Tuesday, September 24, 2024

QOTD -- Abortion Ballot Initiatives

 

"If you’re tired of breathlessly following the horserace polling of the presidential and congressional races, you might consider instead breathlessly following the horserace polling of ballot initiatives to protect reproductive rights. In a sense, they’re more revealing.

"Pending some outstanding court challenges from Republicans – whose dogged commitment to “leaving this issue to the states” curiously disappears when they realize they’re going to lose – up to 10 states will have abortion referendums on the ballot this year. And it happens that they’ll share that ballot with competitive Senate races in states like Montana, Nevada, Arizona, Florida and Maryland.  [snip]

"Sure, maybe touting Taylor Swift’s endorsement on Instagram or sending Barack Obama to juice voter registration on TikTok will move the needle. But with women under 45 citing abortion as their most motivating issue this election, it would seem wise to keep spotlighting a rare issue that is both persuasive to swing voters and galvanizing for young activists..."  -- Katrina vanden Heuvel, writing in The Guardian about the necessity to keep the reproductive rights freedom issue highlighted entering the final weeks of the election.  She makes the point that popular ballot initiatives protecting reproductive rights freedoms, especially in a few swing states like Arizona and Nevada, can provide the margin of victory for Democrats.  Good read.

 

3 comments:

Ten Bears said...

Like legalizing marijuana ~ when it's on the ballot the votes turn out

Anonymous said...

Reproductive freedoms sounds more persuasive to me. Dems might ought to use “freedom” as often as possible. Take it clean away from Republicans.

W. Hackwhacker said...

Good points, all.