In Tuesday’s elections across the country, voters mostly expressed support for abortion rights, while affirming voter ID requirements and saying only U.S. citizens can vote in national elections.
Nearly 150 ballot measures were at stake in more than three dozen states. The largest and most expensive initiative was a proposed billionaire tax in California, but the outcome remained uncertain as votes continued to be counted Wednesday.
Yet voters have directly determined the direction of their state’s policies on other taxes, voting issues, transgender rights and much more.
Here’s a roundup of the results of the most notable ballot measures.
Right to abortion
Four ballot measures asked voters to amend their state’s constitution to affirm or remove the right to abortion.
In Nevada and Virginia, where access to abortion via fetal viability is legal, voters weighed in on ballot measures that would enshrine these rights in each state’s constitution.
Voters in both states overwhelmingly passed these initiatives by a margin of at least 24 percentage points. In Nevada, this vote was the second on the measure, as the state constitution requires citizen-initiated constitutional amendments to pass in two consecutive general elections.
In Missouri, voters rejected a GOP-backed ballot measure that proposed removing language enshrining the right to abortion from the state constitution that was added in 2024. That year, voters approved a constitutional amendment to protect the right to abortion until fetal viability.
However, in ruby-red Idaho — where abortion is almost completely banned — voters roundly rejected a ballot measure that would have created a legal right to abortion based on fetal viability.
Wealth taxes
In Washington state, voters rejected a ballot measure that would have repealed the so-called millionaires tax — a 9.9% tax on annual income above $1 million that Democratic lawmakers signed into law just earlier this year.
Meanwhile, California’s billionaires tax, on the ballot as Proposition 40, was behind by 11 points with 60% of the vote expected.
Voter ID and Citizenship Requirements
Voters in nearly a dozen states also decided on ballot measures that mostly reiterated existing laws regarding voter ID requirements and barring noncitizens from voting in state elections.
Voters in West Virginia, South Dakota, Kansas, Alaska and Arkansas all approved constitutional amendments affirming that only U.S. citizens can vote in national elections. These laws should prevent any local jurisdiction from allowing non-citizens to vote in local elections, which some municipalities have attempted to do in recent years.
These initiatives appeared on the ballot amid the Trump administration’s broader crackdown on non-citizen voting, which is extremely rare.
Voters in Ohio, North Carolina and Nevada passed measures to add to their state constitutions a requirement for residents to show a photo ID when voting in person.
In Virginia, voters approved a Democratic-backed measure to enshrine in their state constitution the restoration of voting rights to all felons after they are released from prison. In Massachusetts, voters rejected a measure that would have replaced party primaries with a multiparty top-two primary.
Electoral redistricting
The mid-decade redistricting war also spilled over to the polls, with voters in two states siding with Democrats.
In Missouri, voters blocked a GOP-drafted congressional map from taking effect after a lengthy legal battle. The new lines were intended to split one of the state’s two Democratic-held districts.
Maryland voters, meanwhile, approved a constitutional amendment paving the way for Democrats to redraw their state’s congressional map. The state has only one district represented by a Republican.
Transgender Rights
Republicans and conservative groups have also placed a series of measures targeting transgender people on the ballot in several states, including Arizona, Colorado and Washington.
Many were still too early to call Wednesday, but in Arizona, voters approved a Republican-backed measure requiring schools to designate sports and intramural teams as male, female or co-ed based on athletes’ sex assigned at birth.
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