- Ohio voters appear primed to pass an abortion rights constitutional amendment.
- According to a new poll, 58% of likely Ohio voters would vote in favor of the amendment.
- Supporters of the proposed amendment will find out shortly if they gathered enough signatures to make the ballot.
Ohio voters appear ready to back a potential abortion rights constitutional amendment by large margins, underlying how the post-Roe reaction continues to animate voters across the country.
According to a USA Today/Suffolk University poll, 58% of voters support a state constitutional amendment that would protect the right to an abortion up to the point of viability. Thirty-two percent of voters oppose the measure. Just like in other states, the measure is showing support across the political spectrum. The poll found that one-third of GOP voters would back the amendment.
Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose must declare by tomorrow whether the abortion rights measure has enough signatures to qualify for the November ballot. Right now, most abortions in Ohio are legal up until 22 weeks of pregnancy, but that is only because a county judge paused an abortion ban. Republican Gov. Mike DeWine had signed a ban that would effectively outlaw most abortions after six weeks of pregnancy.
There’s another potential wrinkle looming. The Republican-controlled legislature pushed for a special election next month that would raise the current threshold for constitutional amendments from a simple majority to 60%, underlining how Republicans and anti-abortion advocates have turned to other methods as a way to try to stop the wave of abortion rights ballot measures.
But the effort to raise the threshold might backfire too. The poll found that 57% of voters oppose raising the threshold that would apply to all measures going forward while only 26% of voters support it. Abortion-related amendments may have dominated recent headlines, but raising the threshold would affect much more than just that. Any future proposed amendment to the state constitution would also have to reach the new threshold.
According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, almost every state provides for some type of ballot question either through citizen-proposed initiatives of new laws, popular referendums on just passed laws, a constitutional amendment, or a combination of those methods. Some initiatives are then directly decided based on the vote, while others involve the state legislature. The Mississippi Supreme Court effectively voided its initiative process in 2021.
As Insider previously reported, abortion rights measures could prove to deliver major political benefits to Democrats. During the 2022 midterms, abortion rights groups passed every state measure they sought and also beat back efforts to restrict abortion access. Their success underlined how the Supreme Court's decision to gut Roe v. Wade triggered a massive uproar nationwide.
The USA Today/Suffolk University poll of 500 likely Ohio voters was conducted from July 9 to 12. Voters were reached via traditional landlines and by cell phone. The overall margin of error is +/- 4.4 percentage points.