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How Ballot Measures Will Change Abortion Access
Abortion rights found support at the ballot box in seven states on Tuesday, expanding access in already legal states and lifting bans in two others.
But support for abortion rights fell short in three contests. Proposed rights measures failed in Florida, Nebraska and South Dakota — and in Nebraska, an opposing measure to restrict abortion won — meaning bans and restrictions will remain in place.
Abortion will become broadly legal again in Arizona and Missouri, and existing protections will be strengthened in at least four other states.
In Florida, more than 57 percent of voters supported a measure to enshrine abortion rights in the state’s Constitution, but it failed because the state requires a supermajority of 60 percent for ballot measures to pass. Florida had been a critical access point for abortion patients across the South before a six-week ban took effect in May.
Nebraska voters faced dueling abortion ballot measures, and misleading ad campaigns may have caused confusion. A measure that will amend the state’s Constitution to restrict abortions after the first trimester, enshrining current law, won a majority of votes, while a measure to protect abortion rights fell just short at 49 percent.
South Dakota will continue to have one of the strictest bans in the country.
Before the election, 21 states banned abortion or placed gestational limits on the procedure. The winning rights measure in Missouri is the first to undo a full ban — one of the strictest in the nation and one of the first enacted after the United States Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022.
Arizona’s 15-week ban will also become void in the coming weeks.
In Arizona, Missouri and Montana, the winning measures will recreate the standard set by Roe v. Wade, which protected abortion until “viability” — the point at which a fetus could survive outside the uterus, or around 24 weeks of pregnancy.
New constitutional amendments will expand protections for abortion in Colorado, Maryland and New York, where the procedure was already broadly legal. Colorado’s measure also repealed an earlier law prohibiting the use of public funds to pay for abortions.
In Nevada, a winning measure to protect abortion until viability must pass again in the next general election before it can be added to the state’s Constitution.
The 2024 election broke a ballot measure winning streak for abortion rights advocates. Voters in seven states, including Republican-led ones, had previously sided with abortion rights in every contest since the Supreme Court overturned Roe in 2022.
Advocates for abortion rights caution that opportunities to protect those rights through ballot measures may be dwindling. Most remaining states with abortion bans do not allow citizen-initiated measures to be placed on the ballot, and their Republican leaders are unlikely to put the issue to voters.
And while former President Donald J. Trump has most recently said he would leave abortion laws to the states if re-elected, abortion rights organizations are bracing for federal action on abortion under his presidency.
“Donald Trump’s election as president of the United States is a deadly threat to reproductive rights,” said Nancy Northup, the president of the Center for Reproductive Rights. “We have many states that protect abortion rights, and if a federal ban passes they will lose that ability to protect their residents’ access.”
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Here's how minimum wage and paid sick leave measures fared in the election
Voters in two red states, Alaska and Missouri, approved ballot measures to raise the minimum wage and require employers to provide paid sick time to their workers.
In Alaska, the minimum wage will gradually rise to $15 per hour by July 1, 2027, up from $11.73 currently, the lowest on the West Coast. After that, the minimum wage will be adjusted to keep pace with inflation.
In Missouri, the minimum wage will gradually rise to $15 an hour by January 1, 2026, up from $12.30 currently. Starting in 2027, an annual inflation adjustment will also be applied.
According to MIT’s Living Wage Calculator, $15 an hour still falls below what individuals would need to earn to support just themselves in most places in the country — including Missouri and Alaska — not to mention their families.
A California ballot measure which would have raised the minimum wage across that state from $16 to $18 an hour by 2025 remained too close to call Wednesday morning. With many ballots still to be counted, 52% of voters had rejected the plan.
The federal minimum wage has been stuck at $7.25 since 2009. In the final weeks of his campaign, former President Donald Trump dodged a question on whether he’d seek to raise it.
In 2023, Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont introduced legislation to raise the federal minimum wage to $17 by 2028, but that effort went nowhere.
Missouri, Alaska and Nebraska say “yes” to paid sick leave
In both Missouri and Alaska, employers will now be required to give workers one hour of sick leave for every 30 hours worked. Missouri provides some exceptions for small businesses.
Nebraska voters also approved a ballot measure giving workers the right to earn paid sick leave. But Nebraska’s measure does not specify the rate of accrual.
Fifteen other states and the District of Columbia have paid sick time laws, according to the Center for American Progress. While the vast majority of private employers offer their employees paid leave, an estimated 22% of American workers do not have paid sick time.
Notably, Alaska’s ballot measure also includes a ban on so-called captive audience meetings, or meetings in which employees are required to listen to their employer’s religious or political views, including their opinions on labor unions. Labor advocates say such meetings hurt workers’ ability to form unions.
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Sarah McBride Will Be the First Openly Trans Member of Congress
The Democrat defeated Republican opponent John Whalen III and swooped the state’s only House seat
Delaware state Sen. Sarah McBride will become the first openly transgender person to be elected to the U.S. House of Representatives.
The Associated Press called her victory over Republican John Whalen III at 9:43 p.m. EST.
McBride, who defeated her Democratic primary opponents with 80 precent of the vote in September, won the state’s sole House seat. She will succeed fellow Democrat Lisa Blunt Rochester as Delaware’s at-large member of Congress.
In June 2023, McBride announced her bid to become the first trans member of Congress. “My commitment is to the people in Delaware who aren’t seen, who don’t shout the loudest or fund political campaigns — parents busy raising their children, seniors worried about paying for prescription drugs, working people struggling to keep up,” McBride said in an announcement video at the time. “Everyone deserves a member of Congress who sees them and respects them.”
In 2012, McBride became the first trans person to work in the White House when she started as an intern in the Obama administration and also spoke at the Democratic National Convention in 2016, becoming the first openly trans person to address a major U.S. party convention. “Four years ago I came out as transgender while serving as student body president in college,” she said at the DNC at the time. “At the time, I was scared. I worried that my dreams and my identity were mutually exclusive. Since then, though, I have seen that change is possible.”
Speaking with Reuters ahead of her election, McBride said that, “Whenever you are first, you often have to try to be the best version that you can.” She added that the role comes with “added responsibilities … But none of them matter if I don’t fulfill the responsibility of just being the best member of Congress that I can be for Delaware.”
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