Days after Ohio voters passed Issue 1 and codified abortion rights into Ohio’s constitution, Republicans are not accepting the election results.
In a new, unhinged press release issued by the Ohio House Republican Committee, GOP members rant that “foreign billionaires” impacted the election results and call the results tainted by so-called “foreign interference.” It is unclear what they are referring to.
Ohio voters overwhelmingly voted ‘Yes’ on Issue 1 by a margin of 56.6% to 43.4%.
The press release further argues that the results of the election do not invalidate a 6-week abortion ban previously passed by the Ohio Legislature and that “no amendment can overturn the God given rights with which we were born.”
That’s not how you compare votes. It’s not like the only other option for that 6.6% was to flip their vote to the opposite side. Abstaining is also a valid “vote”, so to speak, and more likely for those who felt passionate enough to vote in favor of it in the first place if they weren’t going to vote for it for some reason. If the number of people that make up that 6.6% abstained, i.e. just didn’t vote at all, the measure would still have passed with the majority. The full 13.2% would have had to abstain from voting for the vote to have broken even. Which is why you take the difference between the vote percentages, not the difference to 50%.