Tangle - Ohio's special election results.

Episode Date: August 9, 2023

On Tuesday, Ohio voters rejected a ballot measure, dubbed Issue 1, that would have made it harder to amend the state constitution. Official results show the measure has been defeated by a 57% to 43% vote. Plus, a reader question about legacy admissions.You can read today's podcast here, today’s “Under the Radar” story here, and today’s “Have A Nice Day” story here. An interesting stance from Scott Alexander on legacy admissions here.Today’s clickables: Quick Hits (1:42), Today’s Story (03:26), Left’’s Take (06:40), Right’s Take (11:04), Isaac’s Take (15:33), Your Questions Answered (19:28), Under the Radar (22:12), Numbers (23:05), Have A Nice Day (23:54)You can subscribe to Tangle by clicking here or drop something in our tip jar by clicking here.Our podcast is written by Isaac Saul and edited by Zosha Warpeha. Music for the podcast was produced by Diet 75.Our newsletter is edited by Bailey Saul, Sean Brady, Ari Weitzman, and produced in conjunction with Tangle’s social media manager Magdalena Bokowa, who also created our logo.--- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/tanglenews/message Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Based on Charles Yu's award-winning book, Interior Chinatown follows the story of Willis Wu, a background character trapped in a police procedural who dreams about a world beyond Chinatown. When he inadvertently becomes a witness to a crime, Willis begins to unravel a criminal web, his family's buried history, and what it feels like to be in the spotlight.

Interior Chinatown is streaming November 19th, only on Disney+. Chinatown is streaming November 19th, only on Disney+. From executive producer Isaac Saul, this is Tangle. Good morning, good afternoon, and good evening, and welcome to the Tangle Podcast, a place we get views from across the political spectrum, some independent thinking, and a little bit of my take. I'm your host, Isaac Saul, and on today's episode, we're going to be talking about the Ohio special election on issue one, which happened yesterday. We're going to explain the results of that election, as well as what it means for the country at large.

Also, before we jump in, I want to give a quick shout out to the Nick Hilaris Show. This is a podcast I appeared on a couple of weeks ago. Every now and then I get invited on a show like that to talk about the work we're doing with Tangle and I leave feeling like I really got a chance to explain our mission and to lay out my motivations and what we're trying to do. And I thought Nick did an awesome job with the interview. And it was really fun to get a chance to kind of talk at length at some stuff I usually don't get a chance to go into detail on. So I encourage you to go check it out. If you look up the Nick Hilarious Show, wherever you listen to podcasts, it's a relatively new podcast, but I should be the latest episode up

there. I think it was a really good time, so I wanted to give him a shout out. Thank him for having me on and encourage you to go give it a listen. All right, with that out of the way, we're going to kick things off today with our quick hits. with our quick hits. First up, the Supreme Court temporarily reinstated federal regulations on ghost guns while legal challenges move forward. Number two, nearly 100 people were arrested in the United States and Australia as part of a dark web child abuse investigation. Number three, President Joe Biden designated nearly one million acres of land as a national monument outside the Grand Canyon National Park. Number four, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis replaced his campaign manager, Janair Peck, with James

Uthmeyer, the latest in a major staff shakeup in recent weeks. Number five, the United States and Saudi Arabia have agreed to the broad contours of a deal for Saudi Arabia to recognize Israel in exchange for concessions to Palestinians. This morning, it appears that voters in Ohio have rejected a measure that could potentially have had an impact on an abortion vote plan for November. The Associated Press is projecting that voters turned down this measure yesterday. If passed, it would have raised the threshold required for state constitutional amendments from a simple majority to 60 percent. This is the final tally as of 11 p.m. tonight. No is the winner with 56 percent of the vote and more than two million Ohioans came out to vote in this election, which is more than

the May primary and last year's gubernatorial election. Supporters of abortion rights in Ohio are claiming a huge victory after voters rejected a measure that would have made it harder to amend the state constitution. Republicans wanted to change the law ahead of a scheduled vote on abortion rights in November. On Tuesday, Ohio voters rejected a ballot measure dubbed Issue 1 that would have made it harder to amend the state constitution. Official results show the measure has been defeated by a 57 to 43 percent vote. The proposition on the ballot was whether to raise the threshold required to amend the Constitution from a simple majority to 60 percent of voters. If approved, it would have made it significantly more difficult to change the state constitution.

Other provisions that were also rejected in the election would have required signatures from all 88 counties in Ohio to put an amendment on the ballot up from 44, while another would have eliminated the ability to correct errors and signatures on ballots that had been rejected by the state. The efforts to make it more difficult to propose and pass a constitutional amendment were pushed by Ohio's GOP-led General Assembly, which approved a resolution to put the ballot initiative up for a vote. Republicans initially pitched the change as a way to keep wealthy special interests from using the amendment process for their own gain. According to the New York Times, only about a third of constitutional amendments proposed by voters in the past 111 years have exceeded a 60%

threshold. However, the effort came at the same time many opponents of abortion restrictions were laying the groundwork to amend the state constitution in November, hoping to define access to abortion as a right. The November amendment would limit the ways the state can prohibit abortion up until the point of viability and largely leaves the decision up to the judgment of physicians. As a result, the Republican effort was widely viewed as a plan to stymie that forthcoming amendment, a reality some Republican lawmakers eventually conceded. Ohio is the only state with abortion access on the ballot this year, and the move by Republicans to raise the threshold was one of several efforts to restrict the way access to abortion could be enshrined

into state constitutions. It also came with much controversy, as just last December, Ohio's Republican-controlled legislature had outlawed most August elections, saying too few people voted in them and they had become liable for outsized influence by out-of-state interests. Then, in an about-face, Republicans reversed course in May after abortion rights groups gained enough signatures to vote on an abortion rights amendment in November. In a testament to the enthusiasm around the ballot measure, some 578,000 Ohio voters cast ballots by mail or in person in the early voting period before Tuesday's election, compared to just 288,000 who did so in the 2022

primaries. Over 3 million votes were cast in all, nearly double the 1.66 million ballots that were counted in the 2022 midterm primaries when the nominations for gubernatorial U.S. Senate and U.S. House seats were being voted on. Ohio State Legislature has already passed among the strictest bans on abortion in the country, prohibiting abortions after six weeks in most cases. However, that ban was blocked by a Hamilton County judge and is currently in limbo. Today, we're going to break down some reactions from the left and the right, and then my take. Today's podcast is sponsored by Arnold Ventures, a philanthropy dedicated to improving the lives Thank you. their work, go to ArnoldVentures.org. That's ArnoldVentures.org. First up, we'll start with what the left is saying. Many on the left criticized the effort, saying it was an anti-democratic power grab. Some call out the hypocrisy of lawmakers who tried to force this vote in an August election after previously banning such elections. Others say Ohio is now an abortion bellwether, and this result raises

the stakes of the November election. Before the vote, the Akron Beacon Journal editorial board said Ohioans have never seen anything like Issue 1. Ohio lawmakers largely banned August elections last year, correctly arguing important community decisions should not be made in elections where few people participate. But Republicans seeking to defeat an abortion rights amendment in November's election abandoned those principles by placing Issue 1 before voters in August, wasting as much as $20 million and further stressing overworked local boards of election, the board said. There is some truth to the concern of special interests influence, but Ohio voters are smarter than politicians give us credit for and have rejected plenty of poorly

proposed amendments in the past. In fact, 73% of citizen amendments have failed. There are no examples of frivolous issues passing, the board added. And with the 60% standard, if a flawed proposal would somehow be approved, it would be even more difficult to fix it with another vote. Trust in government would visibly erode if 59% of voters supported an issue and lost. It's undemocratic and discourages citizen participation. That's not in anyone's best interest. Not only that, but issue one is bad policy for everyone, not just those who support abortion rights. Conservatives should be wary of the majority backed majority rule in Ohio's scam referendum. When you do everything you can to rig an election and still lose, you have a problem. Voters in Ohio told the state's Republican Party on Tuesday that it has a big problem, and they sent that message to the GOP nationwide. The combination of hypocrisy and opportunism proved too much for most Ohioans

who defeated the GOP's legislature's referendum proposal that would have made it far more difficult for future electorates to change the state's constitution, he wrote. Even though the state voted for Donald Trump by eight points in 2020, a majority refused to accept the Republicans' invitation to throw away its own power. Despite the GOP's claim to the contrary, the measure was clearly designed to head off a constitutional amendment to protect abortion rights on November's ballot. Polls show that abortion rights command majority support in Ohio, as they did in other red states such as Kansas and Kentucky. Reaching 60 percent, however, would have been

difficult, Dion said. But if Issue 1's defeat was a statement about abortion rights, it was also a harsh judgment against the anti-majoritarian politics that Republicans are practicing in many states they control. Their methods include highly partisan gerrymanders, efforts to make it harder for some groups to cast ballots, particularly Black and younger voters, and state takeovers of election administration in Democratic cities. In the Cincinnati Inquirer, Dan Sewell said Ohio may now be a bellwether on abortion. The November 7th election will directly test voter sentiment about abortion and also be the focus of national attention,

with Ohio being the only state with abortion on the ballot, Sewell said. Although Ohio has been getting redder, polls indicate that a majority of its voters support women's access to abortion. This November's issue would allow abortions at around 24 weeks of pregnancy if passed. It would change Ohio's constitution to guarantee abortion access. For now, we can look to lessons from this ballot measure. One we can hope Ohio Republicans take from it is that it's about time to start leading the state with fairness and forthrightness. After the gerrymandering-dominated 2022 state elections, the GOP decided on a new trick, scheduling a stealth election to try to change the rules on the coming abortion vote, Sewell said.

Despite all the claims that Issue 1 was just meant to protect our Constitution, said. Despite all the claims that Issue 1 was just meant to protect our Constitution, that disguise was finally dropped in recent weeks to acknowledge that it was about stopping abortion. And the closer we got to August 8th, the list grew to include protecting gun ownership and parental rights and fighting drag queens and secret gender-changing surgery for children. Through all the smoke and mirrors, voters responded with remarkably high turnout at the levels of some general election. Alright, that is it for what the left is saying, which brings us to what the right is saying. Many on the right supported the ballot measure and are worried about November's election now that it's been rejected so soundly. Some argue that there's

still a path to victory for pro-lifers in November. Others suggest the November amendment is about more than just repealing the heartbeat law, saying it is a radical bill touching abortion, parental rights, and gender issues. Before the election, Grayson Quay said in the Daily Caller that this was one of the biggest weeks for the pro-life movement since Dobbs. Since the 2022 Dobbs decision and the wave of abortion bans that followed it, the pro-life movement has suffered defeat after defeat, but two events taking place this week could signal the turn of the tide, Quay said. The reason Issue 1's success is crucial for the pro-life movement is that, in November, Ohio voters will consider another amendment that would establish a right to make and carry out one's own reproductive decisions. The text claims to allow abortion restrictions post-viability,

but it contains a vague maternal health exemption that would allow abortion up to birth for something as banal as anxiety. Critics have also pointed out that freedom to make reproductive decisions would apply not only to abortion, but also to child sex changes. Under the proposed amendment, any attempt to restrict potentially sterilizing cross-sex hormones for minors would be unconstitutional, Quay added. The abortion amendment is polling very well, with close to 60% in favor. If issue one fails, there will be no way to stop it. A state whose duly elected representatives enacted a six-week abortion ban will be forced to accept the same anti-life extremism that governs California and New York. Based on Charles Yu's award-winning book, Interior Chinatown follows the story of Willis Wu,

a background character trapped in a police procedural who dreams about a world beyond Chinatown. When he inadvertently becomes a witness to a crime, Willis begins to unravel a criminal web, his family's buried history, and what it feels like to be in the spotlight. Interior Chinatown is streaming November 19th, only on Disney+. In National Review, Michael J. New said the Ohio pro-lifers still have a path to win in November. Tuesday's defeat is certainly a disappointment and a setback for pro-lifers, he said. However, despite the loss, there's still a pathway to victory for Buckeye State pro-lifers in November. Many pundits have pointed out that the proposed constitutional amendment to place abortion rights in Ohio State Constitution enjoys a substantial lead. Recent polls indicate that between 54 and 57 percent

of Buckeye State voters support this amendment. However, a substantial body of data shows that ballot propositions lose support as the election day draws near. Michigan's experience in 2022 is instructive, as a ballot proposal to enshrine abortion rights into the state constitution became less popular the closer they got to election day, ultimately losing 16 to 19 points of support. This November's election is very important to pro-lifers both in Ohio and across the country, New wrote. If supporters of legalized abortion can place abortion rights in Ohio's state constitution, they would doubtless try to do the same in other conservative states. This could easily jeopardize strong pro-life laws that are protecting pre-born children in Florida, Missouri, Arizona, and other states. A pro-life victory in November would require considerable effort from pro-lifers around the country as well as in Ohio.

That said, a pro-life victory is still certainly within reach. In Town Hall, Rebecca Downs said this election will clear the way for a radical pro-abortion initiative. Special interest groups from out of state will have a considerably easier time passing a pro-abortion ballot initiative this November, Downs said. The consequences are very real and could be fast approaching if the initiative, known as the Ohio Right to Make Reproductive Decisions, including abortion initiative, pass in just a few months' time. As Town Hall has covered, the initiative's passage could have massive implications for parental rights. This amendment is not merely about repealing Ohio's heartbeat law, but it is a radical vehicle to prohibit any restrictions on abortion and other procedures, including sex change surgeries, that would cancel out parental consent laws and parental notification of abortions or sex change surgeries. It's no surprise, then, that groups like Planned Parenthood and the ACLU have their

fingerprints all over this, especially since they've been vocally opposed to parental rights on such issues as abortion and so-called gender-affirming care, which in reality involves sterilization and genital mutilation, Down saidming care, which in reality involves sterilization and genital mutilation, Down said. Of the groups in favor of the amendment, Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America was among the quickest to release a statement about its failure. The statement was especially harsh on those who sat on the sidelines, including the silence of the establishment and business community, and even Republicans for their failure to act. Alright, that is it for the left and the right are saying, which brings us to my take.

So, there are two separate ideas here that I think are worth addressing. The first is the question of amending a state constitution and outside influence. In a vacuum, if that is what was really at stake here, I think there's a lot to like about what the Ohio GOP proposed. It is true that the state's constitutions are vulnerable to outside special interests. It is true, as Republicans initially acknowledged, special elections tend to have low turnout and are vulnerable to more influence from outside the state. It is true, too, that a simple majority could be reasonably conceived as a low bar to change something as foundational as a state constitution. Again, in a vacuum, you could probably convince me that a 60% threshold is better than a 50% threshold for something as serious as amending the Constitution. The bar, after all, is much higher in Congress. But the second idea is about the reality of this special election,

outside of a vacuum. And that is where things start looking a lot worse for the Ohio GOP. First is the blatant hypocrisy. They made a case to voters that August elections were bad, specifically because of the influence outside interests can exert on them, and then they immediately pivoted to pushing an August election to stop something they feared a majority of their constituents would support. Not only that, but they were dishonest about why. The initial pitch that this was all about preventing special interest influence slowly morphed into a concession, and then the open promotion, really, of the fact that this was about stopping the potential November abortion rights amendment. The GOP had it right the first time. These August elections are a bad way to make major decisions on something like the state constitution, and they are vulnerable to

outside influence. Roughly $32.5 million was spent on this election, evenly split on both sides with $8 and $10 coming from outside the state. The fact Republicans flip-flopped on their initial position when they thought it might benefit them did not go over well with voters who turned out in droves and soundly rejected the idea of raising the constitutional amendment threshold to 60%. It was, simply put, a decisive and rather embarrassing loss. But that doesn't mean the November abortion rights amendment is a shoo-in. As some conservative writers above noted, the amendment being pushed in November is an expansive piece of abortion rights legislation. It's not as clear-cut as Rebecca Downs' claims under what the right is

saying, but because the text of the amendment prohibits state law directly or indirectly placing a burden on reproductive decisions, it's certainly possible, if the amendment passes, a burden on reproductive decisions, it's certainly possible, if the amendment passes, that state courts could invalidate laws requiring parental notification and consent on all kinds of sexual and reproductive health care. In other ways, the law contains more conventional abortion rights language. It leaves decisions up to doctors and patients before fetal viability and allows restrictions after fetal viability so long as the mother's life or health isn't threatened. Despite polling suggesting Ohio voters would support this kind of legislation, I'm entirely unsure of how it will actually break.

Abortion rights and gun reform amendments are notorious for being less popular than polling suggests once the actual votes are tallied. Some pro-choice voters may want more than just the viability standard to limit abortions, and some may be moved off their position if conservatives successfully argue that the amendment could end up boxing parents of minors out of these decisions. For now, though, the results from last night in Ohio are the latest in a long string of defeats for the pro-life, anti-abortion, and conservative side of this battle. After the primaries in November of 2022, I made the case that the

results were primarily about abortion, and I still believe that to be the case. Since then, Democrats have continued to use the fall of Roe v. Wade to their electoral advantage, and I've yet to see anything resembling a cohesive conservative plan to counterpunch on the issue. Come November in Ohio, we'll have our next temperature check. issue. Come November in Ohio, we'll have our next temperature check. All right, that is it for my take on today's issue, which brings us to your questions answered. This one's from Peggy in Delaware. Peggy said, until the current affirmative action ruling, affirmative action had been in place for over 60 years. From 1980 to 2022 at Harvard, the percentage of minority students ranged between 8 and 15 percent. For over 40 years, the percentage of minority students at Harvard was

close to the actual percentage of persons of color in the total population. At this point, there are legacy students of color that should mirror the percentage of minority students that could attend Harvard. Does taking legacy enrollment out of the loop really do more than satisfy a sense of unfairness from the past? So this is a great question, and you know it's either a great point or a really bizarre issue when people who completely disagree on the previous issue find themselves aligned on the next one. Maybe I'm reading into this question a little bit too much, but it sounds to me like you are in favor of affirmative action, and your argument reminded me of this one, which our team found when researching the piece on legacy admissions last week from someone decidedly not pro-affirmative action. Quote, ironically, getting rid of preferences for legacies will hurt black

applicants the most. Recall that colleges have been giving gigantic racial preferences to black applicants since the 1960s, which means we have more than half a century of black graduates whose children and grandchildren are, guess what, legacies. Ann Coulter wrote that in a piece in Town Hall. I'm not going to fully rehash my take on legacy admissions here, but I'll just say that I was left somewhat unconvinced that repealing legacies would really solve much by the way of leveling the playing field in admissions. I think Coulter was exaggerating when she said repealing the practice would hurt black applicants the most, but I do think she has a point about more legacies being black than we might think. And I think you do too. That's partially why I wanted to answer this question. Some things we just have to edit out for length, and this point was one that was sadly left on the cutting room floor. Still, I do think there's more

to it than a sense of vindictive fairness. At the end of the day, if affirmative action isn't part of the admissions process, I think it's the logical position to hold that legacies shouldn't be either. It might not make admissions more fair, though. Ending legacy admissions might be logical and it might feel like it satisfies the sense of unfairness, like you said, but I did start to think that we should know if any policy change is going to be helpful when we make it. The blogger Scott Alexander wrote a great piece about how the ultra-wealthy being able to buy admissions into elite schools might actually be a good thing. His piece was pretty challenging for me and I

definitely recommend it and we have dropped a link to it in today's episode description. All right, that is it for your questions answered, which brings us to our under the radar section. President Biden is expected to sign an executive order on Wednesday that will ban private equity and venture capital investments in some Chinese technology companies. The move is the latest in a series of government actions trying to prevent Beijing from developing cutting-edge technology for its military. It will cover direct investments in the semiconductor, quantum computing, and artificial intelligence sectors and would prohibit investments in some forms of those technologies while also requiring Americans doing business in China

to inform the U.S. government about their work and investments. The order comes after growing bipartisan fears that American technology will help China develop weapons it could use against the military in combat. The Wall Street Journal has this story, and there's a link to it in today's episode description. All right, next up is our numbers section. The percentage of Ohio voters who said they supported granting a constitutional right to abortion access was 58%. That's according to a Suffolk University slash USA Today poll. The percent of Ohio voters who voted today against the ballot measure to raise the threshold to amend the Constitution to 60% of the vote was 57%. The year in which the threshold for changing a constitutional amendment in Ohio

was set at 50% was 1912. The estimated number of votes that were cast on this ballot initiative was over 3 million. The number of people who voted in the 2020 presidential race in Ohio was 5.9 million. The number of states where the pro-abortion rights position won on the ballot in the 2022 midterms was 6 out of 6. Alright, and last but not least, our have a nice day story. For families with autistic children, travel can be quite difficult, with 87% opting not to travel at all. be quite difficult, with 87% opting not to travel at all. Mark Garcia, the president and CEO of the Tourism Bureau for Mesa, Arizona, and father of a child severely impacted by autism, decided to do something about it. Through research, he founded IBCCES, the International Board of Credentialing and Continuing Education Standards, an organization that was already training employees at big

tourist attractions such as the Nickelodeon University Theme Park and the Mall of America in Minnesota to supportively engage with visitors who have cognitive disorders. Garcia is now on its board of directors, and in the fall of 2019, Mesa, Arizona's third largest city, became the first autism-certified city in the world. Reasons to be cheerful has the story and there's a link to it in today's episode description. All right, everybody, that is it for today's podcast. Like I said at the top, don't forget to go check out Nick Caleros' show and my latest appearance there. Also, as always, if you want to support our work, go to retangle.com

slash membership and become a member. It keeps everything here going. The podcast, the YouTube channel, the newsletter, all the great content coming out. We'll be right back here same time tomorrow. Have a good one. Peace. Our podcast is written by me, Isaac Saul, and edited by Zosia Warpea.

Our script is edited by Sean Brady, Ari Weitzman, and Bailey Saul. Shout out to our interns, Audrey Moorhead and Watkins Kelly, and our social media manager, Magdalena Vakova, who created our podcast logo. Music for the podcast was produced by Diet75. For more from Tangle, check out our website at www.tipaco.com. Based on Charles Yu's award-winning book, Interior Chinatown follows the story of Willis Wu, a background character trapped in a police procedural who dreams about a world beyond Chinatown. When he inadvertently becomes a witness to a crime,

Willis begins to unravel a criminal web, his family's buried history, and what it feels like to be in the spotlight. Interior Chinatown is streaming November 19th, only on Disney+.