Florida OKs measure that restores right of ex-felons to vote

NEW YORK — Potentially altering the election landscape in a key swing state, Florida voters Tuesday approved a ballot measure that will enable more than 1 million ex-felons to regain their voting rights.

Floridians also approved a measure aimed at phasing out greyhound racing in the state, the last stronghold of the sport in the U.S.

Those were the first notable results as voters in 37 states considered an array of intriguing ballot measures — ranging from marijuana legalization to boosting the minimum wage to civil rights protections for transgender people.

In all, 155 statewide initiatives were on the ballot across the country. Most were drafted by state legislatures, but 64 resulted from citizen-initiated campaigns, including many of the most eye-catching proposals.

In North Dakota and Michigan, for example, voters had a chance to legalize the recreational use of marijuana, a step already taken by nine other states. The ballots in Missouri and Utah included proposals to legalize the medical use of pot.

A minimum wage increase was up for a vote in two states. An Arkansas measure would raise the wage from $8.50 an hour to $11 by 2021; Missouri’s would gradually raise the $7.85 minimum wage to $12 an hour.

Medicaid expansion was another multistate topic, on the ballot because Republican-led legislatures refused to take advantage of expanded coverage offered under President Barack Obama’s health care law. Measures in Idaho, Nebraska and Utah would expand Medicaid coverage to tens of thousands more residents; a Montana measure would raise tobacco taxes to extend an existing expansion.

Proposals to change the redistricting process so it’s potentially less partisan were on the ballot in Missouri, Michigan, Utah and Colorado.

The goal is “giving citizens, not politicians, a greater voice in the drawing of their voting district lines,” said Sam Mar, of the Action Now Initiative, a group that provided more than $7 million in support of the measures.

Ohio’s ballot included an ambitious proposal to make drug possession a misdemeanor in an effort to reduce the state prison population and divert any savings to drug treatment.

Florida’s measure on felon voting rights was among those placed on the ballot by citizen initiative. Under its terms, most felons will automatically have their voting rights restored when they complete their sentences or go on probation. The amendment exempts those convicted of sex offenses and murder.

While liberal-leaning groups succeeded in getting some of their favored policy proposals on the ballot in Republicancontrolled states, the partisan pattern was reversed in Democratic-leaning Oregon and Massachusetts. In both states, conservatives used the initiative process in a bid to overturn existing policies.

The target in Massachusetts was a 2016 law extending nondiscrimination protections to transgender people in their use of public accommodations.

Conservatives in Oregon targeted two policies — one allowing use of state money to pay for low-income women to have abortions, the other forbidding law enforcement agencies from using state resources or personnel to arrest people whose only crime is being in the U.S. illegally.

Washington voters had a chance to toughen background checks for people buying semiautomatic rifles and to make their state the first to charge a direct fee on carbon pollution to fight climate change.

Climate change also was an issue in Arizona and Nevada, where voters considered measures requiring that 50 percent of electricity come from renewable sources by 2030.

Slavery was on the Colorado ballot. A proposed amendment would remove language in the state Constitution allowing slavery and involuntary servitude to be used to punish a crime.