Voters Continue To Choose Abortion Rights When They’re Not Thwarted By Inflated Thresholds
Politics tamfitronics
Dobbs continues to reverberate through our politics as voters in 10 states choose whether to protect abortion access.
Missouri became the first state to overturn a near-total abortion ban Tuesday night (while also voting in staunch anti-abortion Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO)).
Voters in New York, Maryland and Colorado voted resoundingly to enshrine the right in their state constitutions.
Voters in New York and Maryland voted resoundingly to enshrine the right in their state constitutions.
And while a similar measure in Florida was defeated Tuesday, a majority voted for it. Well over half of voters in Florida — 57 percent with about 94 percent of votes tallied — supported the constitutional amendment, but Republican legislators had previously raised the threshold for citizen-initiated amendments to 60 percent, not a simple majority. A similar threshold would have thwarted abortion measures in other states, including Ohio, which approved its measure in 2023 by right around the same percent of the vote that Florida delivered on Tuesday.
Florida’s measure, known as Amendment 4, was also up against Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R), who used taxpayer dollars and his agencies to run a ubiquitous disinformation campaign, claiming that the amendment would harm women. He also threatened television stations that ran ads favoring the amendment and used the Office of Election Crimes and Security to run a “voter fraud” investigation into petition signatures. Police officers actually showed up at people’s doors to ask for verification.
“These are petitions that were already approved, that were done properly,” Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL) told reporters at the time. “This police intimidation tactic is clearly intended to chill the democratic process.”
A swath of red and purple states have abortion protections on the ballot this cycle, including Arizona, Missouri, Montana, Nevada and South Dakota. Nebraska has dueling initiatives; one would protect the procedure, and one would prohibit it after the first trimester with narrow exceptions.
This post will be updated as additional returns come in.
