Most Tuolumne County voters support abortion rights
Final results from the Nov. 8 general election show a narrow majority of Tuolumne County voters supported protecting the ability of a woman to get an abortion in California, despite also overwhelmingly picking Republican candidates in all partisan state and federal races.
Proposition 1, which enshrines the right to an abortion and contraceptive access in the state Constitution, received 11,554 “yes” votes to 11,035 “no” votes in the results released Monday afternoon by the county Elections Office that included all of the 23,482 ballots that were cast.
There were also 885 county voters who didn’t check a box either way for Proposition 1, and eight who marked both “yes” and “no.”
At the same time, county voters overwhelmingly supported Republican candidates over Democrats by landslide margins ranging from a high of 30 to no fewer than 22 percentage points.
The statewide results went the near-opposite way in many cases, with the most up-to-date totals showing Democrats sweeping all races for state office and U.S. senator by similarly wide margins.
A much larger majority statewide also supported Proposition 1, which received 67% of the vote as of Tuesday, tied for the largest
share either for or against any of the other six state ballot measures.
Tuolumne isn’t the only traditionally conservative county in the Democratdominated Golden State where voters supported Proposition 1 while also largely still favoring Republican candidates, some of whom are on the record opposing the measure and abortion in general.
The Sacramento Bee reported last week that “yes” votes for Proposition 1 were also leading at the time in Placer, El Dorado, Sierra and Nevada counties, all of which, like Tuolumne, also had Republican candidates who opposed abortion far ahead of Democrats in other races.
Calaveras County, where Republicans also did better than Democrats by similar margins to Tuolumne County, also had Proposition 1 ahead by 267 votes in the most recent results available on its website.
U.S. Rep. Tom McClintock, R-elk Grove, cruised to reelection in the newly drawn 5th Congressional District that includes both Tuolumne and Calaveras counties. He received 64% and 61% of the vote in Calaveras and Tuolumne counties, respectively.
Mcclintock has received 0% rating from the group NARAL Pro-choice America and made his opposition to Proposition 1 known in his recommendations for state ballot measures posted on his campaign website.
“Before we hear the ‘My Body My Choice’ refrain, pardon a simple question. Does YOUR choice stop YOUR heart from beating, or suck YOUR brains from your skull? If the answer is no, maybe there’s somebody else whose body is affected,” he wrote of what he dubbed the “Margaret Sanger Eugenics Act.”
Proposition 1 was put on the ballot after the Supreme Court decided in June to overturn Roe v. Wade, the 1973 decision that stood as the precedent protecting the right to have an abortion nationwide, sparking a flurry of protests and activism across the country.
Hundreds attended rallies in Sonora throughout the summer organized by the Mother Lode Women’s March group to protest the overturning of Roe v. Wade, though some opponents of abortion at the time said they believed the community largely was in favor of the Supreme Court’s decision.
“We understand that our community leans toward disapproval of Roe,” Jerad Moss, executive director of the Foothill Pregnancy Center, a religious-based nonprofit organization that opposes abortion and provides free services for pregnant women and their families, wrote in an email to The Union Democrat earlier this year. “We are a conservative pocket of California.”
Republican political consultant Mike Madrid told the Sacramento Bee last week that he wasn’t surprised voters in some of the state’s Republicandominated regions aligned themselves with the prochoice measure.
“What you saw on election night was the defection of Republican collegeeducated women voting against the Republican Party and voting pro-choice where they could,” Madrid said to the Sacramento Bee.
Tuolumne County voters aligned closely with the rest of the state on six other state ballot measures, with a majority voting “no” on propositions 26 and 27 that would have allowed online gambling and sports wagering on tribal lands; “no” on Proposition 29 that would have regulated staffing at dialysis clinics; “no” on Proposition 30 that would have imposed a new tax on millionaires to pay for electric vehicle subsidies and infrastructure; and “yes” on Proposition 28 to direct more state funding to arts and music programs in schools; and “yes” on Proposition 31 banning the sale of flavored tobacco products.
The final results did not change the outcomes of any county-level school and special district races or ballot measures from what they were in the results released on Nov. 10, which included all but 680 ballots that were processed and counted since that time.