot of people turning out in odd year elections who may not care as much about statewide issues but are very passionate about local education issues.

And those people are also going to weigh in on issues one and two in a situation where without those education issues on the ballot, they may not have been likely to turn out.

- Yeah, yeah and that's a new point.

'Cause as we know, yeah, levies are on the ballot bond issue in the ballot all over the place.

People that, well, schools that haven't been on the ballot in maybe 20 years are now back.

And so, for some people, this is the first time they may be voting on a school levy.

So it drives it.

Now Melissa, talk a little about, yeah, I know you want to, you will weigh in on this.

Yeah.

- Well, what I was gonna say is it's just sort of a mix of school board elections, school levies, and two sort of powerhouse social issues- - Yeah.

- That are on the ballot in an odd year where there aren't federal elections.

We're not voting in statewide offices.

And I think the big question we do keep coming back to what Karen was saying about turnout.

Yes, the indication is it's higher.

But for instance, one of my key questions has always been will issue two, to legalize recreational marijuana, will that drive a big turnout among young people?

Young people don't tend to turn out to vote in high number in any election, which I always apologize to my students 'cause I know the students who end up in my class, typically are the ones who are voting.

- Are engaged, yeah.

- But that 18 to 24 year old group is not a high turnout group.

But would issue two and or issue one draw them.

And that's where, again, this is so tied together.

This is where it gets so hard for the pollsters at places like Ohio Northern and at places like Baldwin Wallace to try to craft a sample that's going to reflect who actually ends up turning out.

And who actually ends up turning out, we won't know until after the election is over.

- Until that day, until the evening of November 7th.

Karen, earlier on we talked about issue two in terms of we're looking at issue one, it's a constitutional amendment.

The legislature can't mess with that too much after the fact, if at all.

Issue two though is a different story.

This could pass, but then the legislature will write some additional language around that.

Is that correct?

- Yeah and issue two, just to make sure that we're all on the same page with that, is a initiated statute, which means a group went to the legislature and asked them to pass it.

When they refused, they went out and got signatures and put it on this fall's ballot.

It would legalize, regulate and tax marijuana for recreational use in Ohio, a 10% tax that would go to social welfare programs and other things that are spelled out in the legislation.

And it's pretty clear that this is something that's opposed by a lot of Republican lawmakers, though not all.

There have been republicans who've actually proposed legislation to legalize recreational marijuana and have voted in support of it.

But Senate President Matt Huffman in particular has said that there's a very good chance that they will look at this if it passes and make some changes, which they can do, because it is a statute, not an amendment.

- Right and that's probably a little somewhat confusing for people too because they assume voting on issue one a certain way and voting on issue two, that they both will have the same impact.

But the reality is issue two is subject to some redesign or modifications by the legislature.

When you look at those sort of things, and turnout obviously is gonna be difficult to predict, 'cause I know that the August election was obviously a strange one, but it had an issue on there that drove people there more than normally would be the case for an August election.

This one is, as each of you have mentioned, has other elements besides just issue one and issue two that could affect it.

So that does make it difficult, David, for pollsters to figure out who they're gonna poll and based on what they believe is gonna be the registered voter, likely voter groups.

But as we said, we don't really know until after they start counting the ballots.

And then we analyze who actually turned out, who were likely voters, and who actually were voters that turned out to vote.

- Well, yeah, I mean, so we've got this sort of natural experiment happening right now too, where there's one issue that's receiving a tremendous amount of money, a tremendous amount of attention, a tremendous amount of campaign spending, campaign advertising, yard signs, and another that is not receiving the same amount of attention, and spending, and campaigning.

And so, what this will do is allow us after the fact to look and say, huh, here are are two issues that were on the ballot and we can look at what was done the same and what was done differently about them.

And then look at the results and say, we can isolate the effects of things like campaign spending, things like television advertising, things like yard signs, things like the door knocking that's been going on.

Because it's all happening pretty much on one of the issues.

- Right.

- And not on the other one.

This also goes to the question of why the election in August was so important, which is that created a particular coalition that said if it's done through a statute, the legislature has the right to modify it, alter it, get rid of it.

I mean, it has no permanency whatsoever.

And so, the groups who had been endorsing the no vote on the previous issue one said that people have turned to constitutional amendments because they don't trust the legislature- - Legislature.

- And they don't believe that the legislature will respect what they believe to be the will of the people.

So it has to be a constitutional amendment to prevent the legislature from being able to do the kinds of things they can do when it's a mere statute change.

- The statute right.

Yeah and we've got just a couple of minutes.

And it's interesting that you bring that up, because one of the things, if you read news stories out of Michigan, is obviously, they have benefited from the fact that they have recreational marijuana.

They've been reaping the tax benefits of it, and as some people would say.

Once this changes, once Ohioans are, as we know, most likely are crossing the state line to purchase marijuana, that will change their economic model up there with regard to recreational marijuana.

Because if it's legal in Ohio to the same degree or close, that will affect them from an economic point of view.

So it's, because we've talked before in other shows about Michigan and Ohio, their differences, their similarities.

Here's one that is an economic thing that crosses the state line going both ways.

So it'll be kind of interesting.

And I know the last show we did, no one wants to make predictions, because we know.

So does anybody want to just say, as it stands right now, where we think this will end up on November 7th at 11 o'clock?

- If the yes sides get more of their people show up, it'll pass.

(all laughing) - [Steve] Okay.

- And if the no side gets more of their people to show up, it'll fail.

- That sounds like a safe prediction, that's pretty good.

Anybody else want to, can you do any better than that?

I don't know.

- I second.

- Yeah.

- Second that.

- I'll go with that one.

- Yeah and Karen, any indication real quickly, should issue two pass, has there been rumblings about what the legislature might do in terms of modifying or adjusting the recreational marijuana statute?

- Yeah, there's a particular provision in it that would allow for, the whole idea is to help people who have been negatively impacted by marijuana related laws.

And there's a concern about some of the money going to those people to set up cannabis related businesses.

And so, while lawmakers are saying it differently, they're talking about how these are convicted drug dealers.

That's not necessarily the case in many of these circumstances, but that's something that they have pointed out.

- Okay, great.

Well, we'll have to leave it there now.

We're gonna get together after the election again and see how close we were on turnout and all of those things that we've talked about.

We appreciate you coming in and talking about issue one, and issue two, and the things behind it.

The things that have driven these things to the ballot and the way they're going to appear on the ballot, obviously, 'cause there's more than just meets the eye basically there.

You can watch us every Thursday night at 8:00 PM on WBGU-PBS.

You can check us out at WBGU.org.

We'll see you again next time on "The Journal."

Good night and good luck.

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