This November 3, voters will head to the ballots for the midterm elections. In addition to choosing the people who will represent them in office, they will also be making important decisions about policies that will shape everything from abortion rights to income taxes. Nearly 150 statewide measures will be determined on the ballot during this year’s midterm elections.
Key issues that have been dominating the news cycle—including voter ID registration, transgender rights, and affirmative-action laws—will be reflected in these initiatives, with the outcome affecting the lives of millions of people. With just a week before Election Day, we’ve put together a guide to some of the ballot measures up for discussion in this year’s election. Keep scrolling to learn more.
As income inequality in the U.S. continues to worsen, some voters will get to decide whether or not to impose an income tax on their state’s richest residents. In California, Proposition 40—colloquially known as the “billionaire tax”—would enact a one-time 5 percent emergency tax on any resident whose net worth exceeds $1 billion. Revenue from the tax would be used to fund state health care, education, and food-assistance programs.
It is estimated that it would raise about $100 billion in five years, according to the health care workers union that helped put the measure on the ballot. Naturally, the measure is facing pushback from the state’s powerful and wealthy. California governor Gavin Newsom has publicly opposed Proposition 40, joining detractors who argue that the state relies on these billionaires and that such a tax would push them out.
Opponents have even placed two rival measures on the same ballot: Proposition 41, which requires audits of new tax programs, meaning that Proposition 40 would automatically violate the provision since it wasn’t designed to follow the state’s annual spending limit; and Proposition 42, which blocks taxes based on the ownership of personal property, including financial accounts, investments, and art collections, which are the types of properties that Proposition 40 specifically targets. If either or both of those initiatives pass, then the passage of Proposition 40 will be invalidated. Among Propositions 41 and 42’s proponents is Google cofounder Sergey Brin, who has an estimated net worth of $242 billion and is one of the richest people in the world.
He has reportedly spent $138 million on the campaigns for Propositions 41 and 42—or about 0.057 percent of his total net worth.“It’s very disappointing that they’d go to these lengths and spend all of this money when really they could do the moral and ethical thing of being part of our social contract,” Suzanne Jimenez, chief of staff for SEIU-UHW, told LA Public Press. Wade, voters are continuing to determine the fate of abortion rights on the ballot. In Idaho, a vote “yes” on Proposition 1—also known as the Reproductive Freedom and Privacy Act Initiative—will establish the right to abortion across the state.
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