On most days, “What’s happening in Kansas?” is not a question I usually ask. It is certainly not a question that I would spend much of my day refreshing my browser about. But yesterday, 2 August 2022, was special. For the first time since the US Supreme Court overturned Roe v Wade, abortion rights were on the ballot. So the answer to that question could well prove to be a bellwether of what is to come.
In 2019, the Kansas Supreme Court ruled that the right to have an abortion is protected under the Kansas Constitution. This year, the Kansas legislature referred the deceptively named “Value Them Both” amendment to the ballot of yesterday’s primary election. Note the dirty trick here: the amendment was placed in the primary election, where turnout is usually very low; usually only the most partisan voters cast a ballot. With the state skewed as Republican as it is, the legislature obviously hoped the amendment would squeak under the radar.
Kansas abortion rights activists got to work. Fighting against a campaign of lies and deceit, activists engaged in a good old-fashioned grassroots effort, knocking on doors and talking to people. The effort worked. Voting in record numbers for a primary, the amendment failed. As of this writing, CNN reports the tally is 58.8% against the amendment.
Keep in mind that Kansas is a deep red state. It hasn’t given its electoral college votes to a Democratic presidential candidate since 1964. Since 1976, the Republican candidate has only rarely gotten less than 55% percent of the vote. This was the point. Given the Republican edge in registered voters, in a closed primary state independents aren’t typically a factor.
Yet the “No” vote garnered a higher percentage of the vote than 45* did in both 2016 and 2020. This suggests that, even in Kansas, a significant number of Republicans are willing to vote against their party’s stance on abortion if given the chance. Going forward, the GOP will have to keep this in mind. Unfortunately, this probably means doing everything they can to keep the people from actually voting on abortion rights.
More significantly, the turnout suggests that abortion rights will drive voter turnout. Several states will have ballot measures on abortion rights on the ballot for November, and it is likely that more such measures will be on the ballot in 2024. However, it is less certain that Democrats will benefit from making the coming election a referendum on abortion rights. History shows that enough Republicans will cross over to protect abortion rights in ballot measures while still electing Republican officials. Democrats won’t be able to stand on abortion rights alone.
Looking at the county-by-county results in Kansas also reveals a pattern we should note. The failure of the amendment was driven largely by the urban counties. For example, Johnson County alone provided nearly a third of the overall “No” vote. The more populous the county, the more likely it was to vote “No,” and do so with huge margins. Only two counties with more than 10,000 votes, Butler and Reno, saw the yes vote win, and both these counties were squeakers where less than 200 votes decided the outcome. This may well imply that for ballot measures, abortion rights are safe only if the urban vote is enough to determine the outcome.
For now, the right to have an abortion is safe in Kansas. This gives us hope that another deep red state, Kentucky, will follow suit in November.
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