National politics dominate people’s attention, but local politics often play a greater role in shaping their lives. Daniel Nichanian reports on local politics as the founder and editor in chief of Bolts, which publishes an annual election guide. In a written conversation with Lauren Dominguez Chan, the lead researcher for the Times editorial board, they discuss the down-ballot races with the highest stakes. It has been edited for length and clarity.
President Trump isn’t on the ballot this year, but voters are nonetheless reacting to his policies. The most obvious one is his aggressive use of Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Border Patrol. Where might voters pass judgment on ICE in local elections?
Trump’s immigration agenda has shaken up all sorts of local races. Earlier this year in Whittier, a suburb of Los Angeles where ICE conducted raids last summer, residents doubled the turnout of typical local elections, ousting a longtime Republican mayor and establishing a liberal majority on the City Council. That same backlash is now endangering Republican mayors in several other Southern California cities.
Elsewhere, sheriffs known as staunch ICE allies are also facing challengers. In Alamance County, N.C., the local sheriff has been in office for nearly 25 years and has rarely faced opponents, despite a Department of Justice investigation after accusations of racist statements and practices. This year he has a challenger: a pastor running as an independent who says the sheriff’s office should not engage in racial profiling.
As angry as voters might be about ICE, some might doubt how much a local sheriff can resist a huge federal agency. What kinds of federal actions can they constrain?
The bottom line is that local law enforcement agencies are a very important force multiplier for federal enforcement. If you get pulled over for a broken taillight or booked in the county jail, will police officers try to assess your immigration status? What information will they relay to federal authorities? Will they arrest and detain you on ICE’s behalf?
In most places, those decisions are up to the sheriffs or the governors and mayors who oversee state highway patrols and police departments. Local officials also sometimes sign contracts with ICE to rent out space in local jails to detain immigrants or empower deputies to act as federal immigration agents. This year some Democratic candidates have vowed to terminate those contracts, including in swing areas of Wisconsin.
Let’s talk about another source of national backlash: tech. There are more than 40 measures about data centers on local ballots next week. What do we know about how voters might respond?
I’d go back to the off-year elections in November 2025. Anyone who followed Georgia’s utility commission elections, in which Democrats defeated two Republican incumbents, would have noticed voters’ anger toward data centers. That anger has grown this year. Voters have already approved measures to ban data centers and ousted local officials who have greenlit such projects.
This fall more than a dozen communities in Ohio are voting on measures to ban or restrict data center construction, and Ohio Democrats have made data centers a key attack against Senator Jon Husted. In Georgia the backlash from last year has endured, and Democrats hope it helps them flip another seat on the state’s utility commission. That’d give them their first majority on that board this century.
In Monterey Park, Calif., some of the activists behind a data-center ban that voters adopted earlier this year are now seeking local office themselves.
How about another kind of tech that’s made headlines lately — Flock cameras?
It’s been fascinating to watch the tides turn against Flock (the embattled tech company whose cameras have become ubiquitous in many parts of the country) because growing these surveillance networks has largely been a bipartisan project. They’re put up by police in blue cities and sheriffs in rural red areas. But as scandals and privacy breaches have mounted, officials from both parties have felt public pressure to reverse course.
Now that’s spilled into local elections. The town of York, Maine, will vote on a citizens’ initiative that would ban automated license plate readers, which includes Flock. In St. Petersburg, Fla., Charlie Crist, the former governor now running for mayor, is proposing a moratorium on Flock cameras. Surveillance tech is also defining City Council races in Democratic-governed cities like Asheville, N.C., and San Diego.
In 2024 a lot of candidates, including Kamala Harris, were eager to campaign on abortion. This year it hasn’t been as prominent, but which elections have the most potential to change abortion access?
The end of federal protections for abortion in 2022 made this a central issue in state elections. Suddenly the makeup of state legislatures and courts became essential to the fate of abortion access. For instance, North Carolina Republicans passed an abortion ban in 2023. If Democrats gain the legislature this year, they’ll be able to overturn that ban.
Several ballot measures would also affect the issue. Voters next week could choose to overturn an abortion ban in Idaho and reinstate one in Missouri. In Nevada and Virginia, where abortion is legal, they could codify those rights into the state Constitutions.
I find state courts to be the sleeper level of government when it comes to abortion access. Judges have issued a string of rulings around the country on abortion, and many of the justices who’ve taken part in these rulings are on the ballot in November — in 10 states, by my count. Kansas is a notable battleground. The state Supreme Court there has affirmed a right to abortion, and conservatives tried but failed this summer to change how justices get appointed to the court. But it’s not over yet. One of the justices who has voted to affirm abortion rights is up for retention.
When voters choose their chief election official — usually a secretary of state — democracy itself can be on the ballot. Next week 35 states will determine who will be in charge of their 2028 elections. Which states could end up with a chief election official who denies the result of the 2020 presidential race?
In two swing states, the G.O.P. has nominated a candidate with a long record of denying the result in the 2020 election. In Arizona a G.O.P. state lawmaker who is running for secretary helped Trump’s legal efforts in 2020 and has since pushed for major restrictions on mail voting. In Nevada the G.O.P. nominee is a man who in 2022 helped organize a nationwide slate of candidates who falsely said the 2020 election was stolen. This year he is running on the idea of unregistering everyone from the rolls and forcing them to reregister to vote.
I’d also point to Georgia. To my knowledge, the Republican nominee for secretary of state there has not outright denied the results of the 2020 election, but he has said there were “irregularities.” That’s a far cry from the public statements of the person who currently leads the office, Brad Raffensperger. In 2020, Raffensperger rejected Trump’s call to “find” votes.
How close are those secretary of state races?
Polling for down-ballot races tends to be pretty meager, though a few public surveys have shown Democratic secretaries of state with an advantage in Arizona and Nevada. The Georgia election could be among the nation’s most competitive.
Another signal came from a Wyoming primary earlier this year, where G.O.P. voters in one of the reddest states in the nation rejected a secretary of state candidate and other lawmakers who were attempting to restrict ballot access.
There’s something meta about having an election to decide who should run elections. How else could 2026 voters influence how future elections will be run?
It absolutely is, and there are dozens of measures on the ballot this fall where voters could change election law directly. They’re being asked to consider gerrymandering, voter ID requirements, public campaign financing and so much more.
One measure I’d highlight is Virginia’s Question 3 because of the weighty history it’d shake off. Virginia’s Constitution says that any people who are convicted of any felony lose the right to vote for their entire life. That’s one of the strictest rules in the country, and it’s the legacy of a 1902 constitutional convention where politicians gathered to codify white supremacist goals. This fall, voters are deciding whether to change this. There’s a measure on the ballot that would restore voting rights as soon as people leave prison.
And when it comes to the meta dimension of these elections, nothing beats the fact that some voters will be voting on referendums that’d change the rules of future referendums.
How so?
There have been efforts in recent years, mostly in Republican-run states, to restrict access to direct democracy — to make it harder to put a citizen-led initiative on the ballot. In South Dakota, for example, voters approved a citizen initiative to expand health care coverage, circumventing the Republican-led legislature. This fall, G.O.P. legislators in North Dakota and South Dakota have proposed constitutional amendments that would raise the threshold for amending the state Constitution from a simple majority to 60 percent.
Those measures are not themselves subject to the change they’d impose, so they’ll pass even if they get 50.1 percent of the vote.
There’s also a push by officials in liberal San Francisco to restrict citizen initiatives this fall.
Why might voters opt for that? Are they tired of filling out long ballots?
Let’s see what voters actually say, of course, but the San Francisco mayor has championed the measure as part of a package that’d centralize more power in his office. San Francisco has one of the lowest thresholds in the State of California for qualifying measures, and critics say it balloons the ballot. Voters there are considering 11 local measures this fall.
Where could Democrats or Republicans pick up a new state trifecta, in which one party controls the governor’s office and both legislative houses?
The three states I’m watching most closely are Arizona, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. That’s because Democrats have rarely had a trifecta in any of them in recent history. It hasn’t happened at all this century in Arizona or Pennsylvania. But they could flip legislatures and gain full control of the state governments in all of them. The governors of all three states are now Democrats.
Democrats also want to regain full control of three states they ran earlier this decade — Michigan, Minnesota and Nevada. They may even have a path in North Carolina. In a good night for Republicans, the party could gain trifectas in Arizona, Kansas and Wisconsin by flipping the governor’s offices.
Any such change would make these states’ upcoming legislative sessions fascinating, affecting policy on unions, school vouchers, voting and more. To pick just one example: Democrats could repeal Scott Walker’s 2011 law that restrained collective bargaining in Wisconsin.
Let’s do some rapid-fire questions before we finish. What’s the most interesting conservative idea on a state or local ballot?
In Colorado, conservatives have put forward a measure that would establish a right to natural gas, a reaction to some local regulations on gas appliances and other environmental efforts.
Most interesting progressive idea?
Berkeley, Calif., and San Francisco are voting on measures that’d start the process of setting up a public bank. Local governments would deposit their assets there rather than in commercial banks, and the public bank would use those funds to invest in affordable housing and other projects.
Most interesting rerun?
In 2022 high schoolers organized a ballot measure in Culver City, Calif., to lower the voting age in local elections to 16. The measure lost by — of all margins — 16 votes. Proponents are trying again this year. They say it’s only fair for students to have a say in the school boards that govern them and that it would get more teenagers voting.
Smallest place with an important race?
If you’re interested in Flock cameras, there’s a backlash in the small town of Pine Plains, N.Y. And many of the towns voting on data centers are quite small, rural communities, including a township in Ohio with about 600 residents.
What’s an office that people would be surprised is even elected?
Did you know Vermont elects high bailiffs? It’s an office with narrow duties, the most noteworthy of which is that the person would be in charge of arresting the sheriff.
Let’s end here: Your magazine, Bolts, is a national publication that highlights local elections. Why do you do this work?
So many issues are shaped at the local level. That much we all know. But what that can mean is that people are often excited by a big idea, like “Competent election officials matter to democracy” or “Local officials shouldn’t be enforcing immigration laws,” but they’re not sure what to do with that. The key is to understand who holds power locally. We do reporting and research that help people navigate the labyrinth of our local politics.
Daniel Nichanian is the founder and editor in chief of Bolts, a nonprofit newsroom that has covered criminal justice and voting rights in state governments since 2022. Lauren Dominguez Chan is a researcher in Times Opinion.
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