Kansas voters overwhelmingly reject forced birth referendum on ballot

Nearly half of Kansas’ registered voters turned out in the nation’s first electoral test of US abortion rights after the US Supreme Court overturned the federal protection of privacy rights and a woman’s right to choose.

This year’s primary ballot included a question about whether to stop the state’s constitution from protecting abortion rights, which could have paved the way for lawmakers to completely ban abortion but voters resoundingly rejected that measure, with nearly 60 percent of voters saying “no.”

Last year, the Republican state legislature put this measure on the primary ballot, rather than the November general election ballot, probably because they knew primary voters tend to be more conservative than the overall electorate.

Republicans put language on the ballot that was confusing and misleading, saying the amendment would stop state funding for abortion, even though it is already banned, and devious campaign tactics were employed.

Deceptive messages crafted by a political action committee led by former congressman Tim Huelskamp—a hard-line conservative con artist—claimed that voting yes, which could allow the GOP-controlled legislature to outlaw abortion, would safeguard “choice.”

“Kansas is a red state, to be sure, but luckily they already had abortion rights enshrined in their Constitution,” said Cliff Schecter, the president of Blue Amp Action. “So the right-wing troglodytes put a referendum on the ballot–purposely on a primary day when turnout would be low so they thought they could get their flying monkeys to the polls and turn Kansas women into forced-birth baby containers.”

“Well, their plan went very wrong,” said Schecter. “Turnout was up around 15 percent and in a state Trump won by 15 points, the abortion ban was rejected by a whopping 18 points! Not just a defeat, but if you’ll excuse the British expression, an arse kicking.”

The end of the right to abortion in the United States will have devastating consequences around the world.

A half-century ago, the Supreme Court’s landmark Roe v Wade decision inspired a new era of reproductive freedom in dozens of countries.

Schecter credited Governor Laura Kelly, a Democrat who is leading the red state, with fighting to reject the forced-birth referendum.

Kelly was endorsed by 28 current or former Republican government officials in 2018, when she defeated Secretary of State Kris Kobach, a GOP extremist who only after being threatened with contempt of court agreed to restore nearly 20,000 citizens that were improperly removed from the state’s registered voter rolls.

Kobach came to national prominence as vice-chairman of the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity with “baseless” and “bogus” claims he made entirely without evidence about voter fraud.

Kobach asserted that as many as 2,000 people were using the identities of dead people to vote and 18,000 non-citizens registered to vote in Kansas, but his office filed only nine criminal cases and obtained six convictions—all in cases of double voting; none of which would have been prevented by voter ID laws.

 voter data precipitated a resounding bipartisan rejection