Above: Ohioans celebrate the passage of a state constitutional amendment guaranteeing the right to abortion on Election Day 2023.
On Tuesday evening, Ohioans resoundingly passed a pair of ballot measures to provide constitutional protection for abortion and legalize recreational marijuana use. Like Texas, Ohio is a GOP “trifecta” state with Republicans in full control of state government, and the Buckeye State backed Trump in 2020 by an even wider margin than did Lone Star denizens. Despite Ohio’s apparent redness, ordinary citizens gathered hundreds of thousands of signatures to put Tuesday’s measures on the ballot. Voters blew off the views of their state GOP leaders—even clobbering an August effort by lawmakers to raise the bar for passing the abortion measure—and secured for themselves a pair of popular rights.
“They like to say we’re conservative—they like to count us out—but what we know about Ohioans is that you can’t count us out,” Elizabeth Chasteen Day, organizing director with the American Civil Liberties Union of Ohio, told the Ohio Capital Journal in celebration of the results. A mother at an election watch party added: “I have a daughter and I really want to make sure that she has more rights than we do, not less rights.”
