ICYMI: Top stories of the week

Sixty-five percent of July’s elections were uncontested

Throughout July, Ballotpedia covered 525 elections in 11 states, 65% of which were uncontested. This brings the year-to-date rate of uncontested elections to 73%. Local judicial elections are the least competitive so far this year, with 86% of those elections going uncontested.

The most contested legislative primaries in Arizona since 2010

Primaries for the Arizona State Legislature—which has November elections for all 30 seats in the Senate and 60 in the House—took place on July 30. Arizona has one of the narrowest legislative margins in the country. Republicans have a two-seat margin in the Senate and a three-seat margin in the House.

Twenty-nine legislative primaries—12 Democratic and 17 Republican—were contested this year. Twenty-nine incumbents—14 Democrats and 15 Republicans—were in contested primaries, the most since 2010.

Redistricting ballot measure will go before Ohio voters in November

An initiative to amend the Ohio Constitution and create a Citizens Redistricting Commission will appear on the Ohio ballot on Nov. 5. The initiative would replace the current Ohio Redistricting Commission with a 15-member Citizens Redistricting Commission (CRC).

Introducing Ballotpedia’s Historic Ballot Measure Fact Book

Since Ballotpedia was founded in 2007, we have focused on covering ballot measures and the laws governing them. Sixteen years later, we’ve published nearly 50,000 articles on ballot measures. Now, we are launching our Historic Ballot Measures Fact Book, which documents nearly 200 years of direct democracy in the United States.

We introduced this Fact Book in the July 31 Daily Brew with an analysis of the inventory of ballot measures from Texas, spanning from the first constitutional amendment in 1879 to the most recent in 2023. Click the link below to read our Texas Historic Ballot Measures Fact Book.