Staff photo / David Skolnick Karen Zehr of Warren, in a dinosaur costume, is joined by Jamie Sherman of Niles, left, and Barbara Wike of Niles at an Issue 1 results watch party at the Trumbull County Democratic Party’s headquarters in McKinley Heights on Tuesday.

Ohio voters, including those in Mahoning and Trumbull counties, rejected state Issue 1 on the special election ballot that sought to make it more difficult to get state constitutional amendments approved.

The issue, which was viewed as a litmus test for a proposed abortion rights amendment on the Nov. 7 ballot, was heading for defeat as of press time Tuesday night with those supporting it, including Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, Protect Women Ohio and Ohio Senate President Matt Huffman, R-Lima, acknowledging it lost.

“The defeat of Issue 1 shows that Ohio is not a red state, it’s a rigged state,” Mahoning County Democratic Party Chairman Chris Anderson said. “I’m glad that voters got to see firsthand how deep the Republican corruption is in the General Assembly though this isn’t even the worst thing they did this session.”

The issue lost in Trumbull County 57 percent to 43 percent, according to unofficial totals Tuesday.

The issue lost in Mahoning County 58 percent to 42 percent, according to unofficial totals.

“This is a statement Ohioans made,” Karen Zehr, secretary of the Trumbull County Democratic Party, said. “They said no to the undemocratic power grab of Columbus politicians.”

That it was defeated in Trumbull County shows “voters want good government. They don’t want overreach,” Zehr added.

Republicans have made great strides in Trumbull in the past few years.

Zehr said regarding “all those statements about (Trumbull) being red, we are very encouraged by what we saw with voters in the county. It’s a statement by people about what type of government we want.”

The Republican legislators who represent Trumbull County — state Reps. Nick Santucci, R-Howland; Mike Loychik, R-Bazetta; and state Sen. Sandra O’Brien, R-Lenox — all voted to put Issue 1 on Tuesday’s special election ballot.

“They need to listen to their constituents,” Zehr said. “Their constituents have valid questions about who they’re serving. It was a statement by voters that they want their representatives to serve them and not rule over them.”

Anderson said of the Mahoning County results: “It shows that when we get back to the fundamentals of blocking and tackling and working with our partner groups” we can accomplish great things.

He added: “When we row in the same direction we see the formula to righting the ship and stemming the tide of extremism in the Valley.”

Anderson said the defeat is “hopefully a wake-up call” to the Republican-controlled General Assembly that it “should get back to legislating for the rest of us and not the fringes of their party.”

Tex Fischer, first vice chairman of the Mahoning County Republican Party, said of the results: “It’s definitely disappointing. It’s not something people wanted. People didn’t vote on this along party lines. There’s definitely populist streaks in the (Republican) Party in Ohio and that shows with these results. There are lessons to be learned.”

The opposition side to Issue 1, Fischer said, did “a good job. Their voters were motivated more than Republicans.”

Mahoning Republicans were “united to endorse Issue 1, but there are a lot of former Democrats who are Republicans” in the county “and they care about the ability to be a check on politicians rather than take the conservative viewpoint that it should be difficult to amend the constitution.”

Issue 1, the only item on Tuesday’s ballot, would have required at least 60 percent support for future constitutional amendments to pass rather than the existing simple majority of 50 percent plus one.

That includes an abortion rights constitutional amendment that will be on the Nov. 7 ballot — and what several people on both sides of Issue 1 say was the main, or even the sole, reason for Tuesday’s election.

Also, if Issue 1 had passed, effective Jan. 1, 2024, proposed constitutional amendments would have needed at least 5 percent of those who voted in the last gubernatorial election from all of the state’s 88 counties to qualify for the ballot rather than the existing 44-county minimum.

The overall minimum of 10 percent of all total votes cast in the last gubernatorial election to qualify for the ballot would have remained the same. But proposed constitutional amendments would have no longer had a 10-day “cure period” to get more signatures if the initial effort falls short.

This was the first August special election with a statewide issue on the ballot in 97 years.

It also came after the Republican-controlled state Legislature voted in December to eliminate August special election with few exceptions. A statewide constitutional amendment wasn’t one of those exceptions, but the Ohio Supreme Court ruled that the election could be held.

The simply majority for passing constitutional amendments has been a part of the Ohio Constitution for 111 years.

Since then, Ohio has had 227 proposed constitutional amendments with 127 of them approved by voters. Of those 127, 49 received less than 60 percent of the vote.

Also, most of the constitutional amendments considered by voters came directly from the state Legislature and didn’t have to go through the signature process.

Of the 227 proposals, 71 were citizen-led with only 19 passed and 8 of them received less than 60 percent of the vote.