ICYMI: Columbus Dispatch: More Ohio Women Register To Vote After Abortion Ruling
September 1, 2022
Columbus, OH — In case you missed it, the Columbus Dispatch’s Anna Staver broke down the increased interest in November’s elections following the Supreme Court’s ruling overturning Roe v. Wade. Women in Ohio are out registering men by more than a 10-point margin following the Dobbs decision, and organizations like the Ohio Democratic Party are seeing a massive increase in grassroots interest. Ohioans know that reproductive rights are on the line this November, and they’re not going to allow politicians like J.D. Vance and Mike DeWine to take our state backward.
As a reminder, J.D. Vance compared abortion to slavery and Mike DeWine promised an anti-abortion group that he would ‘go as far as we can’ to rip away reproductive rights in Ohio.
“‘The relentless decades-long attack on women’s rights in this country has borne fruit, and now we’re pissed,’ Walters said. ‘Women in Ohio, women in this country are pissed, and they are going to come for a reckoning.’” ODP Chair Elizabeth Walters told the Dispatch.
Read more from the Columbus Dispatch here and below:
- Katie Paris knew something was up when more than 5,000 Ohioans registered for a weeknight Zoom call before she even advertised it. The Cleveland Democrat’s organization, Red, Wine and Blue, targets suburban women in battleground states, and since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned federal abortion protections interest “has been incredible.”
- Volunteers also poured into the Ohio Democratic Party all summer.
- “We had 3,000 volunteer sign-ups between the rally we did at the statehouse and the two weeks following the overturning of Roe (v Wade),” Ohio Democratic Party Chair Liz Walters said. “That’s a huge number for us in a very short amount of time.”
- Women out-registered Ohio men by an 11-point margin in the two months after the June 24 Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision, according to an analysis of voter data by TargetSmart. These women are younger (under 35), live in urban areas and likely to vote Democratic.
- In Kansas where registered Republicans outnumber Democrats almost two to one, voters rejected a ballot measure in August to restrict and/or eliminate abortion access 59% to 41%.
- Democrats also overperformed in special Congressional elections this summer in Nebraska, Minnesota and New York.
- “The relentless decades-long attack on women’s rights in this country has borne fruit, and now we’re pissed,” Walters said. “Women in Ohio, women in this country are pissed, and they are going to come for a reckoning.”
- [Mike] DeWine has a longstanding record of opposing access to abortion. He signed the “heartbeat bill” that now bans most abortions in the state after six weeks. And he told Ohio Right to Life his administration would “go as far as we can” once the Dobbs decision came down.
- But DeWine has been more circumspect on the issue since the June 24 Supreme Court decision. His campaign removed a paragraph on its website touting his pro-life accomplishments.
- But Walters, Paris and Bonier all saw it differently. “What a great indicator of the liability they see in it,” Bonier said.
- Paris suspected it might be part of the reason DeWine hasn’t agreed to a debate against his Democratic opponent Nan Whaley.
- Whaley is the first woman ever nominated for governor by a major party. Since 1978, the only election for governor that has not had a debate was when John Kasich refused to debate Democrat Ed FitzGerald in 2014.
- “The one thing people used to know about Mike DeWine was he acted reasonably in the beginning of the pandemic,” Paris said. “Now the one thing they know is he signed a law that sent a 10-year-old rape victim to Indiana.”
- Paris said she has personally spoken to dozens of women who voted for DeWine in 2018 but now want to volunteer for Democrats because “while they disagreed with their extreme positions on abortion, they thought Roe v Wade was there.”
- “They can’t imagine their daughter, their friends’ daughters being forced to carry a rapist’s baby,” she said. “They feel urgent about correcting that, and they feel upset they helped put people in office who made that the law.”
- Since the Dobbs decision, Bonier says new registrations of Ohio women are +15 Democratic — a complete reversal from 2020 models that put female registrations at +5 for Republicans.
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