The 2020 election results have enormous implications for the fate of fair elections and democracy itself for years to come, and that's especially true in the many states and localities where voters weighed in on ballot measures that will affect the workings of elections themselves.
Daily Kos Elections compiled a spreadsheet that cataloged 25 different measures on a variety of topics related to elections, some placed on the ballot by voters and some by state lawmakers, and the outcome of each measure following Election Day. Below we'll explore the results of some of the most important measures and whether they may have a positive or negative impact on the right to vote and fair elections going forward.
Overall, 2020 saw major setbacks in the fight against GOP gerrymandering, and if Democrats fail to take the Senate in the Jan. 5 Georgia runoffs, Democrats will be unable to pass new democracy reforms in Congress or constrain the Supreme Court’s radical-right majority from further undermining free and fair elections. However, 2020 still had some silver linings because many—but not all—of the states and localities below nonetheless passed measures that should strengthen the election process going forward.
Gerrymandering and Redistricting Reform
Missouri, New Jersey, and Virginia all voted on constitutional amendments that affect redistricting, and the outcome was a mixed bag. In Missouri, Republicans placed a misleading amendment on the ballot that will effectively gut a reform that voters overwhelmingly passed in 2018 to make legislative redistricting fairer, and the GOP successfully tricked voters into repealing the reform in part by attaching token ethics reforms. That measure passed by just 51-49 spread.
Meanwhile, New Jersey voters voted 58-42 to approve an amendment that Democrats put on the ballot to delay legislative redistricting until the 2023 elections if the release of census data is delayed. The move was intended to protect incumbents from having to run in new districts for an extra two years to the detriment of New Jersey’s growing Asian and Latino populations, whose rightful share of representation would be delayed two more years if the census is unable to meet the amendment's Feb. 15, 2021 deadline.
In Virginia, voters by 66-34 passed a measure to create a bipartisan redistricting commission after the state’s divided Democratic lawmakers allowed an amendment to pass with GOP support that saw Democrats surrender their own power to gerrymander. This reform, which establishes a commission appointed half by legislators from both parties and the other half chosen by retired judges, was a compromise with Republican legislators and includes some noteworthy flaws. However, on the whole it should lead to relatively nonpartisan districts for Congress and the state legislature after 2020.
Electoral System Reform
Efforts to replace the existing electoral system with something that more faithfully implements voters' preferences were on the ballot in several jurisdictions. These measures took aim at the existing system of plurality-winner elections that can see a third candidate play "spoiler" and cost the runner-up a victory. They all aimed to ensure majority rule, but not all were likely to have had the same positive effect.
In Alaska, voters passed a measure (which leads by 50.5-49.5 as of Wednesday) to adopt instant-runoff voting for the presidency and replace traditional party primaries for downballot contests with a "top-four" primary where all candidates regardless of party run on a single primary ballot. In those primaries, the four candidates with the most votes advance to an instant-runoff general election, where voters rank their preferences. If no candidate wins a majority, the last-place finisher is sequentially eliminated by reassigning their votes to each voter's subsequent preference, and this process repeats until one candidate attains a majority.
However, Massachusetts voters rejected adopting instant-runoff voting for both primaries and general elections at the state and congressional level by a 55-45 margin. In 2016, Maine became the first state to adopt the version that Massachusetts voted on this year, and Maine expanded it to presidential elections for 2020, though the presidential race wasn't close enough for an instant-runoff to be needed. Such ranked voting systems can cut down on the spoiler problem and help to protect majority rule.
At the local level, St. Louis, Missouri became the first major U.S. city to pass a more novel reform to plurality-winner elections by adopting a variation of so-called “approval voting,” letting voters cast up to one vote for each candidate in the all-party primary and having whichever two candidates receive the most votes in the first round advance to the general election. This system aims to avoid some of the complications of instant-runoff voting but is largely untested in real elections, unlike instant-runoff voting, which has a long history both domestically at the local level and abroad.
In a relief for fair election outcomes and Black and Latino representation, Floridians voted by only a 57-43 margin to adopt a "top-two primary" for state-level offices, meaning it failed because Florida requires at least 60% for passage. This system is in use in California and Washington and has seen major parties get shut out of winnable general elections solely because their vote was split among too many candidates in the primary. It could have disastrously made it much harder for Black voters especially to elect their chosen candidates in Florida and was facing a lawsuit that sought to invalidate it for that reason.
Finally, voters overwhelmingly passed a measure that Mississippi's GOP-led legislature, in the face of a lawsuit, put on the ballot to repeal part of its 1890 Jim Crow constitution that created an Electoral College-esque system for determining the winner in elections for governor and other statewide executive offices. This system has been further strained by GOP gerrymandering, such that it would have been impossible for Democrats and the Black voters who support them to ever win statewide. The new reform will instead require a separate runoff in case no candidate wins a majority, a method that is not ideal but is nevertheless fairer than the status quo was.
Restrictions on the Ballot Initiative Process
In a major victory against GOP efforts to cement their power by subverting fair election outcomes, voters in Arkansas, Florida, and North Dakota all rejected ballot measures that would have made it harder if not impossible for reformers to place new measures of their own on the ballot in the future. That's especially important in Arkansas and North Dakota because supporters of unsuccessful efforts to put redistricting reform measures on the ballot are likely to try again in future election cycles.
In state after state over the last decade, Republican lawmakers have responded to ballot initiatives that sought to strengthen representative democracy by trying to restrict the initiative process itself. While direct democracy has its own flaws, it's been a critical tool for protecting voting rights, curtailing GOP gerrymandering, and adopting electoral reforms.
Bans on Noncitizen Voting
Republicans in Alabama, Colorado, and Florida successfully got voters to easily pass amendments to their constitutions that replace language guaranteeing that "every citizen" may vote with wording that "only a citizen" may vote.
While these measures would have limited-to-no effect on the status quo, they would prevent local governments from experimenting with letting legal permanent residents who lack citizenship still vote in local elections, something a handful of small localities in the U.S. and many European democracies already allow. Furthermore, replacing a guarantee that all citizens are entitled to vote with a requirement that one must be a citizen to vote potentially opens the door to attacks on the voting rights of citizens themselves in future litigation.
Efforts to Lower the Voting Age
San Francisco voters once more narrowly rejected a proposal to lower the voting age to 16 in local elections by just a 50.8-49.2 margin, a modest decrease in opposition from the proposal's 52-48 defeat in 2016. But just across the Bay Area in Oakland, California, voters approved lowering the voting age to 16 in school board elections by a 2-1 margin.
While San Francisco narrowly avoided becoming the first major U.S. city to lower the voting age, the idea has been adopted for local elections by a number of small localities nationally in recent years, and and a majority of the U.S. House Democratic caucus voted in favor of doing so in federal elections last year. A number of foreign democracies such as Austria, Brazil, and the U.K.'s Scotland already allow 16-year-olds to vote even in elections for their legislative bodies, so the reform is hardly unprecedented in a global context.
Other Measures
By a 52-48 margin, Puerto Rico voters have approved a measure put on the ballot by the pro-statehood New Progressive Party that asked the island's residents whether their government should seek statehood for the territory or retain its current commonwealth status. However, the measure is not legally binding, and congressional Republicans are likely to block statehood if they retain control over the Senate.
If Democrats were to win both Georgia runoffs and gain power in the Senate, they could eliminate the filibuster to pass statehood with a simple majority. Doing so would mean that more than 3 million American citizens would gain representation in the House and Senate. It would also modestly mitigate the upper chamber's bias against voters of color and potentially lessen its partisan bias toward the GOP, too, though that wouldn't be assured.
Meanwhile, voters in Colorado voted 52-48 to reject a GOP effort to repeal a law that Democrats passed to join the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, which would assign a state's votes in the Electoral College to the national popular vote winner if states with a majority of electoral votes sign on. The compact has gained steam since Trump's election in 2016 and saw Colorado become the first swing state to join in 2019. The outcome of this vote could encourage Democrats in other swing states to follow Colorado's lead.
While nearly every state constitution protects the right to vote in some form, Nevada voters passed a measure to go even further by enshrining the right to vote in its constitution using modernized language to protect certain methods of voting access. California voters, meanwhile, expanded voting rights to tens of thousands of citizens on parole for a felony conviction, joining 19 other states that don’t disenfranchise anyone not in prison, though Golden State voters rejected letting 17-year-olds vote in primaries if they will turn 18 by the general election.
Finally, Oregon was one of the last states that allowed individuals to donate unlimited sums of money directly to candidates in state elections, but voters passed a Democratic-backed amendment to let lawmakers finally set limits on campaign donations. A state Supreme Court ruling earlier this year overturned a precedent that had barred limits on campaign contributions, but codifying lawmakers' ability to regulate campaign donations ensures that the existence of such limits and disclosure requirements aren't dependent upon the ever-changing composition of the courts.
Below you can find a table summarizing all 25 ballot measures we tracked, and you can find a spreadsheet version of it here.
| Alabama | Amendment 1 | Passed | Citizenship voting requirement | Negative | Replaces guarantee that "every citizen" may vote with requirement that "only a citizen" may vote |
| Alaska | Measure 2 | Passed | Electoral system reform | Positive or Neutral | Adopts a top-four primary with instant-runoff general election; adds campaign finance disclosure requirements |
| Arkansas | Issue 2 | Passed | Term limits | Neutral | Loosens lifetime term limits for legislators |
| Arkansas | Issue 3 | Failed | Ballot initiative process | Negative | Tightens geographic distribution restrictions for ballot initiative signature requirements in order to make liberal-supported initiatives harder |
| California | Proposition 17 | Passed | Felony disenfranchisement | Positive | Eliminates disenfranchisement of voters on parole for a felony conviction |
| California | Proposition 18 | Failed | Voting age | Positive | Lets 17-year-olds vote in primaries if they turn 18 by the general election |
| Colorado | Amendment 76 | Passed | Citizenship voting requirement | Negative | Replaces guarantee that "every citizen" may vote with requirement that "only a citizen" may vote |
| Colorado | Proposition 113 | Passed | Electoral College | Positive (for passage) | Referendum on whether to implement or repeal law joining the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact for the Electoral College—"Yes" vote keeps the law in place |
| Florida | Amendment 1 | Passed | Citizenship voting requirement | Negative | Replaces guarantee that "every citizen" may vote with requirement that "only a citizen" may vote |
| Florida | Amendment 3 | Failed | Electoral system reform | Negative | Adopts a top-two primary (aka two-round system) in state-level races |
| Florida | Amendment 4 | Failed | Ballot initiative process | Negative | Requires ballot initiatives to win (at least 60%) voter support in two consecutive general elections instead of one |
| Iowa | Constitutional Convention | Failed | Constitutional convention | Neutral | Decides whether to call a state constitutional convention |
| Massachusetts | Question 2 | Failed | Electoral system reform | Positive | Adopts instant-runoff voting (aka ranked-choice) in congressional, state, and countywide elections |
| Mississippi | Measure 2 | Passed | Electoral system reform | Positive | Repeals Jim Crow-era "electoral college" law in statewide elections and replaces it with provision for a separate runoff election if no candidate wins a majority |
| Missouri | Amendment 1 | Passed | Term limits | Neutral | Sets a two-term limit for statewide executive offices below the governorship |
| Missouri | Amendment 3 | Passed | Legislative redistricting | Negative | Effectively repeals a voter-approved 2018 ballot measure that made legislative redistricting treat both parties more fairly |
| Nevada | Question 4 | Passed | Right to vote | Positive | Guarantees the right to vote via certain methods |
| New Jersey | Question 3 | Passed | Legislative redistricting | Negative | Postpones 2021 legislative redistricting until the 2023 election cycle if census data release is delayed to after Feb. 15, 2021 |
| North Dakota | Measure 2 | Failed | Ballot initiative process | Negative | Requires a ballot initiative to win voter support in two consecutive general elections instead of one if the legislature doesn't approve it |
| Oregon | Measure 107 | Passed | Campaign finance | Positive | Allows the legislature to set campaign donation limits and disclosure requirements in state and local elections |
| Virginia | Redistricting Commission Amendment | Passed | Redistricting reform | Positive | Creates a bipartisan commission to draw congressional and legislative districts |
| Puerto Rico | Statehood Referendum | Passed | Statehood | Positive | Expresses yes/no position on whether Puerto Rico should seek statehood |
| Oakland, CA | Measure QQ | Passed | Voting age | Positive | Lowers the voting age to 16 in school board election |
| San Francisco, CA | Proposition G | Failed | Voting age | Positive | Lowers the voting age to 16 in local elections |
| St. Louis, MO | Proposition D | Passed | Electoral system reform | Positive | Adopts approval voting primary where the top-two finishers advance to the general election for local elections |
Source: Daily Kos
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