Mass. transgender rights protected
NEW YORK — In the first statewide referendum on transgender rights, Massachusetts voters on Tuesday beat back a repeal attempt and reaffirmed a 2016 law extending nondiscrimination protections to transgender people, including their use of public bathrooms and locker rooms.
Supporters of the law had feared a vote to repeal would prompt a wave of similar efforts to roll back protections in other states. Already, some protections at the federal level are under threat from President Donald Trump’s administration.
“When transgender rights are being threatened nationally, we absolutely must preserve the rights we have secured at the state level,” said Carol Rose, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts.
Civil-rights activists also scored a major victory in Florida, where voters approved a ballot measure that will enable more than 1 million ex-felons to regain their voting rights. That could alter the future election landscape in the nation’s most populous swing state.
Floridians also approved a measure aimed at phasing out greyhound racing in the state, the last stronghold of the sport in the United States.
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 redistricting.
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, which provided more than $7 million in support of the measures.
A number of initiatives dealt with criminal justice or victims’ rights.
In Ohio, voters defeated 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.