Voters in Maine, Mississippi, Arizona and Ohio told their state governments to back off in elections Tuesday.
Ohio Gov. John Kasich had asked voters to let a law remain in place restricting public workers’ rights to organize, bargain for wages and benefits and strike. The voters said no. They repealed the law. Take your hands off of union members, they said.
On the same ballot was a symbolic referendum on the federal health care law. Ohioans voted in favor of a statement exempting them from the requirement that they carry health insurance or pay a fine. A state can’t nullify a federal law, so approval of the message was nothing more than that. But, again, it said, “keep your governmental hands off me.”
Women rose up in Mississippi and led the assault on a proposed anti-abortion constitutional amendment which would have defined “personhood” as the moment of conception. Had the measure passed, all abortions, including those to save the life of the mother and pregnancies caused by rape or incest, would have been banned, along with some forms of contraception.
The controversial measure defined life “to include every human being from the moment of fertilization, cloning or the functional equivalent thereof.”
The women told the politicians: leave my body up to me. And a majority of men agreed.
Maine voters decided to repeal a Republican measure which had ended same-day registration. Don’t do anything to stop Mainers from voting, the people said.
And in Arizona, voters were close to recalling State Senator Russell Pearce, president of the Senate and the power behind much of the anti-immigrant legislation on the books there. Arizona, they said, isn’t a radical place. We like people here.
WHILE MOST of these decisions at the polls favored Democrats over Republicans, they can’t be taken as pro-Obama decisions. In each case, they are more negative than positive.
Mississippi voted against putting an extreme anti-abortion proscription in their constitution, which would have made it almost impossible to amend it or abolish it in the future. Ohio voters said the right of workers to organize and bargain is a core value. Maine decided the make voting easier, not more difficult. And it appears that Arizona turned out a leading bigot, although all of the votes hadn’t been counted when this was written.
These weren’t partisan measures so much as they were philosophical. Still, they give comfort to the great silent majority in this country who yearn for the return of moderation and reason in our political discourse and decision-making.
In every one of these cases — from conservative Mississippi to liberal Maine — the voters took the reasonable, middle course.
Hallelu, hallelujah!
— Emerson Lynn, jr.
