South Florida voters cast their ballots at a polling center in Miami, Florida on November 6, 2018. - Americans started voting Tuesday in critical midterm elections that mark the first major voter test of US President Donald Trump's controversial presidency, with control of Congress at stake. (Photo by RHONA WISE / AFP)        (Photo credit should read RHONA WISE/AFP/Getty Images)
Florida just gave felons their right to vote back
01:02 - Source: CNN

Editor’s Note: Karine Jean-Pierre is the senior adviser and national spokeswoman for MoveOn. She is also a lecturer in international and public affairs at Columbia University. The views expressed here are solely hers. View more opinion articles on CNN.

CNN  — 

2018 isn’t just shaping up to be a blue wave – it has also become a ballot measure wave.

Karine Jean-Pierre

In ballot measure after ballot measure in the midterm elections, voters of all parties showed that when they get to weigh in directly on the issues rather than choosing candidates, they often vote for progress: for love, not hate; for inclusion, not division.

For example, while gubernatorial and Senate races in Florida are still mid-recount, the results of the Amendment 4 campaign in that state were clear on election night. Florida voters voted handily to restore voting rights to formerly incarcerated people who have served their time and paid their debts to society, effectively re-enfranchising 1.4 million formerly incarcerated Floridians.

It’s hard to overstate just how critical a win this is for fair elections, criminal justice reform, and decency. It’s harder to overstate how easily the measure won – with a massive, bipartisan margin of victory.

Given the unjust racial disparities in our nation’s mass incarceration system – black and brown people are more likely to be arrested, prosecuted and given harsher sentences than white people for the same drug crimes, even though white people commit them at the same rates – this is a huge win for racial justice, and a huge blow to Florida Republicans’ voter suppression strategy.

But Florida wasn’t the only state where ballot measures helped move voting rights forward in the midterms. Automatic voter registration, which disproportionately enfranchises young people and people of color, passed easily in both Nevada and Michigan, two traditional swing states. In Michigan, voters also used the power of the ballot initiative to expand voting rights: They approved same-day voter registration, made it easier to request absentee ballots, and reinstated straight-ticket voting. These changes passed decisively, 67% to 33%. Over on the East Coast, voters in Maryland passed a ballot measure to implement same-day voter registration by an equally wide margin.

But ballot measures didn’t just lead to progressive change in voting rights. Across the country, in states red and blue, voters used ballot measures to: legalize recreational marijuana in Michigan and medical marijuana in Missouri and Utah, raise the minimum wage in Arkansas and Missouri, and eliminate the “tampon tax” (the sales tax on pads and tampons) in Nevada.

In the ballot measures that may have the most significant immediate impact on the largest number of people, in Idaho and Nebraska, and Utah, voters expanded Medicaid, boosting the number of states that have expanded Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act and bringing health care to an additional nearly half-million people.

Those are people who will get covered in overwhelmingly red states, after the voters in those states chose to expand access to health care via a ballot initiative.

The overwhelming progressive skew to Tuesday’s ballot measure wins might seem counterintuitive. Voters expanding Medicaid – a plank in the Democratic, not Republican, party platform – in three of the biggest conservative strongholds in the country? Voters – across the country – supporting voting rights, criminal justice reform, raising the minimum wage, and more by numbers that far outpace support for Democratic candidates?

These votes mean many more people, mostly working families who otherwise couldn’t afford it, can access quality health care. They mean more rural hospitals stay open and portend substantial investment in job creation. All this will be a huge help to state budget bottom lines. The 2018 ballot measures and their outcomes show that most voters, even those in deep red states, prioritize their populations instead of partisanship.

Progressives’ record in ballot measures on election day wasn’t perfect. Unfortunately anti-abortion ballot measures seeking to deprive women of their freedom passed in Alabama and West Virginia. (Though, encouragingly, voters in Oregon rejected such a measure.) But for the most part, progressive ballot measures won overwhelmingly this year, including in red states.

There’s an important lesson hidden here: When voters are given a chance to vote directly on the issues, they vote for progressive values.

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    2018 was a blue wave, but it was also a ballot measure wave. And there’s no reason to think it’s about to subside in future elections.