Voters planning to participate in the 2020 election have more to consider than who they will vote for in the highly contentious presidential election. In addition to the election of national, state, and local leaders, this year, voters in many states have a number of ballot initiatives to consider. Statewide ballot initiatives typically allow voters to decide on changes to their state constitutions and laws.
Reason Foundation’s policy analysts have created Voters’ Guides examining over 40 different ballot proposals from across the nation to help voters as they research and make decisions on these initiatives. These guides aim to:
- Provide plain-English explanations of what a given ballot initiative would do, stripping away the jargon and complex language that can make many of them hard to parse through.
- Fairly summarize the pro and con arguments being made, putting an emphasis on what each side puts forward as their strongest arguments but stripping out ad-hominem and attack arguments so it stays focused on substantive policy arguments.
- Provide an overview of the key issues involved, summarizing what data and research say about the arguments of both sides, flagging experience other states may have had with similar laws, and offering other information that might help voters decide about the initiative.
We regret we are not able to analyze every ballot initiative nationwide. We decided to prioritize some states and some policy issue clusters.
First, Reason has long analyzed ballot measures in California, where Reason is based.
Second, we selected a number of states in which we are currently heavily engaged with state officials and stakeholders on various policy issues. Because we are currently on the ground (well, more recently, on Zoom conferencing) so much in some states, we felt we should extend our analysis of ballot measures to those particular states.
In these state Voters’ Guides, you will find an analysis of all the ballot initiatives in:
In addition, we identified three particular policy areas where Reason Foundation has done a large amount of relevant research and where there are a number of related ballot initiatives in 2020. As such, we have analyzed the ballot measures pertaining to these topics:
If you have questions about these, or other, ballot initiatives please feel free to contact me.