After #NoKings: What to Watch for During Elections

By Jo-Ann Johnston

Elections are coming up in many places in the next couple of weeks, and though voters won’t be deciding on midterm Congressional race results or our next president, there are important reasons to pay attention. 

The electorate is getting a chance to see some political candidates who are new to the nation, while also considering questions about how our states and laws can best administer elections.

And after the attention the No Kings Day rallies generated nationwide on Oct. 18, voters have the opportunity to show candidates and political parties how much they trust our current politics to safeguard (small “d”) democratic practices.

Where elections are taking place, the results will determine important offices at state and local levels. This year, some candidates in statewide races may even announce that they are aligned with or opposed to the philosophy of the current presidential administration — it’s a clear, quick way of defining themselves to voters.

Gubernatorial races also sometimes showcase to voters in other states candidates who may be up-and-comers for national office.

Voters in Virginia and New Jersey, two high profile states, are electing their next governor. In both races, the current governor is not allowed to run for office again immediately because of term limits, according to Ballotpedia, a nonpartisan website.

In Virginia, where governors are not allowed to serve two terms in a row (an unusual practice among the states), Republican Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears is running against a former Democratic congresswomen, Abigail Spanberger. They each want to succeed Republican Glenn Youngkin as the chief executive.

In New Jersey, another high-profile state, Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy is leaving office after serving two consecutive four-year terms. The candidates competing to replace Murphy are: Democratic U.S. Rep. Mikie Sherrill and Republican Jack Ciattarelli, a former state assemblyman and businessman.

In other states, voters may see candidates for state legislative offices, whether the office-seekers want to be assembly members (or representatives, depending on which word the state uses) for the lower chamber, or whether they are running to be senators for their state’s upper chamber. 

If there is a race for a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives, it is an off-cycle occurrence that is probably a special election called because the prior representative left office early, creating a vacancy.

Still, that’s not all. Judges have to be elected in some areas within some states. Also, county executives and mayors are running in many places. (The most high-level mayor’s office race this year is in New York City and at the time of writing, is a three-way race.)

School board races may be on some ballots; races can be either partisan or non-partisan depending on the locale.

On top of all that, local areas may pose questions to voters about spending or direction on particular projects, such as whether to install a new public swimming pool or to authorize repairs on a publicly owned facility.

Ballot measures

Something else that makes this year’s fall elections notable is the number of ballot initiatives, or ballot measures, appearing across the country. Ballot initiatives are easy to confuse with the highly local questions placed on ballot for voter approval or disapproval, usually of a particular project, like the new city swimming pool example mentioned above.

Initiatives are broader in scope and show up statewide. Usually, they are about a change that some voters want to their state constitution, or a new law. Representatives can also create a ballot question and ask voters for their support to get the matter on the ballot for the election. The process is guided by strict rules that must be closely followed. There can be more than one ballot measure proposed on a ballot in a given year.

Ballotpedia reports that voters in five states will decide on ballot measures in November. All counted, there are 24 measures proposed among the states. Some of the topics are parental rights, firearms policy, taxes and bail. 

Passage or defeat rests upon the proportion of votes cast either way — but a simple majority may not be enough. State law determines whether an initiative needs, say, 60 percent of “yes” votes to pass; 52 percent might not be enough. There are also ways that the results can be overridden within a state.

Then there is voting.

Voting about voting 

More than 30 states have required its voters to show some kind of officially accepted identification — some specify a photographic ID — to participate in voting. It’s a fairly recent trend, often enacted by state legislatures. But not always.

In Maine, voters will see a voter ID question in the form of a ballot measure during the Nov. 4 election. Voters will specifically be asked whether the state should require voter ID for in-person and absentee voting. The question is one of two ballot measures on the ballot.

For those who want more background on why voter ID is such an issue lately, it’s helpful to know that in the past, voters were commonly required to prove their identities when they registered to vote. People might use a license or Social Security Number that could be verified, depending on local rules. Then, there were various ways states asked or required people to verify their identification when they got to the polls, such as using an alternative ID or signing an affidavit.

The higher standard of showing an officially established ID to vote, maybe with a photo, is a more effective way of keeping people from misrepresenting themselves to vote and commit fraud, according to those who like the requirement. In addition, they say that if everyone had to show an official ID, especially with a photo, the public would be more confident that elections cannot be manipulated.

Those opposed to the change say there is little to no fraud to contend with. Meanwhile, they say the added expense, time, and travel such requirements place on voters to find the supporting papers required to get an accepted ID disempowers voters. (These can include birth certificates or old marriage documents.) It’s a hurdle a number of people in all kinds of groups — from older, poorer, rural voters to women, the disabled and others — cannot overcome and so actually deprives some people of the right to vote, detractors say.

Wisconsin enacted new voter ID requirements earlier in 2025 by ballot measure, during an April election. 

And keep an eye on….

Beyond the elections coming in just the next few weeks, there are still some important considerations yet to be settled about voting across the country.

For example, a case from Louisiana just came to the U.S. Supreme Court pertaining to the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which was written to prevent discrimination in voting. In the new case, the justices were asked to review how voting districts are drawn by lawmakers on an electoral map. Justices are considering whether lawmakers should be allowed to use race as a factor, or not, in drawing these maps, The New York Times reported.

Race has been used to an extent in the past to draw districts to ensure that minority voters’ preferences are not overwhelmed by districts drawn to favor the majority population. It is helpful to recall that prior to the Voting Rights Act, some states were found to have obstructed the constitutional rights of minority citizens to vote.

“The decision the Supreme Court makes now could end the practice, endorsed by the court for decades, of crafting congressional districts with the purpose of helping minority voters elect the candidates of their choice,” the paper reported.

The Court has not yet announced a decision and it could take months for that to happen. Meanwhile, the major political parties are watching carefully to see what will happen and whether and when they might be able to redraw voting districts to their own political benefit.

And then there was this oddity

No one saw this coming last week, but Dominion Voting Systems, one of the big companies that makes equipment used to conduct elections, was sold to another company. You may remember that Dominion suffered verbal attacks and false accusations from candidate Donald J. Trump, some supporters, and Fox News in 2020 that manipulation of Dominion equipment siphoned votes away from Trump votes. Dominion sued Fox for defamation, by the way, and settled for $787 million.    

A Missouri company called Liberty Vote, owned by Scott Leiendecker, has purchased Dominion and will start operating as Liberty Vote. There are only about three major companies in the election-machine market in the United States (Dominion has clients in 27 states), and it’s not really clear what the motivation for the sale was, according to Wired magazine. But, Leiendecker, a Republican, knows how elections function from a previous career in the field. And apparently the former owners of Dominion wanted to distance themselves from the untrue accusations the company faced. 

Elections officials interviewed by the nonprofit news site Votebeat didn’t really know what to make of the news. It may, in fact, be a neutral development for voters after a very weird big news event from 2020.Time will tell.