The True Power Of Black Voters Lies In Down-Ballot Races

Cable news networks and carefully curated social media content have been driving the public to focus on the federal campaigns ahead of this week’s midterm elections. Much of the focus has been on whether Democrats or Republicans will control Congress once all votes have been counted. This heavy and narrow focus has left little, if any, coverage on local races where policy heavily impacts the daily lives of Black people. 

Civil rights activist and organizer Fannie Lou Hamer once said that Black voters needed to build their own power and win every local political race. Hamer understood the power of the Black electorate to bring about change. According to the U.S. Census Bureau data compiled by USAFacts, Black voter turnout drops during midterm election cycles. While 59.6% of eligible Black voters cast a ballot in the 2024 presidential election, only 45.1% of them voted during the 2022 midterms. 

For the Black electorate, showing up in higher numbers for midterm elections can impact state and municipal ballots. Federal legislation creates broad frameworks but local systems often have the most impact on our daily lives. State lawmakers, county supervisors, and local judges control municipal budgets, criminal justice policies, and funding for public education. Maintaining engagement and voting in these local contests ensures community control and input over the local offices in charge of making crucial decisions for their surrounding communities. 

Consider the battle over prison labor. Individual states retain complete autonomy to set their own policies around prison labor and state constitutions preserve the right to force prisoners into involuntary servitude. In fact, the primary federal labor and safety laws contained in the Fair Labor Standards Act and the Occupational Safety and Health Act exclude the incarcerated from their protections by not defining them as employees. 

The 13th amendment contains a loophole that permits involuntary servitude as an acceptable punishment for a crime, allowing it to be classified as a penal discipline instead of being considered a form of employment. 

When Californians headed to the polls in 2024, they voted against Proposition 6 that would have removed the constitutional exception allowing jails and state prisons to force incarcerated individuals to perform labor under threat of discipline.  This outcome serves as a reminder of what happens when voters skip the bottom of the ticket, leaving systemic biases intact that disproportionately impact Black people who are overrepresented in carceral facilities. Letting local measures like this proposition fail continued the forced labor of inmates that no president or member of Congress has the power to change on a state level.

This week, voters in Houston, Texas will decide whether to pass Proposition A, a city-level ballot measure that would stop local police from using city funds to enforce low-level marijuana possession arrests and ban police from using no-knock search warrants during drug raids. Because marijuana enforcement patterns expose Black residents to physical danger during the execution of search warrants and have created national arrest rates for Black people that are 3.6 times higher than white people, this municipal vote directly impacts Black residents there. 

Inflation and rising costs are hitting Americans hard, and state-level legislation dictates whether workers are afforded relief or get left behind. In Oklahoma, a measure called Oklahoma State Question 832 that proposed to increase the state minimum wage up to $15 an hour by 2029 failed in June. It would have forced employers to pay that higher minimum wage to agricultural and domestic workers who are often left out of wage protections. Bringing these vulnerable groups under state wage rules would have protected families from predatory piece-rate pay structures and unmonitored labor standards.

In Missouri, Proposition A passed in 2024, raising the state minimum wage to $15 per hour and requiring employers to provide one hour of paid sick leave for every 30 hours worked. The paid sick leave portion of the proposition was later repealed, leaving families without a crucial safety net and work protection. Because historic employment barriers leave Black workers heavily concentrated in hourly service sectors that lack safety nets, this legislation has provided a much-needed pay hike that ultimately left parents unable to take time off of work to care for sick children without risking losing their jobs or wages. 

This week, voters are facing down-ballot measures that seek to further restrict diversity and inclusion policies that impact hiring practices and DEI policies. Arizona voters will decide whether to pass Proposition 142 that would prevent the use of “preferential treatment” on the basis of race or ethnicity and would prohibit diversity and inclusion training. Arizona is one of 26 states whose Black unemployment rate is at least two times higher than the white unemployment rate. 

While state-level propositions frequently provide opportunities to reject increasingly restrictive policies that reverse progress in diversity hiring and equity, municipal ballots have helped proactively build economic stability and provide support for vulnerable populations.

When voters in Austin, Texas, passed a dedicated housing bond initiative in 2018, the local measure secured millions in funding to preserve affordable housing units that prevented displacement in historically Black neighborhoods that were rapidly gentrifying. 

In Denver, local voters approved a municipal sales tax initiative in 2018 that transferred 25 cents of every $100 residents spent to fund specialized response teams to handle mental health crises, replacing traditional police dispatches with medical professionals. During the initiative’s first six months, a team of professionals that made up the city’s mobile response team responded to more than 750 calls to support anyone experiencing a mental health challenge or struggling with substance abuse, with none of those encounters leading to an arrest. Studies have shown that Black people with mental health disorders are arrested more frequently than whites. One study found that Black men experience arrest twice as often as white men and Black women five times the rate of white women.

The lessons of the municipal victories of the past and the opportunities that await voters this week, are proof that while national campaigns are likely to continue to dominate the headlines, the policy decisions that shape the daily wellbeing and survival of Black people are decided at the bottom of the ticket. As Black voters head to the polls this week, they should carry with them the spirit of creating the change that Fannie Lou Hamer knew was possible by voting and building political power locally, from the ground up. 

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