The New Yorker:

Opponents of the measure capitalized on fears of a Republican power grab.

By Peter Slevin 

Republicans in the Ohio legislature are accustomed to acting with impunity. Thanks to a carefully crafted, veto-proof majority in both chambers that might make Elbridge Gerry blush, they worry little about the popular will in a state that is more evenly divided than the legislature’s agenda would suggest. “We can kind of do what we want,” Matt Huffman, the State Senate president, said last year. But on Tuesday, Ohio’s voters demonstrated that they can’t do so always—at least, not when they’re trying to change the rules in order to give themselves more power.

In a chain of events triggered by the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision, which overturned Roe v. Wade last year, the Ohio legislature hurriedly tried to raise the threshold for changing the state constitution by popular vote from a simple majority—a standard that has been in force since 1912—to sixty per cent. Their aim was to get ahead of a ballot initiative in November that would amend the constitution to insure that “every individual has a right to make and carry out one’s own reproductive decisions.” Voters in neighboring Michigan approved comparable language last year, with nearly fifty-seven per cent of the vote. A recent opinion poll in Ohio suggested a similar level of support, which worried anti-abortion G.O.P. legislators, who were counting on the summer doldrums to depress turnout.

Go to link