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From The Rachel Maddow Show

Issue 1 watch party in Columbus, Ohio
From left, Sandra Feihrer, Lauren Angler, Shannon Gallagher and Tina Gasbarra Larsen celebrate with other supporters at an Issue 1 watch party in Columbus, Ohio, on Tuesday. Sue Ogrocki / AP file

Ohio voters reject Republican tactics, back abortion rights

As one observer put it, “When you do everything you can to rig an election and still lose, you have a problem.”

By Steve Benen

When it came to defeating a proposed state constitutional amendment on abortion rights, Ohio Republicans tried everything they could think of to win.

They tried to force proponents to get 60% of the vote. They tried purging registered Ohioans from the voter rolls. They added needlessly provocative “unborn child” phrasing to the literal wording of the initiative as it appeared on the ballot. GOP leaders in the state even lied to the public about the implications of the measure.

The party and its allies thought it’d be enough, especially in Ohio, which has become a reliably “red” state. They thought wrong. NBC News reported that the state’s voters have added the right to access abortion care to the state’s constitution.

The passage of the Issue 1 ballot measure inserts language in the state constitution guaranteeing every person in Ohio the right “to one’s own reproductive medical treatment, including but not limited to abortion,” and barring the state from “burdening, penalizing or prohibiting” those rights — though it specifies that abortion will remain prohibited after the point a doctor judges a fetus would most likely survive birth, with exceptions to protect the woman’s life or health.

It wasn’t especially close: With nearly all of the votes counted, proponents of reproductive rights appear to have prevailed by more than 13 points.

I’m reminded of a line The Washington Post’s E.J. Dionne wrote in a column published over the summer: “When you do everything you can to rig an election and still lose, you have a problem.”

NBC News’ report added that the success of Issue 1 “will effectively counteract the state’s ‘heartbeat bill,’ which took effect immediately after the Dobbs decision and banned most abortions — with exceptions for the health of the pregnant woman and ectopic pregnancies — but remains temporarily blocked by a state judge.”

A Washington Post analysis added that Ohio has become “the seventh state to vote to protect access to abortion in a statewide initiative since Roe v. Wade was overturned by the Supreme Court last year. Four of those initiatives were on the ballot in states that Joe Biden lost in the 2020 election; in all seven, the abortion-access position outperformed Biden’s support in the state.”

Since the demise of Roe, how many statewide votes on abortion have Republicans won? Literally none.

Steve Benen

Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MSNBC political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "The Impostors: How Republicans Quit Governing and Seized American Politics."