We legalized marijuana too!
I don’t smoke weed and I don’t have a uterus, but I voted to protect both and I’m glad we won!
What? You voted to support someone ELSE’S freedom?
Blasphemy.
Hey everybody! This guy doesn’t have a uterus!
Could be a lady, sometimes those hysters gotta be ectomied.
I like the use of “guy” as unisex. Like the word “dude”
He’s a dude, she’s a dude, they’re all dudes
I use “guys” plural to refer to any group of people, including all women/girl groups. I know saying “that guy” still means “that man/boy” but I’m hoping people will adopt it as completely unisex
A guy can dream (I’m a cis woman btw)
welcome to goodburger
Home of the goodburger
Fuck yeah dude!
i do it too. casual forums are for casual language. i’m a woman and a retired copy editor. words and their usage were my career, and i was trained by one of the top copy editors in the country. you’re on the side of the angels. 🍀🌸😜
hijacking this post to ask some passing linguist, why is it that any of the invented neopronouns that are socially acceptable and potentially gender neutral, like guy, dude, bro (maybe not that one), how come they’re all male-coded? is that cause it makes it go down easier, or do they just become associated with the boys over time?
I’m not a linguist, but I can answer partially. Women have their own: chick, dame, gurl come to mind. While dame is antiquated, I still occasionally hear “chick”, and “gurl” is used somewhat like “bro” in a close-friends-one-of-us kind of way
I suspect that, depending on how things progress, words will continue to become more gender neutral. Language is supposed to be fluid and the meaning of words rightly changes over time to reflect the society we live in
And if I had to guess as to why we have so many that are gendered, it would be for men/boys (of the past) to be able to identify whether the person in question is dateable and for women/girls (of the past) to be able to identify if the person in question could be a threat
Times are changing, though, and hopefully we can continue to go into a more inclusive/neutral direction. Back when I was a teen alot of this was unheard of. I didn’t even know trans people existed until my 20’s. It took me a while to wrap my head around it, but I’ve mostly caught up and try to use the appropriate language where applicable
i have a guess! it’s because they originate with guys saying them to other guys. just the way they feel and type of situations i see them in first. (also, don’t forget that every bit of language is invented, not just whatever is recent)
Could be a lady, sometimes those hysters gotta be ectomied.
Hysters arent so bad, but if you’re going to ectomy them, I’d recommend a fleet of Yales or Toyotas. Id avoid Crowns unless you like cleaning up hydrualic fluid.
But do they have a vagina? I’ll need photos for reference.
Creeeeeeepy
Oh like you never look at pictures of vaginas.
Asking for pictures, and being given them, are two entirely different things. >.>
I don’t smoke weed and I don’t have a uterus
Same and I’m personally anti-abortion, but that’s my personal stance and I have no right to try to force that on others.
I’ve always said that the best way to reduce abortion would be to treat the reasons behind why women get abortions.
Suppose some women get abortions as a form of birth control (as the right likes to claim). You might be able to reduce this with better sex education and better access to birth control. If abortion happens due to rape or incest, figure out programs to reduce the incidence of these. (I’ll admit that I’m not knowledgeable enough to come up with specific proposals, but I’m sure people who know more than I do could come up with something.)
Nothing is going to be 100% effective, though. Abortion would need to be available for the cases that slip through. This would reduce how many abortions are performed by supporting women more instead of by banning them and putting women’s lives in danger.
Issue 1 covers so much more than just Abortion.
From the ballot:
- Establish in the Constitution of the State of Ohio an individual right to one’s own reproductive medical treatment, including but not limited to abortion.
- Create legal protections for any person or entity that assists a person with receiving reproductive medical treatment, including but not limited to abortion.
- Prohibit the State from directly or indirectly burdening, penalizing, or prohibiting abortion before an unborn child is determined to be viable, unless the State demonstrates that it is using the least restrictive means.
- Grant a pregnant woman’s treating physician the authority to determine, on a case-by-case basis, whether an unborn child is viable.
- Only allow the State to prohibit an abortion after an unborn child is determined by a pregnant woman’s treating physician to be viable and only if the physician does not consider the abortion necessary to protect the pregnant woman’s life or health.
- Always allow an unborn child to be aborted at any stage of pregnancy, regardless of viability if, in the treating physician’s determination, the abortion is necessary to protect the pregnant woman’s life or health.
This is a Freedom of Speech type amendment that centers around a person’s reproductive rights. In that this amendment prohibits the Ohio State government from passing any law that restricts a person’s reproductive rights except in special cases under strict scrutiny. So this goes way pass just abortion. Additionally, it grants doctors benefit of the doubt protections that would have strict scrutiny bars for the State to overcome, an incredibly high evidentiary bar for the State to overcome.
To just say this protects abortion is really missing the forest for the tree. Yeah, it protects abortion but additionally it protects everything related to reproductive rights (contraception, IVF, etc) and sets a massive barrier for the State to later meddle. This is a massive win for not those seeking abortion but for everyone who cheers reproductive protection and Government non-intervention in such matters.
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It doesn’t say reproductive rights are free speech, it says they are as important as free speech.
It would be hard for the current Supreme Court to actually rule the protection of abortion rights since they leave it up to the states. Interestingly, Alito basically wrote in a slant that was very pro-state’s rights to ban abortions specifically but it also does heavily imply to the point of being just shy of explicitly allowing the opposite but it must be what they meant or it doesn’t make actual sense.
It would take a lot of logical gymnastics to essentially unwind and rewrite an opinion otherwise that doesn’t go against their own majority opinion. Saying that, they did perform some Olympian gymnastics on not only Roe v. Wade but also Planned Parenthood v. Casey or in some instances, outright just say that they were plainly wrong.
They would essentially have to all but support a fundamentalist christo-fascist government (probably under the guise of what is in the best interest of the people, even against their own will) over even the Constitution itself and specifically the 10th Amendment and have a serious risk of impeachment unless he would opine that that it is the Congress’ business to supersede that (Article VI), because that would also run counter to his written opinion of Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization (that it is the state’s prerogative to regulate abortion and not the federal government’s), unless it was specific that he meant it all narrowed specifically to the 14 Amendment and further would run counter to his own weaker federal government stance.
It would be far more likely for the SC to find that a state and its people have the right to regulate abortion as they see fit if they were even to decide to hear such a case.
TLDR; it’d be extremely risky and difficult to essentially give the state’s the right to regulate abortion but take away unless those laws are only to ban them.
Alito: “Were we not fucking clear enough the first time?”
Thanks for the breakdown. I had no idea what was at stake.
I’m sure conservatives will be absolutely thrilled to see the power of Big Government so strongly limited!
Right?
I could actually cry right now, what a fucking relief
It’s also by a pretty decent margin so far:
With 59% reporting:
55.9% For
44.1% Against
Edit:
56.6% For
43.4% against
I don’t live in Ohio, but I’m right on the state border. So many “vote no on issue 1” signs around here. I was worried that it would fail. Glad to see otherwise.
It’s been polling consistently strong. Those signs you were seeing on the border are not representative of where the majority of Ohioans live.
What people need to take away from this is that the majority very often want things that are denied to them by a minority of voters who have been given disproportionate control.
What were seeing is direct democracy in action. No gerrymandered districts, just the people voting for what they fuck they want, and majority rules.
If we had more of that (not full direct democracy 24/7 but more than we have now) you’d see a lot more popular things actually get done.
There’s danger there, populism is a double edged sword, but the opposite extreme is what we have now: a majority of people consistently and perpetually having their will undermined by a minority entirely because of their zip code, while the Republicans the minority gives power to continue to make this even worse.
When you actually look at national polling, the majority of people want a lot of things that have no hope of ever making it through Congress any time in the near future because of obstruction from red states that get disproportionate power entirely because of geography. This is untenable.
Those last 2 paragraphs are the sanest thing I’m likely to read all day.
My polling place is right next to a sizeable Catholic church, and the amount of “vote no on issue 1” signs I saw in front of it was almost comical
Drop off a donation box of wire coathangers.
New hobby unlocked
Did some of those signs “mysteriously” break?
That’s a hell of a margin!
I wonder if they’ll even bother claiming voter fraud with that kind of margin. But you know they are just dying to do it. “We didn’t lose, the other team cheated”.
Issue 2, legalizing recreational marijuana for people over 21, is also projected to pass.
Psychedelics need to be next. That step will take a bit, but it’ll be awesome if that happens.
Colorado did good in setting the example, I believe. There wasn’t a huge push to monetize it and the most common psychedelics were made fully legal to produce, use and give away.
In some ways, I don’t really see mushrooms easily fitting into the dispensary model that we have here already. It’s just a different kind of drug, s’all.
Here in California my local smoke shop sells psilocybin infused chocolates under the table, but everyone knows about it and they’re all branded and clean looking
It’s legit a dream come true to pop by on the way home Friday for a trip on the weekend, and the idea that it’s illegal disgusts me
I read up on those, and (generally speaking, YMMV) the amount of active ingredient is ineffectively negligible, if there’s any detectable at all. Not what I want to spend my money on.
A couple of the brands I’d agree with you on as I ate an entire bar of one type and felt nada, and another brand regularly felt much weaker.
However, as someone who grows their own as well, there are brands that aren’t fucking around and will have you tripping hard on just a few pieces, and it’s definitely psilocybin.
Smoke shop owner actively gets reviews from those of us who buy and has been filtering out the duds over time, it’s been one of the most wholesome illegal drug experiences in my life tbh
I was right to qualify my statement, then! I can see where if you had a shop owner who was on their game, that would be a fantastic place to buy from. The vape store that sells Delta 9 and happens to have some rando shroom products, I’ll pass on that.
Smart man
I’ll take my home grown gourmet shrooms over any chocolate bar that is sold under the counter.
While the common phrase is “a cube is a cube”, I am finding that different mushrooms can have very distinct trip characteristics. (My Stormtroopers give me a really “fluffy” high and everything feels like a pillow, for example. It’s weird, and I compare it to being inside a vagina. It’s… a unique experience.)
Grinding up rando shrooms and shoveling that into a candy bar doesn’t seem that appealing after having felt the nuances of different strains.
If it’s anything like the weed edibles market, steer clear unless you know who’s making it.
Otherwise you’re just going to be ripped off.
In some ways, I don’t really see mushrooms easily fitting into the dispensary model that we have here already.
In Massachusetts the dispensaries are giving out mushroom chocolates as “gifts” since they are decriminalized but not yet legal to “sell”
So at least in some states they are already being integrated into the dispensary market ahead of legalization.
From what I’ve seen you really need to eat the whole bar to get a legit trip but at least they are available to the general public. I suspect that given a little time (and actual legalization) there will be a wider variety of stronger products available.
They are likely playing it safe to avoid any mishaps that could damage their PR or their grey market psilocybin business
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I think psychedelics are interesting because their non-addictive nature doesn’t cause competition for other drug companies.
There simply isn’t a way to make egregious profits with them. Mushrooms are cheap and easy to grow. LSD, while being exceptionally hard to make, is effective in such small dosages it ends up being significantly cheaper than mushrooms.
I guess the biggest fear would be psychedelics causing people to ‘wake up’ to what they’ve been ignorant of. There’s also the “I don’t do it and so neither should anyone else crowd,” but I don’t think they’re plentiful in Colorado.
And this is after they tried very very hard to rig the election to put obstacles in the way of people voting for the measure.
Actually getting abortion bans in place is the “dog that caught the car” moment for Republicans. The world is so complicated and people have so little attention to spare, that the GOP can get away with blaming “the economy” or “jobs” or “crime” on the Democrats, and for the most part, people who support them will go with it, even though they spend most of their time being in power making the problems worse and stealing money for themselves and their friends.
Abortion is dead simple. If people know someone who’s suffering in a terrifying way, and it’s because of something the Republicans have been banging their fists on the table about how bad they want to do it for the last fifty years, it becomes a lot harder to shift the blame.
Edit: I backwards
You mean the part where they held a special election in August after writing rules to BAN special elections in August (unless they involved budget crises)? The supermajority 60% of the Aug Issue 1 would’ve tanked this if they had their way (or kept it from hitting the ballot with the 80~ county petition requirement).
THEN they had the gall to change the language on today’s Issue 1 text.
I’m so proud right now, big win for a state that’s had a lot of fails lately (i.e. literal train wrecks that got swept under the rug).
Also: how well do you all think the inclusion of Issue 2 here REALLY brought out the voters? I heard a lot of pot smokers got out of bed early today for it - had to add some extra push for Issue 1.
Why would Democrats want to defeat the measure?
They are talking about an earlier, even more out of cycle ohio constitutional amendment that would have made it much, much harder to pass any amendments. They force marched it into its own election as soon as the abortion and weed amendments hit the necessary thresholds to be on the upcoming November ballot. It would have gone into affect immediately. It was a very transparent attempt to derail abortion rights by the state GOP.
It had its own special election, after they banned the exact type of election a year earlier. It shifted the burden of “yes” from 50% +1 vote to 60%, and most nefariously, shifted the requirments to get an amendment on the ballot form "X voters in half of all districts (44 of 88) to “X voters in all 88 districts,” i.e even the tiny 1k ones that lean 90% Republican. They tried to basically give veto power over all future constitutional amendments to tiny, very, very conservative counties.
Voters rejected it 57% to 43%, which ironically would not have passed it under its own requirements, but would have under the current requirements if the numbers were inverted. If they had a legit bone in their body, they would have imposed a one time “60%” threshold for it as that’s what they were forcing all future votes to, but we all know their bulllshit.
This happened in early August 2023, for anyone trying to follow along. The last few months have been a hell of a ride in Ohio.
I got it backwards as regards this election for some reason. Fixed, thank you.
As a Michigander this is physically painful to say… but you done good Ohio.
We did. And it pains me to say too. But we did.
Michigan won’t be flying as high anymore on Ohioan’s dollars for marijuana, either!
For at least a couple more years we will. It took us a bit to set up our system. Probably will take you a couple as well. Takes time to build a distribution network too, since you can’t really import it from growers in other states, so for a while ours will probably be cheaper.
But it’s still a huge win and it’s better for us all to have more states legalize it. And in the meantime we can just both suck Indiana dry of marijuana money.
Well you still have a legislature that has to put the laws into place and setup the system. I bet they do everything they can to slow it down.
As a Hoosier, this is mentally and physically painful to say but… please help us!
Good job, Ohio. Despite our strange relationship I’ll call this one a win for everyone.
Thank you, genuinely! I know there’s a lot of bad blood but Michigan is stunning and my last few visits have been spectacular (yes even before any cannabis).
I hope you all can find the beauty in Ohio too. I recommend Kelly’s Island for the glacial grooves. Also the Cleveland Metroparks; there’s a good reason it was once called the Forest City.
When Kansas and then Ohio thoroughly shoot holes in your platform and you’re the dominant party in those places, maybe you should start re-thinking your platform.
No, it’s the voters who are wrong
“You don’t want that. You think you do, but you don’t.”
Greene’s takeaway was literally "we’re losing because we’re not extreme enough on abortion.’
I guess that means Republicans will start proposing that any woman who even thinks of getting an abortion should be thrown in prison and any woman who suffers a miscarriage should be tried for murder.
Then, they’ll wonder why they are losing even worse!
There are already states that have been trying to criminalize miscarriages unless they can be “proven” to not be the result of an abortion.
Guilty until proven innocent
I dare them to push for a federal abortion ban. Make every Republican vote on it. Let’s get it on record so voters know exactly who to replace.
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It’s ok, Ohio Republicans have already signaled that they intend to put it on the ballot again to reverse the will of the people.
The majority of conservatives in America are actually pro choice, they’re just against unregulated abortion, which is a reasonable stance. The anti abortion crowd who want to ban it regardless of exceptions make up like 11% of the country.
The majority of conservatives in America are actually pro choice, they’re just against unregulated abortion, which is a reasonable stance.
Are you suggesting that abortion was unregulated?
No, it’s just that conservatives want stronger restrictions compared to what we had before, but they don’t want complete bans either
Stronger restrictions how? What restrictions do you think weren’t in place under Roe?
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I wouldn’t say “antiquated” so much as “broken.”
The concept of polling is perfectly reasonable and sound. But today, it’s just physically hard to do. You’ve got to reach a representational sample, but if you’re under 50, you’re probably not answering unknown numbers calling your cellphone.
This results in oversampling of populations you can actually reach, such as older Americans with landlines, and then trying to weight the results with other information sources, like demographics data.
The more weighting you have to do, the more opportunities there are for problems to creep in.
If we could solve the sampling problem, polling would be easier and more reliable.
I live in a swing state, in a purple county, which has recently flipped back to blue. Last week polls were saying it was likely to go red.
I get multiple texts and phone calls from pollsters and have never answered any of them. I doubt anyone in my age group ot demographic are doing differently.
I truly believe that, like the economy, polling on paper is so divorced from the reality on the ground that it is useless.
Same here. I never answer political calls, and my phone automatically flags the texts as spam and hides them.
If they did the polling with a quick tap-to-answer UI and there were reassurances that they won’t sell your info so you get even more solicitations, that might work better for the present day. This whole business with calling people is so 1950s.
I truly believe that, like the economy, polling on paper is so divorced from the reality on the ground that it is useless.
Oh, definitely. All I’m saying is that the concept of polling is sound, but the current situation “on the ground” makes polling damn near impossible, and that probably won’t be a permanent state of affairs. Pollsters have run into new technology that broke their methodology before, and figured out ways around it.
But yeah, right now? Polls are pretty goddamn unreliable.
as a concept, sure, polls can show things. i think they are a bad idea tho. they just give azzholes time to shape their words so they can win. anyone in office who actually is trying to do their job properly is going to use their knowledge and desire to do good work. what if polls show that to be “losing?” how does it help society in anyway? i don’t see benefit, only harm (or nothing).
plus pollsters clog up phones and so on. just more marketers, people blabbing and asking questions for a paycheck. seriously, i see zip good about polls, esp political polls.
polling is a scoursge. it doesn’t benefit society. notice how everything went well with broken polls. voting itself is the only poll that matters.
To get a poll representative of a population, you need an SRS – simple random sample. The people you poll are chosen completely at random from an unbiased list.
That’s incredibly difficult to do when the person chosen can decline. And as far as getting an unbiased list, good luck. Landlines are lol. Texting doesn’t work either.
I think when everyone had landlines it was probably less biased. But with the state of technology today and the country becoming more diverse? It might be falling apart. They need a new methodology.
Oh yay! Those races don’t get enough national attention, it’s a relief to see them get fucked.
There are some issues that will both sides will end up losing regardless of how hard they double down on them.
Republicans will end up losing debates like on abortion, climate change, and universal healthcare
Democrats will end up losing debates like on crime, immigration, and trans issues
Polls have consistently shown shifts in the political system over the past few years, and a lot of those shifts have to do with how the general population feels about these issues.
Anyone else notice how the “why do you want to kill babies” crowd has fallen mostly silent on these posts? It’s almost like they never had any real horse in this race, and now that most of them aren’t being paid to stir people up they’ve got nothing to say.
The real ones probably just got tired of seeing /\ 2 \/ 101 underneath their posts and slunk back underneath their bridge
And they probably know that their opinions are unpopular and are too scared to post unless one of the paid rabble rousers post first to loan them the courage to do so.
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2 up votes and 101 down votes.
This is a time when emoji would have made it clearer:
⬆️2 ⬇️101
Emoji? Unicode suffices.
↑ 2 ↓ 101
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Well there are a couple of reasons for this. The first is that the completely extreme anti abortion crowd who wants to ban abortion without exception are very small, they comprise 11% of the population. So they’re just no popular. The majority of conservatives aren’t actually against abortions, they’re just against loosely regulated abortions, so they don’t really oppose states like Kansas or Ohio voting the way they do. Also we’re on Lemmy which is a far left echo chamber in it’s entirety. This platform is littered with Marxists and American progressives, and there isn’t really much of anybody else. It makes sense that wouldn’t show up here.
FUCK YEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA! This is some great fucking news for everyone with more then a single braincell.
The right wing fought SO HARD to prevent his from happening.
But it’s not like the loss is going to do anything to change their beliefs or actions.
few of them have real beliefs, it’s mostly emotion and personal gain of some kind.
Fuck yeah! You love to see it!! I was a poll worker today and the turnout was incredible. I obviously don’t know who voted for what but it was great to see.
Thank you for putting in such a long day.
Get scared repubs. Maybe there is a pendulum.
They could just drop abortion and focus on attacking trans and gay rights
funny enough anti trans crusades are just as big of a voter loser as anti choice crusades are.
I very much hope this is true
It was true in KY. The hardest anti-trans candidate got shit on in the GOP primaries, then Cameron lost too. We still have issues with state representatives because gerrymandering but at least governor went well.
It’s a fringe of the fringe issue. They can blast it from the rooftops, news, air whatever. It’s the first time in a long time where I’ve felt it’s just pure hate speech. Not hiding it in an omnibus bill or spending cut out any other tactic. Anti trans/gay/etc rhetoric is just pure hate and mostly off putting to the general population.
The good news there is when issues are presented and left to actually stand on their own and not propped up by being attached to healthcare or education, they crumble so quickly. Line item veto should be a thing and this is clearly an example of why.
I believe Beshear recently vetoed an anti trans law too, didn’t he? His election is a bellwether for LGBT rights, and it certainly seems like the majority are pro LGBT.
He did. It passed because we have a simple majority veto override, but the sentiment still counts.
things are definitely trending away from all the hard right nonsense. most people aren’t that stupid, believe it or not. it’s a small, loud minority. always was, a,ways will be. most of the “wins” far right gets are thru cheating, closing off other choices, and deception.
Can someone who isn’t rabidly pro life win a Republican primary at this point? I don’t think so. And until they can win, the party is going to be incapable of moderating its position on abortion.
Every time they go for new leadership, they pick more and more extreme people. They can’t win without the bigots at this point, and so they let bigots set the policies.
If Republicans were a healthy political party, they’d drop abortion and the LGBTQ stuff. They’d focus on “we need to be fiscally responsible” and “protect people’s rights.” They might get more traction with this.
But they aren’t a healthy political party. Instead of changing to suit the voters. They’ll demand that the voters change to suit the Republican party.
They’d focus on “we need to be fiscally responsible” and “protect people’s rights.” They might get more traction with this.
Hm, a return to their normal lies rather their more extreme lies? I think you’re right that there’s no real way to turn back from the extremist path for them. I’m cautiously optimistic that trump’s election signaled the beginning of the end of the party, especially as more of their voting base continues to die off.
That won’t happen, things will remain 50/50 for awhile. The Republicans are losing on the abortion issue and there’s nothing they can do to stop it. But at the same time, similar things are happening to Democrats on other issues. Outside of some marginal gains here and there, the duopoly will remain.
I am from another country. I have to say that in your movies and shows they have always painted Ohio as being a backwards state. I guess that this goes to show that everything changes. Now Ohio seems to be more civilized than a lot of other states that were the “modern” standard. I love change, it’s so refreshing to see new generations at last making a change statewide.
Ohio as being a backwards state.
The People that LIVE in Ohio are not nearly as backwards as the gerrymandered elections elect representatives from.
Clearly, this result is absolute proof that the gerrymandering of Ohio is ABSOLUTELY NOT properly representing the WILL of actual Ohio Voters .
Well, nearly half are. You still need a shit load of people to vote Republican, just simply declaring “it’s gerrymandered” isn’t enough. They still need the votes, and they get a lot in Ohio.
The government of Ohio is backwards, every Ohioan ive met has been fucking great.
Ohio native here. You can’t have met many Ohioans.
Michigan native here. Give us back Toledo you fucks.
Okay, politics aside this comment is hilarious
Sez the state who stole the UP from Wisconsin!
As an Ohioan who has been stranded in Toledo, you can have it. The place looks and acts more like Detroit than Columbus anyways
Cause I haven’t im from California. But those I meet while on road trips or playing online have been decently chill if not mildly insane.
There’s probably some selection bias going on there. I used to work on the Michigan side of the Toledo border. It’s not like night and day when you cross the border, but there are a lot of backwards assholes there. I thought I was going to move there but nah, I just commuted 200 miles a day to live far away.
The cool ones leave.
Is that why Ohio has more astronauts per capita?
Yep, The Flight Stuff.
are you floyd from 30 rock?
Not quite. It’s just that abortion is such a powerful issue that it activates the left to actually get out and vote. Any time it has been on a ballot, it wins, and democrats tend to win other positions on that same ballot.
It’s also not a coincidence that recreational marijuana passed with nearly identical support. I think Issue 2 helped bring out another demographic that was already likely to support abortion access.
We’ll likely see similar tactics in 2024. Especially as Biden is looking more and more like a weak candidate and that the DNC should have ran a proper primary…
Ohio has more complex political environment than a lot of states. It sits on the border of a number of major geographic features, and host a relatively large, diverse population. It’s swung hard right over the past decade as the Republicans embraced populism, but has always been more left-leaning than many of its neighbors. This state is a political and cultural circus, but I wouldn’t have it any other way (well, a bit bluer would be nice).
It also features both some well populated cities (which trend left), but also a large rural population (which trends right). Between that and the gerrymandering, makes sense it’s often a bit “confused”.
You may be confusing Ohio with Utah.
This is wonderful! It’s a great day when the voice of justice for the people can cancel out unrepresentative government!
This is also a great example of why federal referendums would be a game changer. Thanks to gerrymandering an enormous incumbent advantage and an even bigger incumbent PARTY advantage, most politicians in Washington tend to be a decade or two behind their constituents on most issues, if not in a completely different world. Asking voters directly could shake that up.
Sadly, it would probably require a constitutional amendment which is already de facto impossible BEFORE you take into account that most people in Congress would be against it, but a guy can dream!
State referendums have become the best way to institute liberal policies, and Republicans are terrified of them. For good reason, a commanding majority keeps supporting abortion and legal weed. Here in Missouri, we had the Obamacare Medicaid expansion and legal weed because they were state referendums. Republicans tried to ignore the former, but the state supreme court said they had to do it.
Republicans never gave a shit about states rights and it shows. It was just cover for letting Republicans do whatever they want. And now that abortion actually is a state issue, they’ve fucked around and are finding out.
