In California, slavery is abolished, but involuntary servitude isn't. There's been a lot of back-and-forth about this,” said Dennis Febo, a lead organizer of the Abolish Slavery National Network, which is working to pass similar measures in several states. “It didn't hit California voters as an issue.”
The first came down to the word "slavery": Nevada's measure included the word, while California's did not. The second distinction was in the practical effect of the proposals: California’s measure would have banned mandatory work for prisoners; but Nevada’s ban is largely symbolic, leaving it up to the courts to decide whether it will mean any changes to prison labor.
These diverging results in two neighboring states raised questions about whether Nevada voters, a majority of whom supported Donald Trump's successful bid to return to the White House, are more liberal on criminal justice issues than voters in deep-blue California, where Vice President Kamala Harris won.
Some have suggested that the failure of California's Proposition 6 reflects a rightward shift in the state, where voters passed Proposition 36, the tough-on-crime measure on the same ballot that will reverse course on progressive reforms they approved a decade earlier.
Collection
[
|
...
]