More than 500,000 voters have already voted on Issue 1, an amendment that would make it significantly more difficult to alter the state’s constitution.
Samantha Hendrickson/AP Photo

This isn’t the first time Republicans have tried something like Issue 1. GOP legislatures in Arkansas, Florida, Idaho, Missouri, North Dakota, Ohio and Oklahoma debated bills in recent years that would make it harder to put a measure before voters. Few made it into law, and some of those that did were later struck down by courts.

Several more GOP-led states, including Arkansas and South Dakota, have taken the issue of upping ballot measure thresholds directly to the voters, but nearly all have failed.

Still, Arkansas and Utah have made their signature gathering rules tougher in recent years, Arizona raised the ballot measure threshold just for tax hikes, and Florida set a bar of 60 percent approval for all ballot measures. (An attempt to raise that even more to 67 percent tanked last year.)

These efforts have escalated since Roe v. Wade fell, but opponents also see them as an anti-democratic response to a wave of red states expanding Medicaid, legalizing marijuana, raising the minimum wage and enacting other progressive measures via popular vote.

Leading up to Tuesday’s vote, both sides of the abortion-rights debate have been actively engaged in campaigning, including door-knocking, phone banking and multimillion-dollar ad campaigns.

Much of the advertising from the pro-Issue 1 side has focused on the divisive issue of parental consent for minors’ abortions, claiming that such requirements would be scrapped if the August initiative doesn’t pass. Meanwhile, messaging from abortion-rights groups working against Issue 1 echoes what groups successfully deployed in Kansas, Kentucky and other GOP-controlled states that held abortion referendums last year: That people’s right to make personal medical decisions free from government interference is in jeopardy.

Boxes of signatures are delivered to Republican Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose’s office in downtown Columbus, Ohio.