Three Predictions Regarding the Abortion Amendment Vote in Kansas Today

These four images are just a sampling of the yard signs which have sprouted everywhere in my west Wichita neighborhood over the past couple of months; a complete record of the public expressions about today's amendment vote in yards within just a half-mile of my home would have to include twice as many pics. Do the three "No" signs to the one "Yes" sign suggest that the Noes outnumber the Yeses three to one? No, actually around where we live, the Yeses visibly outnumber the Noes, though only slightly. But every single Yes sign I've seen--not just in our neighborhood, but everywhere throughout the city--is the same as the one in the lower right-hand corner, whereas I'm aware of a half-dozen different No signs besides the ones I've included here, put forward by a close to a dozen different organizations, and that diversity is worth thinking about. 

And yes, I have thought about it, as I have many other things having to do with this amendment, both politically and personally. And I've talked about it: to the Kansas Reflector, to Vox, to KAKE News, and to "Good Morning America" on ABC (both video and print). So after all this thinking and writing, I must have some opinions about the vote itself, right? Well, sure. Here are three, for anyone who cares. (And please remember: my track record when it comes to predictions is pretty horrible.)

1) I think the amendment will pass, but only barely, perhaps by as little as 1% of all the votes cast, or even less. I'm thinking about the election of 2020, where Democrats were as organized and well-funded and had as effective a get-out-the-vote operation in support of Barbara Bollier's U.S. Senate run as I've ever seen here in this state where Republicans outnumber Democrats by more than 2-to-1 in most precincts. And the result, at least by most readings of the election results, was that all that money mostly managed to activate lots of low-propensity, non-ideological, historically Republican voters...who ended up mostly voting for the Republican in the Senate race, which resulted in Bollier, despite benefiting from comparatively fantastic turn-out numbers, losing decisively. 

I suspect something similar will happen here. The Republican majority in Topeka wanted this election to take place during an August primary election, not a general election, assuming the more ideologically passionate primary electorate would be much more likely to vote to open the door to much more extreme anti-abortion legislation than Kansas currently has on the books than would the more ambivalent and diverse electorate that shows up in November. That assumption will work for them, I think, despite what will be a large increase in the turnout of Democrats and unaffiliated voters, thanks to the overturning of Roe v. Wade which generated great consternation, fear, and energy among defenders of abortion rights and unleashed a huge amount of anti-amendment money. The only reason, I predict, that their plan will still work in the face of that is because the conservative anti-abortion faithful will be joined by a small percentage of the less passionate Republican electorate that will show up to vote.

2) The smallness of the victory will throw Republican unity over legislative priorities and electoral prospects in Kansas into chaos. Note what I just said above: I'm guessing that the percentage of the low-propensity Republican voters who support the amendment will be "small"--sufficient to give the Yes campaign a win, but only a tiny one. Because along with the high turnout of Democrats and various unaffiliated, low-propensity abortion-rights defenders, you're going to see a good number of Republicans, many of whom that might otherwise score themselves as quite conservative, deeply distressed by this result. Between the purges of Republican moderates orchestrated by Governor Brownback between 2010 and 2014, and the Republicans that have taken themselves out of the game since Trumpism came to dominate most of the Kansas GOP, it's not like the Republican moderates have anything like the influence within the party which they had decades ago. Still, they are out there--and they depend upon those low-propensity Republican voters, along with the occasional moderate Democrat, to stay in office. The majority of those two groups will turn out to have voted "No" on the amendment, which means they will go into the November elections with ready-made target on their backs: they'll easily be painted as just another extremist, one of those who orchestrated the amendment and is looking to impose a total, no-exceptions, Oklahoma-style abortion ban. 

How will they defend themselves against that charge? I presume by promising like mad to their voters that they will never, ever, ever, support a super-majority challenge to Governor Kelly's veto of extreme abortion legislation. Will that work? It will for some of them. But between the tiny number of moderate Republicans in Topeka either running scared or losing to angry Democrats and the occasional Republican who feels totally burned by what their party pulled off in August, the Republican super-majority in Topeka, at least when it comes to abortion, will disappear. Governor Kelly will position herself and her veto pen as the only thing standing between the ambivalent, diverse voters of Kansas's 10 or so urban counties (which, given that the rural counties which make up 90% of Kansas's territory having been mostly losing population for decades, are the only ones you need to win) and a total abortion ban, and that be winning argument. And because the Republican leaders in Topeka aren't idiots, they're going to be able to see all of the above clearly, and will try to force (with perhaps only moderate success) the firebrands in their party to shut up about abortion bans, and will attempt to pretend that the plans for extreme legislation that has already been floated in Republican circles simply doesn't exist--none of which will make those who bankrolled the Yes campaign for the Republican party at all happy. 

This is Kansas, so surely the Republicans will get it back together soon enough. But they won't, I think, do so soon enough to prevent enough of a fracturing of the GOP in November for Kelly and the state Democratic party to give themselves a fighting chance during what otherwise will likely be a blood-bath for Democrats nationally. Among other things, watch the Value Them Both true-believers put Kris Kobach over the top in the Republican primary for attorney general, and then watch him struggle mightily to turn around his losing streak as he goes up against Chris Mann, who will probably benefit from a decent number of those ticked-off non-culture-warrior, normally-November-only Republican voters, in the general.

3) The overall result of the vote, insofar as public health is concerned, particularly for poor women, will be very bad, but there could be a possible silver lining. The immense and multifaceted organizational and electoral work which amendment opponents have done over the past months won't be entirely for naught; I think, when the votes are all counted, it will be clear that they kept an August primary voter in a strongly Republican state with a large, passionate, and well-organized anti-abortion minority from walking away with a major win, holding them to a squeaker of a victory, with all the consequences I'm imagining above. But in the long run, assuming the variables at work in the abortion debate nationally do not markedly change, extreme anti-abortion legislation will probably come to Kansas eventually anyway, maybe even an Oklahoma-style total ban, though it may take until the end of Governor Kelly's second term to do put it together. For tens of thousands of Kansans, that development, if it turns out to be correct, will be very bad indeed.

But by that time, there's also a decent chance that enough Republican legislators, in the wake of what surely at least a handful of them will consider a to have been a Pyrrhic victory this Augut, could be convinced to go against their leadership, and Kansas will finally expand Medicaid, as every state surrounding us (including Oklahoma!) already has. Obviously, that's not going to help Kansas women without the means to travel who find their ability to choose for themselves how to deal with the anguish of a crisis pregnancy taken away from them by the government (if you've read this far and actually are an undecided voter, then please, if you care about those women at all, get yourself to a polling station immediately, vote No, and make my predictions irrelevant!). But it may give those trying to help those women a resource to build upon into the future, and that's not nothing, even if it's not enough.

Guess we'll find out how wrong I am soon enough.