Immigration and criminal legal issues have been center stage in the 2024 election cycle, from Former President Donald Trump’s repeated attacks on immigrants and plans for mass deportations to Vice President Kamala Harris’s record as a former prosecutor. But the national media’s near-exclusive focus on the presidential election obscures other important votes taking place in November. In many states across the country, voters have the opportunity to decide on local and state ballot initiatives that will determine the outcome of important human rights issues touching the criminal and immigration legal systems. 

State and Local Initiatives at Stake

Increases in Criminal Penalties

In 2014, California passed Proposition 47, which reclassified certain nonviolent felonies as misdemeanor crimes, reducing mass incarceration rates across the state without increasing crime rates and reallocating funding to critical services. Now, preying on false fears of growing retail theft and drug crimes, California Proposition 36 aims to roll back much of Proposition 47’s successes by lengthening sentences, mandating incarceration for some offenses, and increasing criminal penalties from misdemeanors to felonies. The measure also mandates treatment for some drug charges while paradoxically cutting funding for treatment programs and ignoring the harms of involuntary treatment.

Proposition 36 brings back failed approaches to crime and substance abuse. Rather than investing in services and resources that actually keep communities safe, the law signals a return to mass incarceration and the costly war on drugs, with researchers predicting a 35% increase in the state prison population by 2029, at a cost of $4.5 billion annually. Black, poor, and immigrant communities are likely to be hit the hardest. 

Bans on Involuntary Servitude in Prisons

The Thirteenth Amendment, which legally abolished slavery in 1865, contains an exception permitting slavery and involuntary servitude when used as punishment for a crime. Many state constitutions contain parallel “exceptions clauses.” Since 2018, voters in seven states have approved constitutional amendments that repeal exceptions clauses, finally ending the scourge of slavery. This election, voters have the opportunity to vote on similar ballot measures, with California’s Proposition 6 and Nevada’s Question 4 proposing a ban on slavery and involuntary servitude in all their forms. California’s Proposition 6 would additionally restrict the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation from punishing people who refuse work assignments, a form of labor coercion. 

These measures directly target prison work programs that exploit the unpaid or underpaid labor of incarcerated people, disproportionately impacting Black and Brown people, who are overrepresented in the prison population. Many prison work programs pay nothing at all, while those that do pay only between 13 and 52 cents an hour on average. Repealing exception clauses and paying people in prison fair wages would not only end the forced labor of incarcerated workers, but would also net between $18.3 billion and $20.3 billion in fiscal benefits annually to incarcerated workers, their families and children, crime victims, and society at large, including through increased child support payments, restitution payments, and tax revenues. 

Criminalization of Immigrants

Arizona Proposition 314 makes it a state crime for non-citizens to cross the U.S.-Mexico border into Arizona anywhere other than an official port of entry. The measure also requires employers and public welfare programs to check an individual’s immigration status before enrollment and criminalizes submitting false documents for welfare or employment purposes.

The dangers of such an initiative are numerous. Proposition 314 gives law enforcement the broad and potentially abusive power to question, detain, and arrest anyone a police officer suspects of unlawfully crossing the border. It also shields police from civil lawsuits for discriminatory enforcement, weakening law enforcement accountability. The proposal is reminiscent of SB 1070, an anti-immigration bill that was largely struck down by the Supreme Court as unconstitutional in 2012. In addition to shifting exorbitant federal costs of immigration enforcement onto Arizona taxpayers, Proposition 314 denies welfare benefits, essential public services, and employment opportunities to many families in Arizona, worsening economic disparities and health inequities.

State and Local Elections Matter, Too

This election, there are almost 150 ballot measures across the United States that voters will decide. Many hold the power to make real change on issues spanning from abortion and voting rights to policing and mass incarceration. 

In the din of the presidential election season, it’s easy to succumb to the false belief that meaningful change in U.S. governance can only happen once every four years. But ballot measures are an important reminder that state and local politics are fertile ground for progress and protecting human rights, no matter who occupies the Oval Office.