In Ohio, voters overwhelmingly rejected the law enacted last spring by Gov. John Kasich and the Republican-controlled legislature that limited the ability of public employee unions to collectively bargain.
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In Mississippi, abortion rights advocates scored a somewhat surprising victory as voters defeated Initiative 26, a proposed amendment to the state’s constitution that would have defined the word “person” to include every human being “from the moment of fertilization, cloning, or the functional equivalent thereof.”

More than 55 percent of voters were voted “no” on the ballot measure, The Associated Press reported, falling far short of the threshold needed for it to be enacted.

Yet at the same time that Ohio voters were boosting labor unions, they also delivered at least a symbolic rebuff to Obama’s health care reform law by overwhelmingly approving a ballot measure saying that no federal, state, or local law or rule could compel any person or employer to participate in a health care system. The practical effect of that Ohio measure hinges on the outcome of legal challenges in federal courts to Obama’s health care law.
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Meanwhile, Mississippi voters also gave overwhelming approval to a ballot initiative that will create a photo identification requirement for voters. According to the National Council of State Legislatures, Mississippi will now be the 31st state with a voter ID requirement and the eighth with a strict photo ID requirement.

The self-proclaimed “tea party president” had proven a controversial figure in Arizona politics. Pearce was the chief architect of Senate Bill 1070, Arizona’s controversial immigration law, and came under fire in March for reading an overtly racist letter on the floor of the state Senate.

Pearce had also said that Americans were not citizens of the United States but only citizens of their respective states. He had pushed for a bill to grant Arizona the power to ignore federal laws.

The citizens of Maine on Tuesday repealed a recently passed law requiring voters to enroll at least two days before an election.

With more than three-quarters of the state’s precincts reporting, 60 percent of voters had rejected the law, according to the Bangor Daily News.

“Whenever the party in power wants to cling to that power by changing the rules — by making it harder for you to hold them accountable, by making it harder for you to vote — it’s up to you to stop them,” State Rep. Bob Duchesne said during last week’s Democratic Radio Address.

Beshear’s win probably says little about Kentucky in next year’s presidential race: no Democratic presidential candidate has carried the state since Bill Clinton in 1996 and Kentucky is not expected to be a competitive state in the 2012 contest.

Beshear has clashed with the Obama administration over the Environmental Protection Agency’s blocking approval of permits for coal mines in Kentucky. In a Sept. 27 letter, Beshear told Obama that EPA officials were “obstructing a substantial opportunity to create and maintain high-paying jobs and have the potential to devastate job creation and affordable energy across the nation.”

Citizens of Iowa Senate District 18 received a robocall on Monday night instructing them to call Democratic candidate Liz Mathis and ask what homosexual acts she approved of, according to the Des Moines Register.

“Homosexual marriage obviously involves homosexual sex. So before you support Liz Mathis, call her at 319-899-0628 and ask her which homosexual sex acts she endorses,” the automated call said.