Ohio Ballot Issue 1 Megathread (August 8)

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Early voting has started on Ohio's Issue 1 in August. This ballot measure would increase the threshold of passage for future ballot measures from 50%+1 to 60%, and would also increase the number of counties from which signature collection is required from 44 to 88. For the purposes of this poll, I've also included options to predict the vote share that you expect the winning side to receive.

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Just a question: Does the measure to increase the threshold have a threshold?  In other words, can this pass with just 50%+1?

Currently, the threshold for passing ballot measures is 50%+1. So that’s the requirement for this particular ballot measure, but if this one passes, the threshold for future ballot measures would go up to 60%.

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I'm watching the election still and "Yes" is starting to gain votes, Fulton, Williams, Ashtabula, and a bunch of other southern Ohio counties flipped to Yes.

At least "No" was already declared the winner.

Well, as mentioned earlier, the typical reporting pattern in recent OH statewide elections is for Democrats to start out with an initial lead (as early/absentee votes are reported first) and then for Republicans to chip away at the Democratic lead and (usually) overtake Democrats into the lead at some point. Thus, on Election Night 2024, we should expect Joe Biden and Sherrod Brown to be ahead in the time period immediately after polls close, but we still need to see the results from key counties (in this case, Butler, Cuyahoga, Delaware, Franklin, Hamilton, Lake, Lorain, Lucas, Mahoning, Stark, Summit, and Warren) in order to get a better sense of which party/candidate is on track to win.

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Flipping pro-choice Republicans into regular Democratic voters should be the biggest focus for the rest of this decade. Imagine what we could accomplish if we got even half of them to come over.

The issue is trying to convince them. There are Republican voters who don't agree with abortion rights being completely taken away, but will never vote Democrats for partisan reasons.

That's right. Remember that voters in Kentucky voted down an anti-abortion ballot measure in 2022 on the same day they reelected their incumbent (anti-abortion) Republican Senator Rand Paul.

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Could John Kasich's opposition (opposition from a REPUBLICAN) for this initiative have influenced some Republicans to vote "NO"?

Perhaps, but I don't think the number of people who voted No specifically because of Kasich was large enough to be decisive (remember that Kasich's endorsement of Biden in 2020 wasn't anywhere near enough to deliver OH into Biden's column).

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I really don't understand Republican obsession with abortion laws. Especially since this caused that much backlash. Is that really the hill they want to die upon?

They're pandering to their base, which wants a 100% ban. (And the real reason for this is not ideological; it's to exert control over women, especially poorer ones - wealthier women can afford to travel to places where abortion is legal, whereas this is less true for poorer women.)