An earlier such attempt in Ohio was a special election, held in August, to raise the threshold to pass ballot initiatives on constitutional amendments from a simple majority to 60 percent. The state’s lawmakers, who have been introducing extreme abortion restrictions for years, wanted to change the rules in the run-up to the vote on the initiative, throwing the chessboard into the air while still setting pieces. The August date was selected, at enormous taxpayer expense, to circumvent the November election, with our secretary of state declaring the August vote to be “100 percent” about abortion. If passed, though, the August initiative would have affected all future ballot measures, wherever they may have fallen on the political spectrum. Voter initiatives, it turns out, are possibly even more popular than abortion rights, and the August amendment was defeated by a 14 percentage point margin. Anti-abortion activists filed two lawsuits against the ballot measure to stop the process; both failed.
The November ballot initiative now inevitable, the anti-abortion strategy has shifted toward distraction and disinformation. Opponents of the reproductive freedom amendment have disingenuously asserted that it isn’t needed because abortion is already legal in the state until 22 weeks of pregnancy, but that’s only because the six-week abortion ban, which does not include exceptions for rape, incest or lethal fetal anomalies, is under injunction, awaiting a ruling from our State Supreme Court, which could arrive at any time.
Voters have, additionally, not been immune to political talking points raising the fantastical specter of abortions at the end of a full-term pregnancy. As a physician practicing high-risk obstetrics, I can assure Ohioans that such procedures are not part of standard medical care in the United States and never will be.
But none of these contortions are as insidious as the alteration of what voters will see on the ballot. There is no practical or legal reason for the language of the amendment not to appear, as written, on the ballot.
However, state law allows our ballot board to substitute a summary, as long the initiative is reflected fairly — or at least that’s how it’s supposed to work. This is sensible for amendments excessively long or thick with legalese, making an unadulterated replication on paper ballots impractical. Issue 1, by contrast, consists of only 205 words (including numeration), in plain English. The 193-word summary written by the ballot board rescues voters from reading a total of 12 words.