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Ballotpedia

Lifestyle

Samuel Wonacott

Our newest offering – introducing the Election Administration Legislation Tracker

Illinois Republican Brew Abortion Colorado Oklahoma

Welcome to the Wednesday, June 29, Brew.

By: Samuel Wonacott

Here’s what’s in store for you as you start your day:

Introducing the Election Administration Legislation Tracker
Californians will decide on an amendment that would provide a right to abortion and contraceptives in November
We’ve got June 28 election results!

Introducing the Election Administration Legislation Tracker

Election administration in the U.S. is characterized by an ever-changing patchwork of federal, state, and local laws and policies. This year alone, states have enacted 162 bills related to election administration. That can make it difficult to understand how election administration is changing in your state. To help cut through the noise, we’re excited to announce the launch of our new Election Administration Legislation Tracker—a resource to help you quickly and easily track election-related legislation in all 50 states.

This free and accessible online resource allows you to find easy-to-digest bill tags and summaries—written and curated by our election administration experts! We update our database and bill-tracking daily. Using our powerful interactive search function, you can zero in on more 2,500 bills (and counting) covering these topics:

Absentee/mail-in voting and early voting policies
Ballot access requirements for candidates, parties, and ballot initiatives
Election dates and deadlines
Election oversight protocols
In-person voting procedures
Post-election procedures (including counting, canvassing, and auditing policies)
Voter ID
Voter registration and eligibility

To make your search results more precise, we first place bills into one of 22 parent categories. We then apply to each bill one or more of the 88 tags we’ve developed.

But don’t worry—if you don’t want to immerse yourself in the world of election legislation quite that often, we have a free, weekly digest that goes straight to your inbox and keeps you caught up on the week’s developments.

The Election Administration Legislation Tracker dashboard allows you to narrow your search through eight different factors that can be combined into any combination:

Keyword
Bill number
Most recent action
State
Current bill status
Topic
Party affiliation of the bill sponsor
State trifecta status

For example, here’s some trivia for you: legislators from both parties have co-sponsored 8.64% of the bills we’ve tracked.

We also make it easy to visualize much of our data, including which states are introducing the most bills.

Click here to sign up for our weekly digest of election-related legislation. Each week, we’ll bring you noteworthy bills from around the country, recent activity, and a look at the big picture.

Click below to use the Election Administration Legislation Tracker! We’ll be back tomorrow and Friday with more data from the tracker – stay tuned! Go explore it for yourself.

Keep reading

Californians will decide on an amendment to provide a right to abortion and contraceptives in November

California will be the fifth state to vote on an abortion-related ballot measure this year. This year will feature the most abortion-related ballot measures on record.

On June 27, the California Assembly voted 58-16 to advance the California Right to Reproductive Freedom Amendment, a legislatively referred constitutional amendment providing that “The state shall not deny or interfere with an individual’s reproductive freedom in their most intimate decisions …” Earlier, the state Senate passed the amendment by a vote of 29-8 with three absent.

Voters will decide on the measure in November.

Voters in Kansas, Kentucky, Montana, and Vermont will also decide abortion-related ballot measures this year. The proposed Vermont amendment would provide that an “individual’s right to personal reproductive autonomy is central to the liberty and dignity to determine one’s own life course …” The Kansas and Kentucky amendments state that nothing in their respective state constitutions provides a right to abortion or requires government funding for abortion. Montana voters will decide on a law to require medical care to be provided to infants born alive. It makes it a felony for healthcare providers to refuse to offer such care.

The California Right to Reproductive Freedom Amendment was introduced following the leak of a draft majority opinion for Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization on May 2. Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) said, “We are proposing an amendment to enshrine the right to choose in the California constitution. We can’t trust SCOTUS to protect the right to abortion, so we’ll do it ourselves. Women will remain protected here.”

The amendment states: “The state shall not deny or interfere with an individual’s reproductive freedom in their most intimate decisions, which includes their fundamental right to choose to have an abortion and their fundamental right to choose or refuse contraceptives.”

Currently, abortion is legal in California up to fetal viability and after viability if the procedure is necessary to protect the life or health of the mother.

On June 24, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Dobbs that “The Constitution does not confer a right to abortion; Roe and Casey are overruled; and the authority to regulate abortion is returned to the people and their elected representatives.”

Click here to read more about the history of abortion-related ballot measures. Click below to read more about California’s Right to Reproductive Freedom Amendment.

Keep reading

We’ve got June 28 election results!

Yesterday was one of the busiest primary nights of the year. There were statewide primaries in Colorado, Illinois, New York, Oklahoma, and Utah on Tuesday. Our team stayed up late into the night collecting results and monitoring the most significant developments. In tomorrow’s Brew, we’ll take a closer look at the biggest storylines to emerge from Tuesday’s results and how they may affect the November elections.

In the meantime, check out our June 28 election hub to see the latest results. You can also subscribe to The Heart of the Primaries, our weekly dive into key congressional, legislative, and executive races. The next edition comes out Thursday!

Click on the links below to see results from the battleground elections that happened last night:

Colorado

Illinois