Downey is an intern for The Fulcrum and a graduate student at Northwestern's Medill School of Journalism.
Voters will be deciding more than just which candidates will win their races when they cast their ballots in this year’s primary and general elections. Across 34 states, 95 statewide ballot measures have been certified, meaning just over two-thirds of states will let voters decide on hot-button issues like election reform and age limits on candidates.
Here’s a rundown of the ballot measures that would impact how people vote.
Ranked-choice voting
Four years ago, Alaska became the second state (after Maine) to pass a ballot measure that introduced ranked-choice voting to local, state and national elections. The measure also replaced Alaska’s primaries with a single primary for all candidates, regardless of party affiliation. In Alaska’s top-four system, the four candidates who receive the most votes in the all-party primary advance to the general election that uses ranked-choice voting.
Now, RCV will appear on the ballot again, only this time to do away with it. Alaskans for Honest Elections is the group behind the repeal, not to be confused with Alaskans for Better Elections, which brought RCV to the ballot in 2020 and is now defending it.
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Phillip Izon, director of Alaskans for Honest Elections, wrote the repeal in his living room after his grandfather shared with him that the new voting system used for the first time in 2022 was difficult to understand. “He voted for just one person,” Izon said. “And so if he doesn’t understand this, then there’s probably a lot of other people that didn’t understand it.”
Data from Alaskans for Better Elections says otherwise. After the 2022 primary and special election, a survey found that 85% of Alaskans reported RCV to be simple. And while only two-thirds of Alaskans ranked multiple candidates, of those who ranked only one, 75% reported they did that because they only liked one candidate.
Izon and Alaskans for Honest Elections collected over 42,000 signatures across the state in support of repealing RCV. With the repeal now on the ballot, its fate lies in the hands of Alaskans.
Izon, who identified himself as nonpartisan but donated to the state Republican Party in 2023, said that claims made by RCV advocates about how the voting method increases voter turnout was untrue in Alaska. “We had the lowest voter turnout in history using ranked choice voting,” Izon said.
While data shows that when the use of RCV debuted during Alaska’s 2022 general election there was a 4 percent drop in turnout, voter turnout increased significantly during the primary election. Unlike 2018 when primary turnout reached a low of 21 percent, it jumped up to 35% in 2022, according to a report from the Bipartisan Policy Center.
Izon and RCV critics also cite ballot exhaustion as a negative side effect of RCV, especially when a ballot is “exhausted” because it was filled out incorrectly or the selected candidate is eliminated in the first round. Izon referred to a Princeton study that revealed that ballot exhaustion had a greater impact on minority groups in Alaska, specifically Alaskan Natives. The study found that 1 in 20 Alaskan voters who went to the polls had no vote recorded in the last round of tabulation, many of which were concentrated in Alaskan Native precincts.
While ballot exhaustion is an effect of RCV, advocates still promote the voting method because it increases the likelihood that individual voters will see their preferences represented in the final voting round. It has also proven beneficial for ideologically moderate candidates, according to a report from the nonpartisan think tank New America. Mary Peltola, an Alaska Native who won a four-way race against three Republican candidates for U.S. House of Representatives in 2022, is a moderate Democrat who has worked in a “cross-partisan manner,” according to the pro-RCV group FairVote, since she won her race. She is also the first Alaskan Native member of Congress.
Ranked-choice voting will appear on ballots in Nevada and Oregon this fall where, unlike Alaska, the measures will look to implement RCV in each state. This will be the second time Nevadans will vote on the initiative, known as Question 3. As an initiated constitutional amendment, Nevada requires approval in two consecutive general elections for the proposal to go into effect.
The initiative first passed in 2022 by a slim margin with nearly 53 percent of the vote. If approved this time around, the measure would establish open primaries and top-five ranked-choice general elections. Under the new primary system, all candidates would run in a single party primary, regardless of party affiliation and the five candidates to receive the most votes would then advance to the general election.
If Oregon’s ballot measure is passed it would expand RCV to both federal and state elections, but would not include state legislative offices. The ballot measure, first passed last June by the Oregon Legislature as a ranked-choice voting bill, will not go into effect until 2028 if approved. As it is written, the measure would provide voters with the choice to rank as many or as few candidates as they would like in each election where RCV is offered.
Age limits
Candidate age has been discussed almost daily this election cycle, and some states are giving voters the chance to cap the age of eligibility for elected and unelected officials.
Retire Congress North Dakota introduced an Initiative that would prohibit an individual from being elected or appointed to represent North Dakota in Congress if over the age of 80. The group submitted 42,107 citizen signatures, which qualified the amendment for the ballot.
This is not the first time a capping measure has appeared on the ballot in North Dakota. In 2022, the same group introduced a term limits measure for governor and legislators that passed with nearly two-thirds of the vote.
Jared Hendrix, chair of Retire Congress North Dakota and a Republican member of the North Dakota House, said in a press release: “The average age of retirement in America is 64. Everybody else retires, I don’t see why politicians should be different. You can’t run for Senate until you’re 30, or Congress until you’re 25. So we already have age limits on the lower end, just not the upper end.”
Despite strong public support from North Dakotans, the initiative could violate a 1995 Supreme Court ruling that restricted Arkansas from placing term limits on federal lawmakers. If the proposal does pass when it appears as the sole ballot measure on North Dakota’s primary ballot this June, it will likely be challenged in court.
New Hampshire is moving in the opposite direction of North Dakota as it looks to approve a constitutional amendment that would increase the mandatory judicial retirement age by five years.
Currently, the mandatory judicial retirement age is 70 years old. This amendment was introduced to the state legislature in 2022 and had to pass through both chambers in order to appear on the ballot in the 2024 general election.
Citizenship voting
Five states will feature ballot measures that would change the language in their respective constitutions to specify that only citizens of the United States can vote in elections. Noncitizens are already prohibited from voting in state and federal elections.
No states currently allow noncitizens to vote in their elections, but California, Vermont, Maryland and Washington D.C. do allow noncitizens to vote in some municipalities.
In Idaho and Kentucky, a “yes” vote would change the language of the constitution to explicitly state that noncitizens cannot vote in elections. In South Carolina and Wisconsin, the ballot measures would add language to each state’s constitution that dictates only U.S. citizens 18 years of age or older can vote in elections.
Iowa’s ballot measure is a two-for-one deal. A “yes” vote would change the language of the state’s constitution from allowing “every” citizen of the U.S. to vote, to allowing “only” citizens of the U.S. to vote. Approval of the measure would also allow 17-year-olds to vote in a primary election if they will be 18 by the general election.
There have been cases of noncitizens illegally casting votes, but all investigations have revealed that none of the votes were significant enough to impact an election’s outcome, according to the Bipartisan Policy Center.
Banning open primaries in Arizona
One of the six ballot measures Arizona voters will consider this November is a constitutional amendment that would ban primaries where all candidates run together regardless of party affiliation.
Currently, Arizona requires partisan primaries for partisan offices, but the state’s semi-open primary does allow unaffiliated voters the option to choose which party’s primary election they would like to vote in for congressional and state level elections, according to Ballotpedia.
If approved, the constitutional amendment would make partisan primaries the system used throughout the state. The amendment’s language states that the “direct primary election law supersedes local charters and ordinances that are inconsistent with that law,” meaning it prohibits localities from implementing ranked-choice voting or other systems without another constitutional amendment.
This proposed amendment comes in direct response to the Make Elections Fair Arizona Act which would put nonpartisan primaries on the ballot, according to Jeremy Gruber, senior vice president of Open Primaries. His organization advocates for open and nonpartisan primary systems.
“It’s attempt is to ensure the parties’ staying in charge of elections. That the people of Arizona are no longer going to be in the driver's seat of their own elections,” Gruber said. “That will have a particularly strong effect on independent voters, now the largest group of voters in the state.”
Independents make up one-third of registered voters in Arizona, according to the secretary of state’s office. If approved, the constitutional amendment would keep independents from participating in the presidential preference election.
“It’s already an undemocratic state of play when the largest group of voters are shut out,” Gruber said.
No-excuse absentee voting in Connecticut
In Connecticut, voters will decide whether to pass a law that would allow for no-excuse absentee voting.
Connecticut is currently one of the 14 states that requires voters to provide an excuse when requesting an absentee ballot. Voters are sent an absentee ballot if they cannot make it to the poll on Election Day due to active military service, absence from town during voting hours, illness or disability, religious beliefs prohibiting secular activity, or serving as an election official at a different polling location.
If the proposed amendment is approved, Connecticut will join 28 other states that allow any voter to request an absentee ballot. Nine additional states conduct all voting via the mail (at least for general elections).
Public financing of campaigns in Florida
Floridians will consider six constitutional amendments on Election Day, with the last proposal determining whether public financing for candidates running for state offices will be repealed.
Florida is one of 12 states with a public campaign finance program for governor and lieutenant governor candidates. Florida also provides public financing for candidates running for attorney general, chief financial officer and commissioner of agriculture.
Some states have “clean elections programs,” which require candidates to collect small contributions from individuals first to show that they have enough support to receive public funds. Florida, along with Hawaii, has a matching funds program, where a certain amount of matching funds are allocated to the candidates.
In Florida, candidates only qualify for public financing so long as they are not running unopposed and agree to expenditure limits and to report all finance data. Candidates running for governor are required to raise an initial $150,000 and candidates running for cabinet offices must raise an initial $100,000 if they wish to participate in the public financing program.
The Republican-backed amendment has been criticized by Florida Democrats, like state Rep. Anna Eskamani, who said that, “Public money levels the political playing field,” for those candidates running against an incumbent or “someone of greater means.”
If approved, the proposed constitutional amendment would repeal Article VI, Section 7 of the Florida Constitution, which provides public funding to statewide candidates who agreed to spending limits.
