Ballot measures by topic
Subjects covered by the measures we currently track.
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Abortion and reproductive rights
1 measure
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Bonds and borrowing
3 measures
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Civil rights
16 measures
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Criminal justice
7 measures
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Education
14 measures
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Elections and voting
13 measures
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Energy and environment
3 measures
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Gambling and gaming
1 measure
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Government structure
20 measures
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Health care
7 measures
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Housing
6 measures
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Immigration
2 measures
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Labor and wages
3 measures
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Marijuana and drug policy
2 measures
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Public safety
6 measures
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Redistricting
2 measures
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Sports and athletics
4 measures
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Taxes and revenue
21 measures
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Transportation
3 measures
How these topics are assigned
Subject tags are applied by this site from a fixed list, based on what a measure's operative text actually addresses rather than on how it is campaigned about. They are a navigation aid: no state assigns them, they carry no legal meaning, and nothing about a measure's classification here affects how it appears on a ballot.
A measure can carry more than one tag, and many do — a question that changes how districts are drawn is tagged both redistricting and elections and voting, and appears under each. That is deliberate. Grouping by subject is useful precisely because related questions recur across states and across years, and reading several of them together shows what a category of measure usually contains and where a particular one departs from the pattern.
What is on a topic page
Each topic page lists the tracked measures carrying that tag, grouped by state, and explains what kinds of questions the category covers, what legal form they usually take and why, and what to look for in the text of one — the difference between a constitutional amendment and a statute, effective dates, whether a measure works on its own or waits on the legislature, and where the fiscal estimate comes from.
Only tags actually in use are listed here, so this index reflects current coverage rather than the full vocabulary. Every summary on every topic page links to the records it was built from; the methodology page describes the sourcing hierarchy and the correction policy.