Brian Lehrer: It's the Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning, everyone. We started yesterday's show, as some of you'll remember, by looking closely at the movement to enshrine abortion rights in Republican states using ballot measures, referendums, where red state legislatures have been passing very restrictive abortion laws. Well, they had this referendum against the referendum in Ohio yesterday. That measure lost by 14 points.

They failed, the Republicans did, to make it harder to pass the upcoming abortion rights referendum. 57% voted against making it harder to pass a referendum, to just 43%, with nearly all the votes now counted. A breakdown of some of that from the New York Times shows the power of abortion rights as an issue that reshapes elections. That's the way they frame it. "Nearly twice as many people voted on this ballot measure than cast ballots in primaries for Governor, Senate House and other marquess statewide races last year," says the Times. The issue had major turnout power.

On the percentages in both Democratic and Republican parts of the state, the Times notes that in Athens, Ohio, for example, a Democratic bastion, home of Ohio University, voters opposed this measure to make it harder to pass the abortion rights measure by 71%. Last fall, former representative, Tim Ryan, the Democratic candidate for Senate, got 61%.

Abortion rights, in effect, got 10 more points than Tim Ryan, who was pretty popular among Democrats. The Times says there were signs that moderate and even some conservative voters were against the idea of making referendums harder to pass. Last November, 66% of voters in Defiance County, a conservative area in the northwest corner of the state backed Republican J. D. Vance, for Senate. Only 61% supported the proposal to amend the state constitution yesterday.

In a conservative area, abortion rights in effect were five points more popular and with a big majority, 66% than their new very-- Let me reframe that a little bit. I misstated that a little bit. Only 61% supported the proposed amendment to the state constitution. In a very conservative area, abortion rights in effect were five points more popular than J. D. Vance.

We'll talk about the results now but also use the opportunity to discuss the whole idea of direct versus representative democracy with historian, Joshua Zeitz, contributing writer at POLITICO Magazine and author of books including Building the Great Society: Inside Lyndon Johnson's White House, one called White Ethnic New York, and his new book, Lincoln's God: How Faith Transformed a President and a Nation. He's got an article in POLITICO Magazine called Ohio's Abortion Ban is Rekindling a Century-Old Battle Over Direct Democracy. Joshua, thanks for joining. Welcome to WNYC.

Joshua Zeitz: Oh, it's a pleasure. Thank you for having me, Brian.

Brian Lehrer: What's the significance of what happened yesterday in Ohio as you see it?

Joshua Zeitz: Well, I think there are probably two strains here. The most obvious one is that it's very clear, I think from the referendum in Ohio and similar referenda or more direct referenda in places like Kansas and Iowa on abortion rights, that the Republican Party has become the dog that caught the car. For the better part of 50 years, abortion politics has been, or anti-choice politics has been a motivating factor for the GOP. Now having won its day at the Supreme Court, it has flipped the script on itself.

One of the knocks against the pro-choice movement from people including Ruth Bader Ginsburg had been that by securing the right to reproductive freedom in the courts the reproductive rights movement never had to actually build a popular base of support politically. On the contrary, it was the pro-life movement that did so. I think that script has been flipped now, and it's very clear the Republican Party has a pretty big problem on its hands in terms of abortion rights.

More fundamentally, and I think more directly related to the article I wrote for POLITICO, at stake yesterday in Ohio was the very notion of the citizen's right to amend the Constitution by popular vote, which is something that stretches back to the progressive era. It's very clear that the Ohio State legislature is not particularly representative of the state as a whole. It's a Republican state, but nowhere near as Republican as the super majorities of the GOP enjoys in the legislature.

They tried to force through a very unpopular measure in the form of a six-week abortion ban. Then they attempted to change the rules in midstream and require a super majority for an abortion rights referendum and it failed spectacularly. That suggests not only that there's pretty widespread support for access to reproductive services, but also a majority of Ohio, including many people who probably voted for J. D. Vance and who'll probably vote for Donald Trump, they don't want their right to amend the constitution by direct referendum to be curtailed.

Brian Lehrer: Those numbers I was giving from the New York Times for that conservative area in the northwest part of the state, Defiance County, Ohio, I'll give them again because I think I gave them in a confusing way a minute ago. The Times said in November, 66% of voters in Defiance County backed Republican J. D. Vance for Senate. Only 61% supported the proposal to amend the state constitution.

It was still a majority that was going to go with the Republicans on this to make it harder to pass the upcoming abortion rights referendum but by five points less than J. D. Vance was popular. We might look at that and say, well, it's only five points. They still got 61% willing to let them do what they were going to do. Elections are decided at the margins so often in American politics. If you do five points worse in one election than you did in another election, you may well lose.

Joshua Zeitz: That's exactly right. Sherrod Brown is on the ballot next year in Ohio. He is certain to face a very tight race. There are very few senators left on either side of the aisle who represent a state that the opposite party carried in the presidential race. He's almost certain to have a very tight race. To your point, if he's able to shave three or four or five points off of his Republican challenger simply on the basis of abortion politics and reproductive rights, that's the difference between a win and a loss, most likely.

This is not somebody who's going to lose by 10 points. He's either going to win or lose by one or two. This is clearly a motivating issue for voters, not just Democrats, for independents, and even for some Republicans as well, clearly.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, we can take calls on a few tracks here with Josh Zeitz this morning. One, any more callers from Ohio? We had some Ohio callers yesterday. How are you feeling this morning now that these results are in? What's the local analysis like this morning? Who's reading the Columbus dispatch this AM? Who's reading the Cleveland plane dealer? Who wants to talk about what you're hearing on Ohio broadcast media and give us your take on what happened here yesterday and implications for the future, both for abortion rights, perhaps nationally, as well as for Ohio politics?

Remember, Ohio used to be a swing state. We talked yesterday how it was the ultimate swing state in the 2004 presidential election. It's more of a red state now. What does this mean that this anti-referendum referendum, which was taken as a surrogate vote on abortion rights, went down to defeat? 212-433-WNYC, if you're in Ohio, or anyone else can call on that.

Also, we're going to expand the conversation now with historian Josh Zeitz to the whole idea of direct democracy. There are pros and cons of direct democracy. We see this outburst of direct democracy in the United States ever since the Dobbs ruling restricted abortion rights last year. As one of our guests pointed out yesterday, we're also seeing it used on the progressive side for some other things, including the expansion of adult recreational use, marijuana legalization around the country.

Many states that have that got it by direct democracy, not by their state legislatures and other ways too. It's also been used by the right over time. We will discuss that as we get into this history. What do you think about the pros and cons of direct democracy?

We will even touch on Joshua Zeitz's new book, Lincoln's God: How Faith Transformed a President and a Nation. He reveals in there that if people early on knew what Lincoln really thought about religion, he may never have gotten elected. We may have a confederacy to this day. We'll get into that history too. All those things on the table with historian, Josh Zeitz. 212-433-WNYC, call or text, 212-433-9692.

Good morning, Cincinnati. Good morning, Dayton. Good morning, anywhere in Ohio, where you happen to be listening to us right now, and good morning, anywhere else. You can also tweet @BrianLehrer.

All right, Joshua, your history article on direct democracy takes us back to 1912 in Ohio, and nationally. What was happening in 1912?

Joshua Zeitz: Well, I would even back it up a couple of years before that. 1912 was the year that Ohio adopted a new state constitution that included a provision for direct referenda, and referenda that would allow the citizens of the state by a simple majority to amend their own constitution. It wasn't the first state to adopt this concept. States like California under the progressive governor, Hiram Johnson, and states like Wisconsin, under progressive governor, Robert La Follette, led the way.

To set the context, in the late 19th century and early 20th century, you saw a tremendous concentration of wealth and power. This was an era in which large holding companies or corporations would come snatching up and eating up smaller companies. You had something like 300 companies by the early 1900s by, 1904, or something like, that were controlling 40%, 50% of all manufacturing in the country. They controlled a great deal of the-- They controlled the levers of government.

To understand why popular democracy and initiatives and referenda were such a popular progressive cause, bear in mind that most state legislatures in this period were pretty undemocratic. There were several methods by which business interests and political machines managed to control the levers of government.

One was that you didn't have what in a lot of states what we would call, one man, one vote or one woman, one vote. Apportionment was done by county or by municipality. You could have rural counties or rural towns that were entitled to have a member of the State Legislature.

Let's use Connecticut as an example. You could have a really small town in northeast Connecticut that maybe had 800 people. It would get a legislator. The City of New Haven, which probably had a population 100, 200 times that size, would also get one legislator. This was the case in most states. Frankly, the Supreme Court didn't actually outlaw this practice until the early 1960s, around 1962, I believe.

What you effectively had was a rising generation of urban workers, many of them of whom were immigrants, and non-protestants, a lot of Jewish and Italian immigrants coming from Southern and Eastern Europe. They were feeling this-- They were effectively disenfranchised because they were concentrated in cities where apportionment was such that they never enjoyed legislative representation on par with their growing share of the population. That was one method by which the state legislatures tended to be pretty anti-Democratic.

The second was simply through gerrymandering, good old-fashioned gerrymandering. Once you had business and rural interests that were able in combination with each other, to control the legislature, they can ensure that they control that power, in perpetuity through gerrymandering, which is very similar to what you're seeing in Ohio today. Ohio is a Republican state more or less now.

That having been said, the proportion of the statewide vote the Democrats win is not reflected in the number of competitive legislative and congressional districts. The Republicans have pretty well gerrymandered it. You see a pretty strong parallel between today and what you might have seen 100 years ago.

Remember that up until Woodrow Wilson's term in office, first term in office, state legislatures elected United States senators. It wasn't just the case that malapportionment and gerrymandering affected government at the local level. It was also the case that they were able to exert control over the selection of the United States senators. Moreover, you often saw state legislatures asserting control over large cities and municipalities.

Effectively, big cities like, again, maybe we'll use an example from Ohio, a city like Cincinnati or Akron may not have enjoyed full home rule at the time. A rising urban population felt itself to be pretty disenfranchised, as did some rural interest as well, farmers who had been maybe active in the populist movement in the 1890s.

What they could do is vote on a municipal level for mayors who would be reformed-minded. They could vote obviously, for governors because you can't really gerrymander a gubernatorial election, although Mississippi continues to have a statewide version of the Electoral College, which effectively does allow for gerrymandering in a gubernatorial election. By and large, if you could get in the door, if you could elect a reform-minded governor, you had a chance at enacting reforms, like direct referenda and initiatives.

Those were born out of a desire to restore to the citizenry, the powers that they had effectively been denied, the power of self-government through a combination of gerrymandering and malapportionment.

Brian Lehrer: Direct democracy, I think I'm taking from your answer and from your article, was born in large measure to counter the increasing power of corporate business interests over a century ago.

Joshua Zeitz: That's exactly right. Those corporate business interests had been pretty effective at securing for themselves in perpetuity, it seems, a grasp over state legislatures, and in some cases, municipal governments as well. Direct democracy in the form of initiatives and referenda were one way for citizens to take that power back.

It's telling that in the 1912 presidential election, which saw a three-way race between the incumbent President Taft, and between former President Teddy Roosevelt, a progressive, and New Jersey governor, Woodrow Wilson, who also identified as a progressive. In that race, the two progressive candidates, TR and Wilson, both endorsed initiative and referenda, and they did so explicitly as a measure by which citizens could take back power that had been seized from them by subterfuge, really.

TR actually endorsed it on-site in Ohio in a speech before the Ohio constitutional convention that year. It was very well understood that these concepts were deeply aligned with the progressive calls in 1912.

Brian Lehrer: You noted in your political article that business interests were also supporting this Ohio referendum to make direct democracy harder. Overwhelmingly, we've been talking about this referendum as having to do with abortion rights. In your view, did the business supporters of this ballot measure have other agendas because presumably, they don't care either way about abortion rights, they just care about their profits?

Joshua Zeitz: Yes, the head of the Ohio Chamber of Commerce, who I believe is a former Republican congressman, stated in a number of interviews that the Chamber's support for yesterday's referendum, which went down, which again, would have raised the bar to 60% for the fall referendum on reproductive rights, he claimed that the Chamber did not have abortion politics in mind, and they didn't want to weigh in on that particular issue. I would take him at face value, that he's probably more concerned that people will manage to get a $15 minimum wage referendum on the ballot or extra environmental and labor protections.

It is telling that as was the case, 120 years ago, you have the states' business interests attempting to curtail popular democracy or keep it at bay. They clearly have their own agenda that may not have anything to do with abortion rights or reproductive rights. They seem pretty comfortable with the current state of affairs in which a heavily gerrymandered legislature is able to do pretty unpopular things. It's a tell when any interest steps in and says, "We absolutely must prevent citizens from adopting constitutional provisions by a majority vote." Tells you that they don't want that.

Brian Lehrer: One of the things that we're learning from a lot of recent politics is to be afraid of state legislatures [laughs] especially gerrymandered state legislatures that aren't really representative of the population of the states. You were just describing how they did that a century ago, and also that Ohio, among other states, and apparently more true in Republican states than Democratic states-- Excuse me. I swallowed the wrong way. That's happening.

I want to finish the thought, because this even reminds me of one of the main ways that Trump tried to steal the 2020 election. You write in your article, "Looking back a hundred years in a nation where state legislatures still elected United States senators." I think that's something that a lot of people around today don't even realize was ever the case, that there was not direct election of United States senators. State legislatures elected the senators.

That's what the Trump campaign in effect wanted with this independent legislature's case before the Supreme Court and what it was arguing for in the fall of 2020. After the election results came in, they were trying to get state legislatures to say, "No, no, we can overturn the certified election results because we, the state legislatures, have the ultimate say."

Joshua Zeitz: I think that's right. Now I don't want to overstate the point. I live in New Jersey where, in theory, we have a non-partisan commission that does redistricting at the legislative and congressional levels every 10 years. In reality, it tends to be a very clubby-type arrangement between both the Republican and Democratic state parties, where it becomes an incumbent protection racket. It's gerrymandering in the interest of protecting incumbents from both parties and diminishing the number of competitive districts at the congressional legislative level.

Then you have states like New York where this is an issue as well. I wouldn't want to over-reduce this to being something that only one party has done. However, it is the case that extreme gerrymandering has been pretty particular in recent years to Republican-controlled states. When those legislatures are able to write laws for themselves that effectively prevent them from ever losing a supermajority in states like North Carolina or Alabama or Ohio, then they've effectively circumvented popular democracy, and it can be a real problem.

In Alabama, the Supreme Court has ordered the state legislature to redistrict in mid-cycle its congressional districts because they were so badly gerrymandered in a way that violates the 1965 Voting Rights Act. Then the legislature simply ignored the courts and redistricted in a way that clearly violates the court's order.

When a legislature feels that it is beyond any controlling force, then it effectively becomes an undemocratic body. This is a problem in states like Ohio as well, where the State Supreme Court ordered the legislature to redistrict, and the legislature simply ignored this State Supreme Court.

At issue is not just a question as to whether you need 60% or 50% to pass a constitutional provision by referendum. It's whether one party has opted out of the idea that elections have consequences and that elected officials should be responsive to the citizenry and not the other way around so it is troubling.

Brian Lehrer: Here is Lydia in Brooklyn but who grew up in Ohio. I think, Lydia, you're on WNYC with historian Josh Zeitz. Hi.

Lydia: Hi. I grew up in Greene County in Yellow Springs, Ohio, which is similar to Athens, Ohio, where I went to college, go Bobcats. I just want to say that--

Brian Lehrer: A pretty progressive area. If you're saying it's similar to Athens, it's a pretty progressive area, yes?

Lydia: Yes, but even like teeny tinier and even probably in a more red kind of circle, especially in the last 10 years. My mom helped to collect signatures for the ballot reform in November for abortion.

I wanted to mention that one of the big issues with Issue 1 was not only that it's 60%, but that all 88 counties have to be represented when you're collecting signatures, and that the number of signatures to even get a ballot measure doubles. In these super rural counties, you could drive for an hour and only get five signatures but have this insane threshold that you need to even get things on the ballot 60% a size.

I just wanted to say that Greene County went 50/50, and that is shocking to me, knowing going there every year for the last couple of years for months over the summer, seeing how many Trump signs are everywhere. I'm heartened and I'm hopeful that this measure in November will pass and that people are thinking more deeply about their rights and protecting them.

Brian Lehrer: You take that 50-50 as a lot of your family's conservative neighbors in the county support basic abortion rights if no other progressive item?

Lydia: Maybe, but I also take it as maybe there's some more deep thinking that people have a right to vote on things and that those decisions shouldn't just be made for them. I think in talking to people in Ohio, and I was just there for a couple of weeks, that even my mom collecting signatures for November, people who were clearly very conservative said, "Well, I think people should be able to vote on it. I think it should be on the ballot."

I am hopeful that Issue 1 going down means that there are more Ohioans who want to exercise their rights to vote on these things. The turnout alone is exciting. I think that the secretary of state of Ohio assumed nobody would show up for an August special election, and that is clearly wrong and a testament to all of the progressive organizations in Ohio who really rallied a broad range of turnout and support to vote this issue down.

Brian Lehrer: Lydia, thank you very much. More in a minute on the Ohio results on direct democracy in general. Elisa in Washington Heights, you're going to be the next call, hang in there. Even on Christianity, according to Abraham Lincoln, which is the subject of a new book by our guest historian Josh Zeitz. Stay with us.

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Brian Lehrer on WNYC as we talk about the defeat in Ohio yesterday of the anti-referendum referendum, the ballot measure that would have required 60% plus one of voters in the state of Ohio to pass a ballot measure, a direct democracy action, rather than the current 50% plus one. We all know that this was aimed at an abortion rights referendum that's going to be on the ballot in November, making it harder.

As our last caller who was from Ohio was pointing out, it would have also made getting ballot measures on the ballot much harder by requiring a much higher set of hurdles to collect petition signatures to even place the questions in the first place. We're talking about this with historian Joshua Zeitz, who wrote an article in POLITICO Magazine called Ohio’s Abortion Ban is Rekindling a Century-Old Battle Over Direct Democracy. Elisa in Washington Heights, you're on WNYC. Hello, Elisa.

Elisa: I have a specific question and then a more general question. Specifically, I was wondering whether Mr. Zeitz knows the demographics of this election, how much the participation of Gen Z and Millennials was involved.

Secondarily, I'm very interested in the fact that we have, within the race education issue, we have a reconsideration of reconstruction and how much the late 19th century has affected where we are now. I'm wondering whether there is something on social media.

Being a Boomer, I remember in the 1980s when in California and places out West the Republicans were on every school port, were in every state assembly. There was a snobbishness to getting involved with the local politics in a number of ways on the progressive spectrum. I'm just wondering whether your guests could weigh in on that a bit.

Brian Lehrer: Two big questions. First, on the demographics, I haven't seen it. I can try to look it up if you don't know it, but it is very interesting to hear if this question with abortion rights implied got younger voters to turn out more, got women to turn out more, whether the balance of who actually the voters were yesterday were different than in other Ohio elections. Have you happened to see that, Josh?

Joshua Zeitz: I suspect we'll learn more in the coming days, but I did note, I was following some democratic strategists who crunch these numbers. They were looking at the early vote two days ago. I do recall seeing that the early vote was, relative to other elections in Ohio, that Black women were over-represented, and younger voters as well. It does seem that the turnout itself, at least in the early vote, might have been skewed toward groups that are going to be naturally more friendly to reproductive rights.

I think it's also telling though, that organized labor really mobilized against this referendum. Those unions have to be careful. They probably represent quite a few people who don't support reproductive rights. To our earlier point, I think the unions understood that any effort to curtail the right of the citizens to amend their constitution by popular vote, was ultimately going to redound on them if they felt that they needed to circumvent a gerrymandered legislature to try to pass or enshrine in the state constitution, greater worker protections or health and safety protections.

I would imagine that because of that mobilization, you're going to see an electorate that probably looks a little different from the state electorate in past campaigns, but we'll find out more in the days to come.

Brian Lehrer: How about her larger history question regarding reconstruction and the teaching of the history of race?

Joshua Zeitz: That's clearly bound up in so many of these state battles right now. I don't know that this is necessarily the answer we're looking for here, but I think one of the reasons that writers and historians are looking back to the era of reconstruction today is that that is the last period when you had a really credible threat to the functioning of popular democracy.

It's a period back then when it would have been Southern Democrats, as opposed to Republicans who really attempted to negate the effects of the Civil War and prevent Republican coalitions of ex-enslaved people, and white Republicans in the South from forming majoritarian state governments or local governments. They effectively tried to overturn that through any variety of mechanisms, whether they were violent, or just through voter fraud and ballot stuffing.

I think that today, as was the case then, we have a political party- it's not Democrats anymore, it's Republicans- who have opted out of this notion that you sometimes lose elections and that that has a consequence. If you have one party that just refuses to acknowledge the consequences of losing an election or refuses to lose an election, as you did during Reconstruction, you have a real grave threat to democracy.

I think that is one of the reasons Congress in 1870, and then throughout the 1870s, passed a series of reconstruction acts known as the enforcement acts. Those were meant to provide the federal government with a mechanism to fight back against these anti-democratic practices. Ironically, the Enforcement Act of 1870 is one of the reconstruction or acts that Donald Trump has been charged with violating in the January 6 cases.

I think Reconstruction is a vitally important part of history, particularly today, and it's one that it would behoove us to revisit and think about more consistently.

Brian Lehrer: We're celebrating direct democracy today because of what just happened in Ohio, but is it always the best form of democracy?

Here's a tweet from a listener who writes, "I live in California, and have mixed feelings on propositions," meaning direct democracy. "In addition to the infamous Proposition 13, which restricted property taxes in California 1970s, Uber and Lyft recently protected their profit model via referendum. Anti-gay marriage Prop 8 was also referendum." With those examples, Josh, is direct democracy, always the best democracy?

Joshua Zeitz: It's not necessarily the best democracy. I think as was the case in the progressive era, it became a necessity when state legislatures simply evolved into anti-democratic and unrepresentative bodies. If you have a functioning state democracy, small d, in which there are competitive districts, and people can sort out these issues through regular elections and through regular legislative process, then you may not need to resort to things like initiatives and referenda, which can be messier, and they can also particularly if they're done on a simple majority basis. I think I would probably flip the question, though.

There's certainly mischief that can be done and they can certainly lead to a messy outcome and a messy process. You can see a state constitution becoming kind of a Frankenstein-type compilation of measures that are passed at certain moments in time by referendum.

I guess I'd flipped the question. If you don't like this in Ohio, or if you don't like it in other states, are you willing to actually draw their legislative lines that allow the citizens of that state to affect outcomes through regular legislative elections?

If you had more representative districts in Ohio, I think it's an open question as to whether the state legislature would have passed the six-week abortion ban. It's really unpopular, and people could have lost their seats, but when you maneuver the system such that there's no electoral consequence for doing wildly unpopular things, then you probably do need something like direct referendum to balance that out.

I would say to the Chamber of Commerce in Ohio, if you don't like this process, maybe you ought to look at making Ohio a more democratic state, small d, democratic state, in which the regular legislative process reflects the will of the voters. if you're not willing to do that, then voters are going to insist that there's a way to circumvent the legislature.

Brian Lehrer: To go one step further on the pros and cons of direct democracy, in this case, we're talking about a right that was taken away by the Supreme Court, the right to an abortion. In many other cases, like in the segregated South, in the civil rights era, the Jim Crow era, it was the Supreme Court that ultimately provided some basic rights. When if you took a statewide referendum in Mississippi or Alabama or pick your southern state, there's no way that basic civil rights would have been passed.

We need representative democracy, which is a cooling saucer against the popular mob, against populists in the negative sense. We need the courts as bulwarks against mob rule, which is the downside of direct democracy. There are cases where that's the case, there are cases where direct democracy overturns a corrupt elite, like maybe in this case.

Joshua Zeitz: Yes. If you look at the famous Scopes case, in the 1920s, which we today remember, fundamentally, as a battle between modern science and fundamentalist religion, there was something actually more fundamental at play there. The two lead attorneys in that case, Clarence Darrow, who was representing the teacher, John Scopes, and then William Jennings Bryan, the former Secretary of State and former congressman and presidential candidate who represented the local school board, Jennings point was that voters have the right to decide what was taught in their schools.

Tennessee was a very religious state and that parents and voters had a right, in the same way, I guess that say, somebody from Florida today might argue that the state government, duly elected by the citizens, has a right to decide what's taught in those schools, whereas Darrow's argument was that there are fundamental individual liberties that the state is not allowed to take away, including by popular majority. You had a tension between majoritarian liberalism and civil liberty liberalism.

That tension resides today in debates as well. I'm sure that there are states that would probably easily pass popular referenda by a majority vote and do things that liberals today would be really uncomfortable with, including regulating what kids can read and be exposed to in school. There is always that danger, and always that tension, but it will never work itself out until we have courts and legislatures that fairly reflect a fair political process.

You mentioned the Supreme Court. That's another problem that we have in the current moment, where you have a number of justices who are filling seats that they probably shouldn't have been filling, or who were appointed by presidents who lost the popular vote. You see the same crisis of legitimacy, overtaking the court as well in the courts more generally.

I think much as we were in the 1870s or the early 20th century, we are facing a moment when a lot of our democratic institutions are being bent to the point where they're going to break. I think that what happened in Ohio reflects people fighting back against that.

Brian Lehrer: With problems in the context of democracy with the current Supreme Court, and always with the Electoral College, should there be or have there ever been national referendums to get around something like the Electoral College or the idea that we're electing presidents recently without the popular vote because of the Electoral College? We talked about referendums on the state level. I don't know that we've ever had that in this country, a national referendum. Have we? Should we?

Joshua Zeitz: I think that the closest equivalent to that would be state ratification conventions when there have been constitutional amendments put up for ratification. I think, and I could be wrong about this though, the last moment in time when you had something approximating this would have been the 1970s and the debate over the Equal Rights Amendment, the ERA where citizens have the ability to weigh in on a state by state basis as to whether it should be ratified. In some states, it was the ratification process was done by referendum effectively. In others, it was done through the state legislature.

That is probably the "closest equivalent" that we have for any national mechanism like initiative or referendum. Other than that probably the state ratifying conventions back in the 1780s would have been the closest equivalent. It's not a function that's built into the Constitution. I don't know. It would be an interesting debate that I think political scientists could weigh in on as to whether this works in other countries and whether it could or should work here.

Brian Lehrer: Before you go, let me give the opportunity to plug and give one central thought from your new book, Lincoln's God: How Faith Transformed a President and a Nation. Let me set this up by asking you, Josh, back around the time of the Civil War, the time of slavery, weren't both sides using their Christian faith as a rationale for their positions, including the enslavers?

Joshua Zeitz: They certainly were. The major evangelical churches, the Baptists, Methodists, and Presbyterians actually split along sectional lines in the 1840s over the question of slavery. Southerners could find plenty of scriptural texts that would allow them to argue that the Bible sanctioned the enslavement of people and had for quite some time.

On the flip side, many northern evangelicals could point to other provisions in the Bible that effectively said that slaveholding was sinful and that it was a violation of Christian practice and theology.

When those churches split in the 1840s, it freed people in the middle from having to really accommodate the other side, and so the churches in the North could become much more vociferous in their opposition to slavery because they no longer had to sue the sensibility of border state and Southern co-religionists who might have been offended by it. You saw a real polarisation along religious lines or within religious denominations leading up to and during the war.

Some historians argue that when the churches could no longer accommodate this split, that portended something much more severe that would occur politically, and indeed it did.

Brian Lehrer: With respect to Lincoln?

Joshua Zeitz: Lincoln is a fascinating character because, for most of his life, he's a non-believer. I argue in the book that there's a fair amount of evidence that he comes to some sort of Christian faith during the war. In the same way that millions of northerners viewed the events of the 1860s through a religious lens, he also did as well. I think that his religious awakening was more iconoclastic. I wouldn't call him an evangelical Christian in the classic mode. His God was always more distant and unknowable, not a kind of personal God or didn't feel a personal relationship with Christ in the way that his evangelical co-religionists might.

He also recognized the power of the evangelical churches band of religion as a motivating force and a mechanism to explain and help frame the stakes of the war for the public. He became very savvy about weaving religious themes and language into his speeches and public papers. He openly courted the evangelical churches and leadership. In that sense, I think he's the first president and probably the only one up until, let's say Jimmy Carter or George W. Bush, to recognize and actively court and mobilize the religious vote in support of a particular agenda.

In his particular case, it was both to support the war effort and also to help bring the country along with the notion that the war would transform itself from a war for union to a war for emancipation.

Brian Lehrer: Historian Joshua Zeitz, Z-E-I-T-Z. His new book is Lincoln's God: How Faith Transformed a President and a Nation. His new article in POLITICO Magazine is called Ohio's Abortion Ban is Rekindling a Century-Old Battle Over Direct Democracy. Josh, thank you so much. This was great.

Joshua Zeitz: Thank you Brian. It was a pleasure. I appreciate it.

 

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