What happened

Voters approved a slate of progressive state ballot measures Tuesday, expanding access to legal marijuana, extending Medicaid coverage, raising minimum wages, and granting voting rights to felons. In three red states—Idaho, Nebraska, and Utah—voters approved measures to expand Medicaid, extending coverage to hundreds of thousands of lower-income residents. In Florida, voters resoundingly favored a closely watched initiative restoring voting rights to felons who had finished their sentences. Under Florida law, most felons had been disenfranchised for life. “Right about now, we can presently say that we have made history,” said Rhonda Thomas, a Florida pastor and a leader of the voting rights campaign. Voters in two conservative states approved minimum wage hikes that will kick in over several years—to $11 an hour in Arkansas and $12 in Missouri. And by a comfortable margin, Michigan became the 10th state in the nation, and the first in the Midwest, to legalize recreational marijuana; medical marijuana initiatives passed in Utah and Missouri.

Conservatives scored wins, too. A hotly contested bid to create the nation’s first carbon tax was soundly defeated in Washington. Voters in Maine rejected a first-of-its-kind proposal to guarantee universal home care for seniors and people with disabilities. North Carolina and Arkansas passed measures mandating photo ID for voters. And in Alabama and West Virginia, voters wrote abortion bans into their state constitutions; Alabama’s will also now specifically recognize the rights of unborn children.