Voters stunned the anti-democracy politicians in Columbus, who scheduled a low-profile August election asking them to give up their power and hand over absolute authority to those politicians. They were hoping for a small turnout; instead voters turned out in droves to tell them HELL NO on Issue 1, the only item on this costly August ballot.
The reason that election was scheduled for August instead of waiting until November was, of course, the success of the petition drive to put reproductive rights on the November ballot. To say that Ohio’s Republican majority is committed to abolishing reproductive rights is an understatement, and now we’re seeing just how far they’ll go.
Led, of course, by Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose, the state’s top election official who laughably calls himself an “unbiased referee,” the November issue has also been dubbed Issue 1, only now people in favor of reproductive rights, who were asked to vote No in August, are being asked to vote yes in November. But that was expected (If you see a leftover “Vote NO” sign from the last election in your area, please take it down.)
What wasn’t expected was LaRose’s almost unprecedented dishonesty and bias in presenting to the Ohio Ballot Board ballot language that, rather than clearly describing the issue as it was on the petition people signed, substituted persuasion points for the campaign against it, which will present voters with misleading and inaccurate language.
Instead of listing the five items the bill protects (abortion, contraception, fertility treatment, miscarriage care and the right to continue a pregnancy), it collapses them into “abortion” and “but not limited to.” It doesn’t enumerate them. And four times it replaces the technical medical term “fetus” with the vague, inaccurate and arguable term “unborn child,” a creation of the anti-choice movement. He can’t argue that the petition language needed to be condensed, since the new language he wrote is wordier. Of course the ballot board divided along party lines and with a Republican majority, it approved LaRose’s subterfuge.
To be clear, voters who vote YES in November, as we expect and urge a majority of Ohioan to do, will still be voting on what was in the petition that got the issue on the ballot. Just because LaRose and his cohorts omit it, voting YES will still protect the right to contraception, to miscarriage care, to fertility treatments and to continuing a pregnancy if so desired — all of which are under jeopardy from the current regime in Columbus.
Meanwhile, Ohioans for Reproductive Rights has sued the Ohio Ballot Board for creating this “politicized, deceptive language” and taken their case to the Ohio Supreme Court which, alas, is composed of a majority of openly anti-choice judges.Whether they set that aside to remedy an obvious wrong is an open question.