[NOISE] Ohioans are shaming Republican state lawmakers
after they basically decided to call for
a special election in August in order to make it even more difficult for
any constitutional changes to be made to their state constitution.
And of course,
they made this decision just ahead of an effort to pass protections for
reproductive rights and abortion in the state through a ballot initiative.
Now Ohio will unfortunately spend tens of millions of dollars in taxpayer
money in order to do this.
And in order to really understand this story, we do need to kind of go
back in time a little bit at the beginning of where this idea came from,
what the real objective is here.
And at the time back in November,
the Columbus Dispatch reported that Secretary of State Frank LaRose and
State Representative Brian Stewart are spearheading an effort to
require 60% of voters to enact citizen-led amendments,
instead of a simple majority of 50% plus one vote.
So, basically they're implementing what leads to legislation dying in the Senate,
that legislative filibuster that requires 60 senators to vote in favor of something,
or else it just doesn't pass.
Well, it's the same thinking that would impact how these
amendments would get voted on.
So, in this case, the people of Ohio want
a constitutional amendment that protects abortion.
A majority of people living in that state, according to several polls,
want to protect abortion.
And so the Republican lawmakers know that they need to do something to stop it and
make it even more difficult, basically, increase the threshold from
a simple majority to 60% of the vote in order to make this happen.
Now, Stewart in particular has been pretty transparent about what the objective is.
You have some Republican lawmakers claiming, no,
this isn't meant to hinder efforts or
stop efforts to protect abortion rights, but Brian Stewart is pretty clear.
So, Representative Brian Stewart is lobbying his colleagues still to pass
HJR6, the constitutional amendment supermajority measure,
either now or when the next session begins in January.
He sent a memo to all House Republicans today,
it led off tying the issue to abortion.
In fact, this individual also shares a quick excerpt from that letter where
the lawmaker writes, quote, after decades of work to make Ohio a pro-life state,
the left intends to write abortion on demand into Ohio's Constitution.
If they succeed, all the work accomplished by multiple Republican majorities
will be undone, and we will return to 19K+ babies aborted each year.
Now, keep in mind that the left he's referring to happens to be nearly,
nearly 60% of voters in Ohio, but that's the point.
This special election is going to take place in August,
it's gonna cost $20 million to do it.
And if it passes, if this initiative passes during that August
special election, that would mean that should the voters be
able to get a ballot initiative on the ballot for November.
They would need 60% of the vote in order for
that constitutional amendment protecting abortion to pass.
So, I'm curious what you think about this, Sharon,
because it seems like every time there is a successful effort or
a seemingly successful effort by the left, by Democrats, for instance.
To pass ballot initiatives in order to protect certain rights that are being
stripped away from Republicans, they just decide to change the rules and
basically rig the system to their advantage.
>> Yeah, I mean, that's what we're doing here, you don't like this democracy?
I got another one for you, what's behind door number three,
can I pick present number two, please?
It's more ridiculousness, but I just wonder it's like this piecemeal thing
that's scaling back, and when we see a sea of people enter the halls there and demand
justice, I just wonder how long it's gonna take for people to say, you know what?
Not only am I going to storm, I'm not leaving this time, that's really what it's
going to take because it's that ridiculous, it's that ridiculous.
And you had the one representative who's a co-sponsor of the bill,
who's taking the selfie and doing the propaganda, it's just on and on and on.
And if this keeps up, why bother calling it a democracy?
Because it's not one, it's really not.
>> Yeah, well, I wanna pick up on what Sharon said, this issue that we're talking
about here is not about abortion, it's about democracy.
Because this ballot referendum says,
from now on you need 60% on all of these referendums.
Because the Republicans in Ohio have realized the only reason why they're in
power is because they gerrymander the hell out of those districts and
they're actually not at all popular.
If we actually had a functioning democracy, they would lose.
In this particular case, Ohio is like most of the country, over 70% pro-choice.
When they ask the specific question of, do you want to legally protect abortion and
write it into the Constitution of Ohio, guess what that polls at?
It polls that 59%, that's why they picked the number 60%, right?
And by the way, if they were going to be principled and they're like, no, this
isn't about abortion or the fact that we hate democracy, we just think that every
vote should require 60%, okay, then why shouldn't this ballot measure require 60%?
Why don't you put that as a threshold for this ballot measure and
be principled about it?
No, no, no, no, no, we wanna just sneak it in,
make sure we kill democracy and then all of our good work getting
this Republican minority to be in charge will be wiped away.
If we have actual democracy, this would kill in the middle of the night,
it'd be perfect, guys, they're pretty much admitting it.
And I know they're in super gerrymander districts,
but if you show up like that all over the place and actually vote against them,
you might be able to vote them out, you really might.
Because remember this one last thing about that, and then I let Anna come back
in here with more facts, etc., is that in order for them to have so
many seats in all of these red states when they do the gerrymandering.
They stuff almost all the Democratic voters into districts that are like 80,
90% Democratic, and then they get all the Republican districts to be around 55%,
60%, 52%, 51%, by definition, just as a matter of mere math, right?
So, that makes their districts way more vulnerable than the Democratic districts.
So, it's not at all inconceivable to vote amount,
especially when about 60% of the people in Ohio say, we don't like what you're doing,
we're definitely against you.
>> So, just to go back to the poll that Jank had cited,
it's important to know the details of that poll.
So, it was done by Baldwin Wallace University,
they did this poll back in 2022 and it showed that 59% of registered
Ohio voters support a ballot amendment to make abortion access a fundamental right,
so it would be part of their state constitution.
And again, they plan on doing this special election that would ask
voters if they favor a supermajority in order to pass any ballot initiative.
And the problem is, of course, as with all ballot measures, as you know,
Jank, we talk about this time to time, it's really hard to get accurate
news coverage and information about what's in those measures.
So, a lot of people are led astray and they end up either voting for
or against things that they actually don't support.
And then there's also the problem of low voter turnout when it comes to these
special elections.
In fact, in some of the counties in Ohio,
historically speaking, they're lucky if they draw in 7% of the vote.
So, this is very much done intentionally to get the most
zealous anti-abortion people to the polls during the special
election to basically vote in favor of this supermajority.
And should it pass by November, once that ballot measure is left up to
the voters of Ohio, they would need 60% of voters to approve that
constitutional amendment for their state in order to protect abortion.
And it just gives you a sense of how much our politicians,
whether we're talking about local politicians, state politicians or
federal politicians, are willing to work against the will of the people,
are willing to go against what their own voters want.
Because if working against their voters means that they might lose political
power, they'll just find a way to change the rules.
And I got to give them credit, they're super strategic, I wish we had some
Democrats who were as strategic as these Republicans in Ohio happen to be.
>> Yeah, so I want to add one thought to what Anna saying because it's
exactly right.
Guys, think about it, why are they doing a special election and wasting $20 million?
That's a lot for a state, why don't they just wait for the next election?
The next election is not that far away,
then they could put it as a referendum in that one and save all the money.
Now they're doing the special election exactly because they know there will be
low voter turnout, in special elections, there's always low voter turnout.
And that is a giant advantage for Republicans,
because unfortunately, Republican voters always show up.
And when you have low voter turnout, that really hurts Democrats normally.
And so that's why they're purposely spending the money to make sure
that as little of the 60% of Ohio's who want it actually show up.
And as much of their really loud minority as possible show up to the voting booth,
and just win when a tiny percentage of them come to vote.
And hijack the state because they know for a fact that they are the minority,
and the majority of people of Ohio do not want this.
>> And they're gonna spend $20 million in taxpayer money in order to do this special
election, so it's just insult to injury to save the waste.