The Republican Party, as time goes by, has become less and less a fan of democracy. This is a direct result of both their policies being unpopular and their fealty to Donald Trump driving away voters who used to be in their camp. So they figure if they can't win a fair vote, they'll just change the rules.

This is happening in plenty of places, but all eyes will be on the anti-democratic effort in Ohio tomorrow to restrict citizens' ability to enact policies by direct democracy. Ohio Republicans, it bears pointing out, have already gerrymandered their state in extreme ways -- which leads to laughably lopsided results:

Donald J. Trump won 53.3 percent of Ohio's votes in the 2020 presidential election. But Republicans control 67 percent of seats in the State House -- and 79 percent in the State Senate.

That's some prime, grade-A gerrymandering, you've got to admit. But unfortunately for Republicans, Ohio is one of those states where long ago Progressives (and other reform-minded political parties) forced changes to wrest some political control out of the hands of the politicians and put it directly into the hands of The People. This happened way back in 1912, in Ohio.

People in Ohio can use direct democracy to change not just the state's laws but also the state's constitution. A measure can be put on the ballot just by collecting citizens' signatures, and then if it wins a majority of the votes cast in the election (50 percent plus one vote, in other words), it becomes law. And that prospect has Ohio Republicans terrified, because it might mean the state's voters are about to enshrine the right to an abortion into the state's constitution -- which would put the issue entirely out of reach of the legislature and the governor, forever.

The abortion measure has already qualified for the ballot, by gathering more than enough signatures. It will be on the ballot this November. Last December, the state legislature abolished special elections in August because the turnout for such elections has always been so dismally low. And, as the secretary of state said at the time, low turnouts are: "bad news for the civic health of our state." That was nine months ago. Now? Now Ohio Republicans are singing a very different tune, as they hustled this particular special election through the legislature specifically to fend off an abortion vote they were going to lose in November. It is all a blatant effort to change the rules in the middle of the game. The proposed measure Ohioans will vote on tomorrow would essentially double the requirements for signatures to get a ballot measure approved, and (more importantly) would raise the threshold vote-count for state constitutional amendments to pass from a simple majority to 60 percent.

They didn't just pull this number out of thin air, either:

Thwarting that effort [to enshrine abortion rights in the state constitution] is at the root of the proposal to raise the threshold for approving a constitutional amendment to 60 percent from a simple majority. Supporters of abortion rights prevailed in all six ballot measures that were put to voters last year, including those in conservative states like Kentucky and Kansas. But none of those measures received more than 60 percent of the vote. (Ohio's ballot measure would also require signatures from each of the state's 88 counties, up from 44 now.)

This, obviously, is about as anti-democratic as you can get. Republicans have taken the stance of: "If you can't win, just move the goalposts until you think you can," plain and simple. Tomorrow will show if they are successful at drastically limiting direct democracy or not.

As mentioned, Ohio Republicans didn't pull the 60 percent figure out of thin air -- the abortion question has been solidly polling in the high 50s -- much better than a simple majority, in other words, but still below that 60 percent mark. Moving the goalposts might work exactly as the Republicans intend, in other words.

There haven't been a whole lot of polls on the issue, and since it is a special election held in August (when few people are thinking about politics), it might all come down to which side turns out enough voters. Then again, maybe it won't be all that close. It all depends on which polling turns out to be closer to the truth.

The two most-recent polls (done in mid-to-late July) show wildly different results. The first showed a whopping 57 percent of the voters in Ohio were against Issue 1 (the initiative they will be voting on tomorrow), while only 26 percent supported it (with 17 percent undecided). That's a pretty comfortable margin of error, you might think (better than 2-to-1 against), since Issue 1 only has to pass or fail under the current rules -- meaning with only 50 percent plus one vote.

But the second poll wasn't so lopsided. In fact, it put support for Issue 1 at 42.4 percent, and opposition to it at only 41.0 percent (with 16.6 percent undecided). That's an enormous difference in polling results, which means one of these pollsters is going to wind up with some egg on their faces tomorrow night.

If the Ohio GOP is successful in limiting direct democracy to a threshold they think will allow them to continue passing wildly unpopular abortion restrictions, then you can bet your bottom dollar this effort will be replicated in other red states where direct democracy (ballot initiatives) exist. If there really is an unreachable ceiling of around 60 percent in red states for abortion rights, then moving the goalposts to this amount will ensure the voice of the people will not matter. So even though this is a special election in one state in the dog days of August, it's going to be an important one going forward. If the voters approve Issue 1 in Ohio tomorrow, we will almost certainly see a lot more copycat attempts in other states run by Republicans in the very near future.

-- Chris Weigant

Follow Chris on Twitter: @ChrisWeigant