It’s August, so most Ohioans are on holiday in body or spirit. And yet three million voters took part in a special election on the state’s constitution – nearly double the turnout in last year’s primaries for governor, Senate and House races and the highest Ohio has seen for a primary election since 2016. Officially, voters were being asked whether to make it harder to amend the state constitution. Unofficially this was a proxy battle over abortion – an attempt by Republican officials to make it more difficult to add an amendment protecting abortion rights in a separate ballot measure scheduled for November. With most votes counted, 57 per cent of voters rejected the measure, known as Issue 1, in what Mary Ziegler, a law professor at the University of California, called the biggest victory for abortion rights in the US since Roe v Wade was overturned last year. Abortion’s ability to reshape elections looks like a problem for Republicans in 2024.
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