A progressive prison reform that was on the ballot in California and Nevada this month saw dramatically different results after the votes were counted:

In California, voters chose to maintain the status quo, allowing “involuntary servitude” to remain legal in prisons. Across the border, Nevada voters overwhelmingly passed a measure banning “slavery and involuntary servitude.”

These divergent results in two neighboring states have raised the question of whether voters in Nevada, 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 California, where Vice President Kamala Harris won.

Some have suggested that the failure of California’s Proposition 6 reflects a move to the right in the state where voters passed Proposition 36, the crime-fighting measure on the same ballot that reverse course on the progressive reforms they had approved ten years earlier.

But a closer look at prison measures in California and Nevada reveals two key differences that may explain this surprising result.

The first boiled down to the word “slavery”: Nevada’s measure included the word, while California’s did not.

The second distinction lies in the practical effect of the proposals: the California measure would have banned forced labor for prisoners; But Nevada’s ban is largely symbolic, leaving it up to the courts to decide whether it will lead to changes in prison labor.

Luke Scott, who is pursuing a master’s degree in a state prison last year, is among the inmates who advocates say could focus more on rehabilitation if involuntary servitude were banned in California.

(Brian van der Brug/Los Angeles Times)

“In California, slavery is abolished, but not involuntary servitude. There’s been a lot of discussion about it,” said Dennis Febo, a lead organizer with the national Abolish Slavery Network, which is working to pass similar measures in several states. “This was not a problem for California voters.”

California amended its Constitution in the 1970s to ban slavery. This year, Proposition 6 asked voters if they would like to further amend the Constitution to remove a “provision that allows prisons to impose involuntary servitude as punishment for a crime (i.e., forcing incarcerated people to work ). »

Nevada’s measure sought to remove slavery and involuntary servitude as punishments for crimes in one fell swoop, since both terms were still in its constitution.

The presence of the word “slavery” on the ballot likely alarmed Nevada voters who may not have known it was still legal in their state as a punishment for a crime, said Jay Jordan, who led the Yes campaign on Proposition 6. The California measure, he said, did not create a similar sense of urgency or shock because it did not contain the word “slavery.”

Proponents of Proposition 6 view forced prison labor as a vestige of slavery and have used the word in their campaign messages. Jordan said he asked California officials to describe the measure in the ballot summary with the phrase: “Slavery in any form is prohibited.”

“But they didn’t put it in there,” he said. “I don’t know why.”

California Atty. General Rob Bonta writes the titles and summaries of each voted measure. In crafting them, his office considers several factors, including the full text of the measure and how it would change existing law, a spokesperson said.

Mentioning slavery in the Proposition 6 summary could have raised questions of accuracy, as California has long banned the practice as punishment for crimes. However, involuntary servitude remains enshrined in the Constitution.

“It’s all about language,” Febo said. He noted that although both states wanted the same language changes, “Nevada’s campaign was simple” and California’s ballot summary was less direct.

Jordan said the California measure faced additional hurdles, including the limited amount of time supporters had to organize a campaign. Parliament put Proposition 6 to the ballot this summer amid intense negotiations led by the Legislative Black Caucus on a set of bills intended to address reparations. And the proposition passed in a year when voters showed increased concern about crime, passing Proposition 36 to enact harsher penalties for certain theft and drug crimes, and ousting progressive prosecutors in Los Angeles and Alameda counties.

In Nevada, the measure that became Question 4 on this year’s ballot also came from the state legislature. Assembly Member Howard Watts introduced measurement in 2021.

Watts, a Democrat, said he was partly inspired by Ava DuVernay’s 2016 documentary “13th,” which explored how the U.S. Constitution abolished slavery in 1865 through the 13th Amendment – but with a provision authorizing slavery as a criminal sanction.

As other free states joined the union, several of them also included this language in their constitutions.

DuVernay and lawmakers who favor him have argued that the phrase allowing slavery as punishment for a crime allows prisons to force inmates to perform labor, many of them for as little as a few cents per hour.

In recent years, seven states have banned slavery and involuntary servitude in their constitutions, including Colorado in 2018, Utah and Nebraska in 2020, and Alabama, Oregon, Tennessee and Vermont in 2022. Louisiana voters rejected their state’s 2022 measure.

Prison workers in Louisiana, where voters two years ago rejected a similar constitutional amendment banning slavery and involuntary servitude.

(Gérald Herbert / Associated Press)

The practical consequences of each measure may differ from state to state. In Tennessee, for example, state officials said the ballot measure was written to remove outdated language without stopping the state from forcing prisoners to work.

Watts said Nevada’s measure is largely “symbolic,” but he “invites” people to take the interpretation further so that it applies to prison labor. The decision to ban compulsory labor for prisoners will likely be decided by the courts.

“My idea was to keep it simple,” Watts said of the measure. “The more complicated it is, the more difficult it is” for voters to understand.

But in California, Rep. Lori Wilson (D-Suisun City) went further, explicitly stating that eliminating involuntary servitude would result in a voluntary labor program for prisoners. She and her advocates say it would allow inmates to refuse a work assignment, choose their schedule and have more time for rehabilitation, including therapy and schooling.

The majority of California voters were not convinced this was the right path forward.

“These are people who have committed crimes and are being punished for those crimes,” said Jeff Greeson, a Chico prosecutor who voted against Proposition 6. “The tasks that many of them perform that are involuntary are based on normal maintenance that anyone would do to maintain a facility.

He said “characterizing inmate labor as slavery” would be a “grossly inappropriate use of language.”

Austin Yu, a San Mateo voter, said he was “50-50” on the measure, but ultimately decided to vote yes. Yu said he believes more work needs to be done in California to correct a legal system he sees as biased against people of color.

“I think if you are rightly imprisoned, you should be forced to work,” he said. “But I’m pretty liberal, so what won out was not affecting the population disproportionately.”

Jordan, of the Yes on 6 campaign, hopes California will eventually follow the same path as Nevada in passing its own ban. His grassroots campaign was led by a corps of volunteers who had served prison sentences. Involving them in politics was a victory, he said, even if the measure was a failure.

“They said, ‘Can we do this again?’ “, he said. “And I’m like, ‘You can do this again and again.’ This is not the end.’”