What voters face: in November, citizens will determine much more than who the next president will be.

• Author: Underhill, Wendy
• Position: ELECTIONS 2016

This year's crop of statewide ballot measures challenges voters to read carefully, listen beyond the sound bites and thoughtfully consider policy questions that directly affect their lives.

Some of the issues lean right, some lean left, though most don't lean at all. Regardless, they're being decided even now by citizen lawmakers across the country in places with early voting.

Wendy Underhill is NCSL's program director for elections and redistricting; Princess Umodu is an intern with the Center for Legislative Research and Support and a student at Stanford University.

The Breakdown

As of mid-September, there were 145 measures in 34 states. That's about the same as in 2014, when voters faced 147 measures in 41 states and the District of Columbia. But it's nowhere near the 240 that voters were asked to consider in 1996, the peak year.

This year's total includes 65 legislative referrals, 74 citizen initiatives, four popular referenda and two advisory measures. Notably, there were just 35 citizen initiatives in 2014--a sign, perhaps, that bypassing the legislature via "direct democracy" is an increasingly attractive strategy.

Voters have approved about 45 percent of all citizen initiatives and about 75 percent of legislative referrals and bond issues since 1996.

Hot Topics

Surprisingly, there are no ballot measures this year on lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender issues, reproductive choices or abortion. Still, there's no lack of controversy.

The headline grabbers include marijuana (both medical and recreational), campaign finance, the minimum wage and the death penalty. There is a typical assortment of tax measures, bond issues to fund transportation or other infrastructure projects, and a variety of questions that appear before voters simply for legal or housekeeping reasons.

Here are the specifics.

Marijuana: Marijuana has been a ballot staple since 1996, but this year's a bumper crop. As of mid-September, nine measures had qualified, four permitting medical marijuana (Arkansas, Florida, Montana, North Dakota) and five permitting adult recreational use (Arizona, California, Maine, Massachusetts, Nevada). The last time a particular topic was so prominent was in 2004, when defining marriage as between a man and a woman only was on 13 ballots.

Criminal Justice: Victims' rights (Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota), protecting child victims from sexual exploitation and trafficking (Georgia), pretrial release reform (New Mexico), the death...