Welcome to the Friday, June 6, 2025, Brew.
By: Lara Bonatesta
Here’s what’s in store for you as you start your day:
- Texas legislators refer 17 constitutional amendments for Nov. 2025 ballot—the most for a single election date since 2003
- How we connect people to politics, by Leslie Graves, Ballotpedia Founder and CEO
- Forty-three percent of the elections Ballotpedia covered in May were uncontested
Texas legislators refer 17 constitutional amendments for Nov. 2025 ballot—the most for a single election date since 2003
The Texas Legislature adjourned on June 2, ending its 2025 legislative session. During the 140-day session, legislators put 17 constitutional amendments on the Nov. 4, 2025, ballot—the most on a single election date in the state since 2003.
The amendments cover a range of policy areas, from property tax exemptions to dementia research funding and more.
We’ll discuss some of those amendments below, but first, let’s take a look at how legislators voted and some historical context.
Legislative referrals and partisanship
In Texas, a two-thirds vote is required in a single legislative session to put a constitutional amendment on the ballot. This amounts to at least 100 votes in the House and 21 in the Senate, assuming no vacancies. Republicans have an 88-62 majority in the House and a 20-11 majority in the Senate. This means at least 12 Democratic votes in the House and at least one in the Senate were needed to put the amendments on the ballot.
For this analysis, we grouped the 17 amendments into three categories: bipartisan, lean Republican, and lean Democratic.
- Bipartisan: There was less than a 20 percentage point difference between Republican and Democratic ‘yes’ vote rates.
- Lean Republican: The Republican ‘yes’ vote rate was more than 20 percentage points higher than the Democratic rate
- Lean Democratic: The Democratic ‘yes’ vote rate was more than 20 percentage points higher than the Republican rate.
Nine amendments received bipartisan support. Three, all related to homestead exemptions, received unanimous support from all voting members.
Seven amendments were classified as lean Republican. The largest difference (59.3 percentage points) was for an amendment to prohibit the Legislature from enacting a tax on realized or unrealized capital gains for individuals, families, estates, or trusts, including taxes on the sale or transfer of capital assets. Amendments on parental rights and citizenship voting requirements were also classified as lean Republican.
One amendment was classified as lean Democratic. The amendment would establish the Dementia Prevention and Research Institute of Texas and allocate $3 billion from the general fund. It received support from 100% of Democratic legislators and 79.8% of Republican legislators.
Historical context
Since Texas adopted its constitution in 1876, voters have decided on 712 statewide ballot measures—all constitutional amendments. Voters approved 531 (74.6%) and rejected 181 (25.4%). Click here to see our comprehensive coverage of Texas ballot measures since 1876.
Notable amendments
Here’s a look at some of the amendments on the Nov. 4 ballot in Texas.
- SJR 34 (Parental Rights): The amendment says parents have the right “to exercise care, custody, and control of the parent’s child, including the right to make decisions concerning the child’s upbringing” and the responsibility “to nurture and protect the parent’s child.” The last state to vote on a parental rights amendment was Colorado in 1996. Voters rejected it 57.7%-42.4%.
- SJR 37 (Citizenship Voting Requirement): Would add noncitizens to the list of people prohibited from voting under Section 1, Article 6 of the Texas Constitution. From 2018 to 2024, voters approved 14 ballot measures that added language to their state constitutions about citizenship requirements for voting.
- SJR 3 (Dementia Prevention and Research Institute): Would establish the Dementia Prevention and Research Institute of Texas with $3 billion from the general fund.
- HJR 2, HJR 4, and SJR 18 (Constitutional Bans on Certain Taxes): Would prohibit state taxes on certain financial assets, transactions, or occupations.
- HJR 1, HJR 34, and HJR 99 (Property Tax Exemptions): These three amendments would authorize the Legislature to create new property tax exemptions other than the homestead tax exemptions described above.
Click here to learn more about all 17 amendments on the ballot this Nov. 4 in Texas.
How we connect people to politics
One of the goals of this column has been to give Daily Brew readers a new perspective — a look behind the curtain, if you will — on how we gather, process, curate, and share information about politics and elections.
Now that the curtain has been drawn aside, it’s important to step back and make sense of what we’ve just seen. Today, I will explore the common theme running through these columns, what it all means for everyone who has a stake or an interest in what Ballotpedia does, and where we’re headed.
The common theme running through my first two months of columns is how Ballotpedia makes connections — between voters and candidates, people and public policy, and every person in every community — to the great American experiment in self-governance.
How do we make those connections?
It begins with our staff, this incredible group of professionals who love politics and thrive on sharing what they know and discover about candidates, elections, and public policy. Their efforts to cover the people and stories behind local races — for school board, city council, state and local judges, and more — provide a vital public service for the voters in those communities. They also serve as windows into the issues that drive politics at its most elemental and personal level.
Working alongside our staff, filling critical needs for research, data collection, and so much more is our dedicated community of volunteers. They are the people making the calls, following the leads, and gathering the fine details on tens of thousands of candidates running for local office.
But as we’ve seen, they are gathering more than just candidate names and addresses. Our staff and volunteers are constantly working to expand the number of candidates who complete and return our Candidate Connection survey.
This information goes well beyond the basics, giving voters a more complete understanding not only of what candidates hope to do in office, but also of what they believe, what inspires them, and so much more. And for candidates, the survey allows them to speak candidly and directly to voters whom they may never otherwise have an opportunity to reach.
Behind all of this is our increasingly sophisticated and innovative suite of technological tools. These tools not only help us gather and process information about candidates and elections more quickly, but they also allow us to share it with voters more easily and quickly than ever before.
But there is so very much left to do.
I often talk about how Ballotpedia’s work is like a mountain hike. We know what our goal is — to reach that peak in the distance. In our case, it’s a place where every voter can get in-depth information about every candidate on their ballot in every election, and every candidate has seized the opportunity to make a direct connection with voters. Here, with this level of connection, the only unknown for a voter is who will ultimately get their vote.
We’re prepared to make that journey — and hope you will join us, as a reader, a volunteer, or a Ballotpedia Society member.
Forty-three percent of the elections Ballotpedia covered in May were uncontested
Ballotpedia will cover more than 32,000 elections this year. Most of those are for local offices such as city councils, mayors, and school board members – the ones closest to the people. One thing we’ve discovered in our coverage of these races is how many are uncontested.
Our most recent data from May shows that 43% of the 2,891 we covered in 24 states were uncontested. In April, we covered 19,290 elections, 81% of which were uncontested.
We define an uncontested election as one where the number of candidates running is less than or equal to the number of seats up for election. This analysis does not account for write-in candidates.
Most of the races we covered in May were in Texas. Of the 2,053 elections in Texas, 772 (38%) were uncontested. Other states where we covered more than 100 elections included:
- Ohio: Out of 221 elections, 129 (58%) were uncontested
- Arkansas: Out of 206 elections, 150 (73%) were uncontested
- Montana: Out of 163 elections, 68 (42%) were uncontested
Florida and Oklahoma had no uncontested races, but both cancel uncontested elections by default.
So far this year, we have covered 22,745 elections in 38 states – 17,077 (75%) were uncontested. Between 2018 and 2024, an average of 64% of the elections we covered were uncontested, ranging from a low of 49% in 2021 to a high of 70% in 2024.
Click here to learn more about uncontested elections nationwide in the last month and in previous months.