In a win for abortion-rights supporters, Ohio voters reject Issue 1

Groups opposing Issue 1 spent nearly $15.9 million on ads, almost all of it coming from a single group — One Person One Vote — according to the ad tracking firm AdImpact. Groups urging a “yes” vote spent a combined $10.7 million on ads.

The measure on the ballot Tuesday didn’t explicitly mention abortion, but reproductive rights groups maintained for months that it was designed to make it more difficult for voters to pass their own proposed amendment in November. 

Those groups repeatedly accused Republicans in the state of hypocrisy over their decision to schedule the August election at all.

In January, Ohio Republicans enacted a law that effectively scrubbed August special elections from the state’s calendar, with several GOP legislators calling them expensive, low-turnout endeavors that weren’t worth the trouble.

But months later, as reproductive rights groups moved closer to placing their own proposed constitutional amendment on the November ballot, state Republicans reversed themselves and scheduled the August election.

Then, in June, local news outlets published a video of Republican Secretary of State Frank LaRose — a candidate for the Senate — acknowledging that the purpose of the summertime ballot measure was “100% about keeping a radical pro-abortion amendment out of our constitution.”

LaRose’s involvement helped further propel the Issue 1 contest to the center of the Ohio Senate race.

Pressed during an interview with NBC News over whether he would regret his approach if his side were to lose Tuesday, LaRose said, “No, it’s better to fight and lose than never fight at all when it’s a worthwhile cause.”

But he also blamed groups opposing Issue 1, arguing they’d run “a very dishonest ad” that he said took his comments out of context.

Meanwhile, groups opposing the measure also frequently emphasized how passing it Tuesday would have marked a major change to the constitutional amendment process: State law has required only a simple majority to pass constitutional amendments since 1912. Several former Republican officeholders, including GOP ex-governors, publicly opposed the measure.

The proposed 60% threshold would almost certainly have complicated the prospects to pass the proposed November amendment.

Public polling has found that about 59% of Ohio voters support including abortion rights in the state constitution — just shy of the newly proposed higher threshold.

Instead, Ohio becomes the latest red state — following ones like Kentucky and Kansas — where abortion-rights advocates have won a ballot measure battle in the year since the Supreme Court’s Dobbs ruling.