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Maude Porter Wright dot com and from the Ohio Education Association representing 124,000 members who work to inspire their students to think creatively and experience the joy of learning online at OHEA.org The constitutional change that would make it harder to pass future amendments, especially for citizens and groups, goes down in a special election.

A review of the vote and a preview of what's next.

This weekend, the state of Ohio.

Welcome to the state of ohio.

I'm karen kasler.

Ohio voters turned out in surprisingly large numbers for the August eight statewide special election on issue one.

About 38 and a half percent of Ohio's registered voters cast ballots and they voted it down by 14 points.

The issue lost 57% to 43%.

Issue one is the proposed change to the Constitution that would have required future amendments to pass by 60%.

It also would have required citizens and groups to get signatures from all 88 counties to make the ballot, doubling the current requirement of half the state and would have eliminated the ten day window to gather more signatures.

If not enough of those submitted were valid.

While supporters said the proposal would keep special interests from buying their way into Ohio's founding document, critics said the changes would make it so only special interests with money to get those signatures and run a 60% campaign could get to the ballot and win.

Here's a recap of Tuesday's vote from State House correspondent Joe Ingles.

Tonight is a major victory for democracy in Ohio.

The majority still rules in Ohio.

Opponents of Issue one, many of whom haven't scored wins in Ohio for years, cheered as the results came in.

Unofficial final results show issue one passed in 66 counties, all of them rural.

But it failed in the other 22, the state's most populated counties, the suburban counties surrounding them.

All of the counties on the shoreline of Lake Erie and the Pennsylvania border and two rural counties, Athens, a longtime Democratic stronghold and green, the home county of issue.

One supporter, Governor Mike DeWine.

14 of those counties had been red last fall, voting for both DeWine and now Senator J.D.

Vance.

Voters saw ISSUE one for what it was a deceptive power grab designed to silence our voices and diminish our voting power.

We defeated ISSUE one because an enormous coalition that spans ideological divides came together to defend democracy.

Ohio Democratic Party Chair Liz Walters agreed that voters saw through the plan.

Any time politicians tried to take the voice of the people away from them, this is what happens.

And so I can't say enough about how proud I am about the voters of Ohio for making their voice heard tonight and making sure that we are telling out of touch corrupt politicians in the state House that we will not go back and we will not give up our power.

It was quite a different the site set up for the supporters of issue one.

Republican lawmakers had put the issue before voters in this August special election, though they had passed a law to eliminate most August special elections last year to have it in place before a vote on an abortion rights amendment in November.

But Republican Senate President Matt Huffman said after the results that they didn't have time to pull a win together.

I think one thing that hurt us in the election was the length of time of the campaign, typically in an issue campaign or a candidate campaign, for that matter.

There's planning a year or two out.

And then when the campaign when you actually know you're going on the ballot, the if you have some time, then to plan a campaign, raise the money and execute the campaign.

That's not usually the case for amendments proposed by lawmakers.

Last June, legislators sent two issues to the November ballot.

One, changing rules on bail and one making it clear non-citizens cannot vote in Ohio.

They both passed the 2018 congressional redistricting amendment that Huffman helped draft was sent to the ballot in February of that year, and it passed in May.

Huffman also blamed some fellow members of his party for the loss.

There were some key folks on our side of the aisle, Republicans especially, who actively opposed this, some pretty vociferously.

And then there were there were key Republicans who simply didn't support it, who should have been doing that also.

He called out former governors John Kasich and Bob Taft and former auditor and Attorney General Betty Montgomery.

They were among the four living ex-governors and five former AGs who opposed issue one.

Huffman said this isn't the end of the effort to make it harder to pass constitutional amendments.

I'm kind of astonished that we got within ten points, if that's what it ends up being.

So, you know, it's an important question, and what was the time that we had to work with and all of that?

I think you'll probably see the question coming back again and maybe at another time.

But he also added the fight over abortion won't end this fall.

If it passes in November, there's going to be another abortion amendment.

Go on after that to repeal that.

Mike Garner Dacus, president of Ohio Right to Life, had pushed hard for issue one, but his attention now turns to the abortion Rights Amendment, which is much like the one passed in Michigan last year and garnered, Dacus thinks Republicans who worked and voted against issue one will return this fall.

They'll come home like when you have weed and you have abortion on the ballot in November, we're going to solidify our conservative base here in Ohio and vote no on both of them this November.

That ballot will probably also feature a law to legalize marijuana, though it hasn't been certified yet.

In addition to his duties at Ohio, Right to Life and on the state Medical board, Garnet Dacus lobbies for three marijuana related clients.

On the Democratic side, Walters said she knows while polls show most Ohioans favor some abortion rights, there will be a fight ahead.

We know that Ohioans are going to stand up for women, for families, for the right of families to make their health care decisions in private without the interference of government.

The battle over the amendment on reproductive rights and abortion access is expected to be one of the most expensive campaigns in Ohio's history and could break a money record.

Joe Ingles, Statehouse News Bureau.

I talked with two longtime figures in Ohio politics about what the rejection of Issue one means going forward.

First up, David Pepper, who chair of the Ohio Democratic Party from 2015 to 2020 and has written and spoken on political power in state houses.

You've been working with the no side.

You've been speaking out about you want a lot on Twitter, in interviews and national interviews and that sort of thing.

But you've also been in Ohio politics for a long time.

So were you surprised at the final result?

In the end, I wasn't.

I mean, obviously, if you've been a Democrat and you've been around a lot of elections, you'd take nothing for granted.

I think the yes side, obviously, the last week we saw an uptick in their activity that made it a little closer.

My guess is if they hadn't done that, they would actually lost by by worse.

But over the course of the month, this incredible coalition of of, you know, Republicans, independents, Democrats, all basically saying this is democracy itself, this is too much.

We may disagree on other things, but this is too much.

And at some point, you have a coalition like that build up, and it's pretty hard to stop like they tried at the end to scare the voters to show up and hope for, I'm sure, a low turnout.

But that's the broader coalition.

And you saw you see it in a in a green county voting no in a geography counting voting no in a Butler County 5050.

Like they just there were too many people who just saw this for what it was.

And that included a lot of Republicans, a lot of independents, some sporadic voters that don't show up at every election.

And I just think it was too much.

And their last push maybe saved them losing by ironically, more than 6040.

But it clearly was enough.

And on Election Day itself, I because I've been through this and I can see we saw good voting in our large counties, but in 18 it was a huge rural surge that elected Mike DeWine.

I started driving to rural areas and spot checking those polls and you could just see that whatever the.

Yes I was doing had not inspired people show up and you could sense in small and small towns and rural areas, people who were literally at the polls for the no side, convincing people to vote no in a very low, you know, anemic turnout.

They just they were trying to scare their voters to think this was something that it wasn't and it clearly didn't work.

And the no side saw it for what it was and clearly were motivated to show up almost as if it was a midterm election.

How does this potentially help Democrats with some of their problems with that for finding quality candidates, building up a bench for future races, and obviously raising the money to compete against well-funded Republicans?

I mean, I think it gives momentum to that.

But I do still think and this is this this I've started something in Ohio to help do this.

There's not really an infrastructure right now, and we're trying to build it that says actually, we do value running everywhere.

Traditionally, Democrats only focus on swing states.

And that's what whether or not Ohio is determined as a swing state for federal purposes is everything.

And my philosophy is that's not good enough anymore.

We when we don't run in tons of places, well, we don't even talk to millions of Ohioans about the state house because we're not running in their districts.

We are allowing all this kind of stuff like issue one to happen.

And the people who do it don't even have an election the next November.

That's how you lose and that's why they keep doing it.

So but I do think this is a wake up call that this state house is out of touch with Ohio.

They made an end run to destroy our democracy.

They were stopped.

But anyone who voted for that, Brian Stewart or whoever else and I met Brian Stewart's opponent the other day.

I'm thrilled.

We've got this incredible guy running against him.

Everywhere we go.

There should be people knocking on doors and passing out fliers explaining what they just tried to do.

And you're not going to win everywhere, of course.

But that's the beginning of accountability for people who, frankly have lived in the statehouse, the most corrupt in the country.

They're in the most corrupt state outside the country.

Yet still they feel no accountability because too often we're either not running against them or we're not helping people run against them.

So they just keep doing what they're doing.

I mean, the speaker, as you know better than me, just got locked up for 20 years.

And instead of reform thing, they go and do something to make themselves even less accountable that is in place that is desperately telling the rest of us they need a dose of accountability and they need people knocking on doors, explaining what they're doing to try and push them in a different direction.

Of course, you're referring to former House Speaker Larry Householder, right along with former Ohio Republican Party chair Matt Burgess.

Just this map that we got out of this results, especially when you look at results in the Youngstown area and near Toledo, where Democrats have been losing ground in statewide elections in the past few years, give Democrats a road map to try to reach voters who have maybe gone toward Republican candidates, especially as Sherrod Brown's reelection is coming up next year.

It gives a very nice road map, again, for not just a Democratic map.

And obviously, that's one that's something Sherrod Brown can worry about.

But a democracy map, an accountability map of this state house is way carried away map.

And it wasn't just you know, it was every county along Lake Erie, in every county along Lake Erie agrees or something.

That's it, folks.

If you're running for president in the future, free advice to anyone does it.

If you would every county oligarchy or you are the prize the United States.

So we have that whole belt.

We have large Republican counties.

Delaware, boom, Big win.

Butler 5050.

You have GREENE County.

I was there the day before the election Tuesday after they told me they were doing Hawken Waves and everyone was saying, We're with you.

So it wasn't even just the old democratic areas.

And that was great to see them come back.

And by the way, those are the areas that elected Jennifer Brunner.

If you look back in 2020 when she won the Supreme Court race, similar map.

This map has some similarities to share its map in 18, by the way.

But you start to see these these quite conservative counties also saying, well, we may be Republican, but we're not for politicians stealing power from the people.

That's a map that might also lend itself to ending gerrymandering if that comes forward.

Again, the same, you know, the same people saying, hey, we don't agree with with politicians rigging democracy, which was what this was.

That might be a map that foretells how you pass future efforts to get rid of the gerrymandering entirely.

So, yeah, all that is is good.

But it's it wasn't just the old Democratic counties coming back.

It was much lower turnout in red counties, meaning they weren't impressed by the arguments.

It was high turnout in large, higher educated counties in suburbs, which again meant that Warren County was closer than it ever should be.

If you're a Republican, Butler County tied and really strong turnouts in the suburbs of Hamilton, Franklin, Cuyahoga.

Put that together and yeah, that's a winning coalition for not just candidates but my hope is we got to get rid of gerrymandering this state.

That's a winning map for a future effort to get rid of gerrymandering and get these politicians away from the Jerry Manning process that they so abused in the last couple of years.

Turning to November, we've got the Abortion Rights Amendment, but also potentially a law that would legalize marijuana as well.

We saw a preview of how the opposition is going to be pushing back on the abortion rights amendment by raising the question about what point at which abortion should be legal, but also messaging.

It's off topic about drag queens and things like that and disinformation, for instance, about gender transition, surgery for minors.

It's going to be a lot of money involved in this as well.

How do you get prepared for the onslaught of what's going to happen in November?

And how do you get voters prepared for that who are probably exhausted by all?

Yeah, I mean, I think the voters on the know side are exhausted.

And maybe today you could hear my voice.

Have a little tired, but they're energized and they're going to keep right on going.

And everyone who signed that petition knows that that statehouse tried to make their petition meaningless.

I think you're going to see energy that builds in the same coalition virtually keep building.

I also spoke with Mark Weaver, a Republican consultant who's represented conservative clients and causes in Ohio and nationwide.

You've been in Ohio politics for a long time.

You know, the state has been pretty red for a long time, well over a decade.

There were two polls that were out about issue one, one showing it was winning it by just a little.

There were internal polls that suggested it would win.

Were you surprised with what you saw with the results?

Not particularly.

I've advised many statewide ballot issue campaigns, and I've looked at a lot of polls.

Often when voters you confuse, they tend to vote no.

And if there's any issue they were going to be confused about, it was this one.

Some people said it was about abortion, but the commercials were about parents rights.

And then the text of the amendment didn't mention either of them.

It wouldn't be surprising that a lot of people said, I don't know what it's about, but I know if I vote no, it's a safer way to go.

So for a lot of people, I think that was confusion on the ballot issue.

One, opponents have called this a vote against an attack on democracy and a rejection of a power grab by Republican state lawmakers.

Why do you think voters rejected issue one?

Was it just because they were confused or could it have been those other things, too?

Only in politics can with a straight face.

You say that allowing voters to vote is a vote is somehow a sack against democracy.

But that's okay.

We're in politics.

People say funny things.

Listen, every time you have a ballot issue, different people vote for different reasons.

For some people, that small slice of people for whom abortion, pro or con, is the number one issue, they obviously voted about abortion for others, they want to have a lower standard for about by changing the Constitution and by amendment.

And you have others probably were annoyed with the August election.

So I think the no voters probably were in several different camps.

The rural counties were the counties, but the suburban counties were not.

Many of those, such as Delaware, Lake Georgia, Medina, have been won by Republicans for a while.

It won by one vote in Butler County, which is a pretty red county as well.

Was there a different message that rural counties and rural voters got?

And was there too much concentration on rural counties and suburban counties were ignored?

I would suspect this was more about turnout in suburban counties than the rural county.

The no side had tens of millions of dollars, most of which will never be reported or seen.

There's money to be made by the abortion industry.

There's profits to be made.

And so I think tens of millions of dollars was spent to turn out voters in the suburbs where they live closer to one another.

It's easier to turn them out to vote no.

It's harder to do that in a rural area where people are more spread out.

Democrats are seeing this as a win and perhaps a crack in the Republican hold over Ohio.

I want to ask you, as a Republican strategist, do you see it that way?

Has the landscape, the political landscape in Ohio changed from?

Probably not.

The Democrats will have a better case to make if they can ever get a Democrat elected statewide in the state.

That is, that they love to talk about gerrymandering.

All of the officeholders statewide are Republican.

Sherrod Brown will lose next year.

They have a few folks left on the Supreme Court who will likely lose this next time.

We are now in a red state.

When I first moved to Ohio was a purple state.

It's now a red state.

The thing this issue won, I think it's more of an outlier and less of a partizan trend.

You mentioned that, Senator Sherrod Brown.

I want to ask you specifically about that.

Does this map of the results that we got after this vote, especially looking at the Youngstown area, at the Toledo area, areas where Democrats have lost ground over the last couple of years, does this map give Democrats a road map to get Sherrod Brown reelected and to get statewide Democrats elected?

Probably not.

Any of the three Republicans running against Sherrod Brown can beat him as though, as Ohio has grown more conservative, Sherrod Brown has grown more liberal.

He votes with Bernie Sanders.

He doesn't represent Ohio.

The Mahoning Valley will vote against Sherrod Brown.

That used to be where he would get his votes.

That won't happen.

He'll get votes in the blue counties, in the big cities, and he will be the former senator of Ohio.

Will Democrats still be able to use this map to try to reach out to those voters in counties where they used to have a stronghold but haven't anymore?

Perhaps.

But again, as I mentioned earlier, if she won was sort of a multiple reasons for voting no.

Some were abortion, some were about the Constitution, some were confused.

So the notion that that's a good proxy for Democrat voters, I just don't think that's true.

You mentioned a little bit about the ads.

There were millions of dollars worth of ads on both sides.

There were also some mailers, a lot of focus by the yes side on the upcoming amendment on abortion rights, even though issue one didn't have anything to do with abortion itself tied into that message or messages about parental rights and gender transition surgery for minors, which doesn't happen in Ohio unless there's parental involvement and permission, and if it even does also drag queens were brought into this.

It appears people didn't buy those messages or were concerned and confused by those messages.

Will we see similar messaging going forward into the fall?

It was a bit of a bank shot in an election about how to amend the Constitution to talk about those things, but it will be front and center in November because the text of the amendment will be scrutinized by voters.

And it doesn't just say that it gives a right to an abortion.

Everybody should read the text.

It says reproductive decisions, including but not limited to abortions.

And that's a job.

I'm a lawyer.

That's a giant loophole, including but not limited to what else does that include?

And one single Planned Parenthood doctor with one stroke of the pen, can allow abortion all the way through the ninth month or for a baby just because it's Down syndrome or because it's a girl.

Those will be focused on in November.

I don't think there was quite as much focus on that in August.

There are reports that this vote and others like it have sparked soul searching in the pro-life anti-abortion movement, with some activists suggesting there's room for compromise on abortion laws and restrictions.

Others saying that there is no compromise acceptable from what you know about the movement in Ohio.

Is that true?

Is there this identity crisis going on?

And if there is or isn't?

Could there be a change in Ohio's abortion laws that could make a difference in how Ohioans might vote this fall on the amendment?

I don't normally thank people for questions, but you've been interviewing me for decades, years.

This is why I like coming on your show.

That's a smart question.

I talk to reporters all the time.

I get bloated, biased questions.

That's a fair question and I'll give you a fair answer.

The pro-life community is kind of split.

Some people think get everything you can get the most restrictions, save as many babies as possible.

Others say, let's work with it.

What's real and what will be upheld by the courts?

So I think it's a fair question to say whither the pro-life movement and what's next?

And I know a lot of good people will be putting their thoughts and their hearts into that decision.

Abortion rights have been upheld in other red states Arkansas, Kansas, Kentucky, Montana, South Dakota.

Is abortion still a key issue and a winning issue for Republicans?

I think both parties have a challenge on the abortion question.

Obviously, many Republicans are so pro-life, they'd like to have almost no abortions except for maybe protecting the life of the mother.

And many Democrats want that to be unfettered through the ninth month.

Most voters are somewhere in between.

Most voters would like to see us field abortion as possible, but they would like access of up to maybe 15 weeks.

That's the polling data we see.

Most people come around that 15 weeks.

The ballot issue in November would allow, with the signature of one doctor abortion through the ninth month.

Each party plays to its base, but each party is not paying close attention to the center of opinion on abortion.

A final note The Ohio Supreme Court will hear arguments on the six week abortion ban on September 27th, two weeks before early voting begins on October 11th.

But a decision is not expected until after the November 7th election.

And that is it for this week.

My colleagues at the Statehouse News Bureau of Ohio Public Radio and Television, thanks for watching.

Please check out our Web site at state News dot org and find us online by searching State of Ohio show.

And please join us again next time for the state of Ohio.

Support for the statewide broadcast of the state of Ohio comes from medical mutual, providing more than 1.4 million Ohioans peace of mind with a selection of health insurance plans online at med mutual dot com slash Ohio by the law offices of Porter Wright Morris and Arthur LLP.

Now with eight locations across the country, Porter Wright is a legal partner with a new perspective to the business community.

More at Porter Wright dot com and from the Ohio Education Association representing 124,000 members who work to inspire their students to think creatively and experience the joy of learning online at OHEA.org