A ballot proposal to restore abortion rights in Florida that earned clear majority support failed to pass after falling short of the necessary supermajority threshold.
That makes Florida the first state to reject such a measure since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022.
Until now, every single time a state voted on abortion access, the measure passed. This includes blue states like California, swing states like Michigan and even traditional Republican states such as Kentucky and Kansas.
Reproductive rights are one of three main issues of this campaign alongside the economy and immigration, following several high-profile cases of pregnant women that suffered preventable deaths after they were refused life-saving treatment. If Kamala Harris hopes to defeat Donald Trump, she’ll need college-educated young women most affected by abortion restrictions to vote in mass numbers.
Florida’s Amendment 4, which would have legalized abortion before fetal viability or in cases where a patient’s health was at stake, needed 60% support in order to be adopted. Currently it is projected to achieve only 57%, with nearly all of the state’s votes already counted.
“Amendment 4 has failed,” governor Ron DeSantis posted on Tuesday evening.
The former Republican presidential candidate incurred criticism for using state resources and the power of his office to openly campaign against the measure.
“The state of Florida weaponized a neutral democratic process and is using taxpayer dollars to deceive voters,” argued Floridians Protecting Freedom, the group that brought forth the amendment.
Florida is not the only state to put the issue on the ballot this election. Missouri, South Dakota and Nebraska also have similar proposals, for example, as does the battleground state of Arizona.
In these other states, however, only a simple majority is required for the measures to pass.
State Assemblywoman Anna Eskamani, who represents a district in Orlando, pledged to continue the fight in state capital Tallahassee to ensure Floridians access to abortion.
“This is still a historic outcome that demonstrates how the majority of Floridians reject the state’s near-total abortion ban,” she wrote on Tuesday. “We must demand that the [Florida] legislature repeal the ban. We are the majority, and we’re not going anywhere.”
Donald Trump also won Florida, earning him the state’s 30 electoral votes. So far, reliably Republican or Democratic states have been called, but no major battlegrounds.
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