That was a scene in Kansas after a resounding victory for abortion rights at the polls,

Kansas voted overwhelmingly to protect the right to an abortion in the Kansas Constitution.

Not only was the result surprising in a status conservative as Kansas, but the margin

wasn't even close.

Kansas voters rejected the Republican anti-abortion measure by nearly 20 points.

What's remarkable about the outcome is that Kansas Republicans did everything they possibly

could to stack the deck in their favor.

For starters, they scheduled the vote during a typically low turnout August primary,

instead of during the general election in November, because yesterday's primary featured

mostly Republican candidates running against each other, and therefore would presumably attract

mostly Republican voters.

They made the language of the ballot measure so dense and confusing that a normal person

would be hard pressed to decipher it first glance, what a yes or a no vote even meant.

Republican groups even blasted out a barrage of misleading text messages to Kansas voters

the day before the vote that made it sound like voting yes would protect a woman's right

to choose when in fact the opposite was true.

But despite all those obstacles, voter turnout was massive, far from the usual trickle of

voters for an August primary in a midterm year, turnout approached presidential election

levels.

And the votes to defeat the anti-abortion measure didn't just come from the urban and suburban

counties where most of the state's Democrats live.

Many rural, solidly Republican counties also voted no, or they voted yes by incredibly

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