Future voting rights, pot laws at stake in states

A proposal intended to diminish partisan politics in redistricting was leading Tuesday in Virginia as voters across the country decided scores of ballot measures affecting their future voting rights, marijuana policies and other issues.

A total of 120 proposed state laws and constitutional amendments were on the ballot in 32 states. They touched on an array of issues that have roiled politics in recent years — abortion, racial inequalities, taxes and education, to name a few.

But none directly dealt with the dominant theme of 2020 — the coronavirus pandemic. That’s because the process to put measures on the ballot began, in most cases, before the virus surged to the forefront.

The Virginia constitutional amendment would take power away from members of the Democratic-led Legislature to draw voting districts for themselves and members of Congress based on census results. It instead would create a bipartisan commission of lawmakers and citizens to develop a redistricting plan that the Legislature could approve or reject, but not change.

Virginia is the sixth state in the past two general election cycles to vote on measures intended to prevent gerrymandering — a process in which politicians draw voting districts to benefit themselves or their political parties. Voters in Missouri, which passed a redistricting reform measure in 2018, were deciding Tuesday whether to roll back key parts of it before it can be used next year.

The Missouri measure would repeal a nationally unique model to employ a nonpartisan demographer to draw state House and Senate districts to achieve “partisan fairness” and “competitiveness.”

Voters in several states were deciding whether to legalize marijuana. The Democratic-led New Jersey Legislature decided last December to place a measure on the ballot asking voters whether they should legalize marijuana for adults age 21 and older. According to early returns, New Jersey voters approved the measure Tuesday.

Citizens’ initiatives led to recreational marijuana measures on ballots in Arizona, Montana and South Dakota. Medical marijuana initiatives also are being decided in Mississippi and South Dakota.