Some Republicans embrace abortion referendums, but GOP will fight them

The party as a whole, of course, probably won’t like what those voters decide, as Kansas recently showed. And we should hardly expect this approach to catch on very widely. Indeed, getting such measures on the ballot looks to be one of the next big battlegrounds in the fight over abortion, with Republicans as a whole preparing to fight against it.

But to a few candidates, direct democracy is apparently an attractive off-ramp.

This week, both Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) and New Mexico GOP governor candidate Mark Ronchetti proposed letting voters decide the issue, in different ways.

Ronchetti in a new ad proposes putting the issue on the ballot, saying, “No politician should decide this; you should. We should vote on it as a state. Put it on the statewide ballots, so everyone gets a say.” Ronchetti, who has taken pains to soften his past position on abortion, adds that “no politician should make this decision for you.”

Johnson, meanwhile, suggested Wisconsin hold a ballot referendum to add rape and incest exceptions to Wisconsin’s Civil War-era law banning nearly all abortions. “We really ought to poll the citizens,” Johnson said. “And I’d rather do it through a direct referendum.” But the process for doing that in Wisconsin is lengthy and might be prohibitive.

One state that will see abortion actually on the ballot this fall is Michigan, whose Supreme Court made sure of that last week over Republican objections. GOP gubernatorial candidate Tudor Dixon promptly responded by saying voters can now “vote for [Gov.] Gretchen Whitmer’s abortion agenda & still vote against her.”

Also last week, a South Carolina GOP legislator proposed a ballot referendum, offering it during a contentious debate over new abortion restrictions. But state Sen. Sandy Senn (R) acknowledged that idea was going nowhere for a very specific reason.

“We won’t do that because y’all are scared to do that,” she said. “The same thing that happened in Kansas would happen here, resoundingly. Y’all think you know better than your own constituents.”

The vote in Kansas, where 59 percent of voters rejected an effort to remove abortion protections from the state constitution despite the red lean of the state, is certainly the biggest cautionary tale thus far. But it’s unlikely to be the only one.

Multiple polls in Michigan have shown the ballot measure that was greenlighted last week — which would enshrine abortion rights in the state constitution and block a restrictive ban from taking effect — passing by a very wide margin. A Detroit News/WDIV poll last week showed it passing by a 60 percent-to-29 percent margin. An earlier EPIC-MRA poll showed an even wider margin: 67-24. That’s in a preeminent swing state.

Two blue states — California and Vermont — will also take up amendments explicitly protecting abortion rights, and the votes are expected to be lopsided, with a new poll this week in California showing voters