Reproductive rights will be on the ballot November 8 in Michigan.

Motown Spartan wrote:I had a client tell me today that Proposal 3 included allowing 12 year olds to get gender reassignment treatment without parental consent. So, I pulled up the official language of Prop3 from the Google machine and asked her to read it to me word for word. She still didn't believe me because her church told her.

Jake from State Farm wrote:I received a mailing the other day on Proposal 3. It basically made it sound like school nurses would be able to castrate or sterilize your children. Nothing like good old scare tactics to get people out to vote.

At one house, Susan Maveal, 75, said she wasn’t going to vote in the midterm election at all.

“Because I think the last presidential election was so fraudulent that it wasn't even worth me going and doing it [this year],” she explained to BuzzFeed News.

DEARBORN, MICHIGAN — When Yvonnie Mills casts her ballot on Tuesday, the only box she will be ticking is “yes” on Proposal 3, the Right to Reproductive Freedom Initiative that aims to enshrine the right to abortion in the Michigan state constitution. She doesn’t have strong opinions about the other names or measures on the ballot, but abortion rights are a priority for her — her only priority this election.

Occasionally, they saw the difference they made first-hand. On Monday, Mills, the single-issue voter, told Petrie that her partner wasn’t interested in voting no matter how she worked on him.

As she spoke about her strong feelings on abortion rights with the canvassers, her partner sauntered to the door.

“OK,” he said. “So what is this Proposal 3?”

GRR Spartan wrote:I know this election is too complicated.

I’ve been told with a person I’ve known for 30 years that Proposal 3 requires schools to have litter boxes for “Furries”

Getting texts that voting Yes on Proposal 2 means “Your vote will be cancelled “by rapists and murderers” and voting Yes on Proposal 1 hurts MI government. Is that because of 12 year legislative term limits or requiring legislators to reveal their donors and personal finances?

I ever got a mailer from MI Supreme Court Justice Zahra say Justice Bernstein is bad and Zahra is pro-life. But then we learn Zahra arranged for his first wife’s abortion when they were both umaa students.

So confusing I don’t think we’ll know official results until sometime in December.

Motown Spartan wrote:I voted ten times already.  All for Democrats and yes on all proposals.  

Trapper Gus wrote:

Motown Spartan wrote:I voted ten times already.  All for Democrats and yes on all proposals.  

I got my packet of 50 ballots to fill out, too, still working on it. /s

Motown Spartan wrote:

Trapper Gus wrote:

I got my packet of 50 ballots to fill out, too, still working on it. /s

I will provide an armed escort for you to your polling location. However, I will not provide you with a bottle of water while we wait in line, that would be illegal in Florida...

msugolfguy wrote:In a stunning change of events. Right to Work, Betsy DeVos biggest win is possible about to be blown up by her handpicked candidate losing.

Also....funny things happen when you can't gerrymander your way to a win.

tNYT's Morning Newsletter wrote:A political winner
By the time the midterm election campaign reached its final days, some Democrats had spent weeks fretting that their nominees had consumed far too much time talking about abortion rights at the expense of economic issues — and, potentially, their seats.

Well, about that.

Support for abortion rights now appears to be one of the big reasons Democrats defied history and staved off deep midterm losses. In a new article, my colleague Elizabeth Dias and I explain how Democrats changed the politics of an issue that’s long been most galvanizing for their opponents.

Democratic campaigns invested more heavily in abortion rights than any other topic, riding a wave of anger after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in June. In total, Democrats and their allies spent nearly half a billion dollars on ads mentioning abortion — more than twice what they spent on crime, and eight times as much as Republicans spent on abortion, according to AdImpact, an ad-tracking firm.

The impact
In Virginia, Minnesota, New Mexico and elsewhere, abortion rights emerged as a driving force in the midterm elections, helping Democrats win ballot measures, governor’s races and House seats.

Voters in three states — California, Vermont and highly contested Michigan — protected abortion rights in their state constitutions. In Kentucky, the Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell’s home state, voters rejected an anti-abortion amendment.

In several states where the future of abortion rights rested on the outcomes of state legislative and governor’s races, voters said the issue was pivotal, according to exit polls conducted by TV networks and Edison Research. In Pennsylvania, abortion overtook the economy as the top issue on voters’ minds. Democrats there won a Senate race, critical to their hopes of maintaining a Senate majority, as well as the governor’s mansion, and they seemed poised to flip control of the State House of Representatives.

In Michigan, where nearly half of voters said abortion was their top issue, Democrats won both chambers of the Legislature and re-elected Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, giving the party a trifecta of power for the first time in 40 years.

The bottom line
Republicans had sought an end to Roe for nearly 50 years, and the issue had long motivated their core supporters more than it had their opponents’. But in this election, the court victory turned out to be a political loser. (And, as The Upshot recently reported, it hasn’t made much of a dent in the number of abortions nationwide.)

The midterm results suggest that Democrats have upended the status quo on the issue — and that abortion rights could remain a source of motivation in the next election, when the possibility of a nationwide ban is on the ballot.

Trapper Gus wrote:

tNYT's Morning Newsletter wrote:A political winner
By the time the midterm election campaign reached its final days, some Democrats had spent weeks fretting that their nominees had consumed far too much time talking about abortion rights at the expense of economic issues — and, potentially, their seats.

Well, about that.

Support for abortion rights now appears to be one of the big reasons Democrats defied history and staved off deep midterm losses. In a new article, my colleague Elizabeth Dias and I explain how Democrats changed the politics of an issue that’s long been most galvanizing for their opponents.

Democratic campaigns invested more heavily in abortion rights than any other topic, riding a wave of anger after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in June. In total, Democrats and their allies spent nearly half a billion dollars on ads mentioning abortion — more than twice what they spent on crime, and eight times as much as Republicans spent on abortion, according to AdImpact, an ad-tracking firm.

The impact
In Virginia, Minnesota, New Mexico and elsewhere, abortion rights emerged as a driving force in the midterm elections, helping Democrats win ballot measures, governor’s races and House seats.

Voters in three states — California, Vermont and highly contested Michigan — protected abortion rights in their state constitutions. In Kentucky, the Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell’s home state, voters rejected an anti-abortion amendment.

In several states where the future of abortion rights rested on the outcomes of state legislative and governor’s races, voters said the issue was pivotal, according to exit polls conducted by TV networks and Edison Research. In Pennsylvania, abortion overtook the economy as the top issue on voters’ minds. Democrats there won a Senate race, critical to their hopes of maintaining a Senate majority, as well as the governor’s mansion, and they seemed poised to flip control of the State House of Representatives.

In Michigan, where nearly half of voters said abortion was their top issue, Democrats won both chambers of the Legislature and re-elected Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, giving the party a trifecta of power for the first time in 40 years.

The bottom line
Republicans had sought an end to Roe for nearly 50 years, and the issue had long motivated their core supporters more than it had their opponents’. But in this election, the court victory turned out to be a political loser. (And, as The Upshot recently reported, it hasn’t made much of a dent in the number of abortions nationwide.)

The midterm results suggest that Democrats have upended the status quo on the issue — and that abortion rights could remain a source of motivation in the next election, when the possibility of a nationwide ban is on the ballot.

DWags wrote:

We all know, unfortunately, the supreme court has become highly political. It is not a court that rules by law, but rather by heart. And while ruling by heart in your personal life might actually be a selfless thing, ruling my heart politically, harms those That don’t feel the same way as you.

Fortunately, in my opinion, while you can’t be an idiot and aspire to the Supreme Court, it does seem like the new justices highly miss calculated when ruling on Roe v. Wade. We will see if that carries over to the 2024 presidential election, but I do know one thing for sure, It did have a ton of young liberal people registering to vote. Will they vote two years from now? I don’t know, but once you get it in your blood you tend to want to do it all the time.

Turtleneck wrote:When do the employees at Pep Boys start performing abortions?

DWags wrote:

Trapper Gus wrote:

We all know, unfortunately, the supreme court has become highly political. It is not a court that rules by law, but rather by heart. And while ruling by heart in your personal life might actually be a selfless thing, ruling my heart politically, harms those That don’t feel the same way as you.

Fortunately, in my opinion, while you can’t be an idiot and aspire to the Supreme Court, it does seem like the new justices highly miss calculated when ruling on Roe v. Wade. We will see if that carries over to the 2024 presidential election, but I do know one thing for sure, It did have a ton of young liberal people registering to vote. Will they vote two years from now? I don’t know, but once you get it in your blood you tend to want to do it all the time.

Rick Saunders wrote:

Robert J Sakimano wrote: someone said that Prop 3 doesn't go into effect until December 24th, so just in time to celebrate the birth of baby jesus, I guess.

Interesting question... when did Jesus become a person if not at the time of fertilization?