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This summer, in the weeks after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe vs. Wade, more than three-quarters of a million residents of Michigan signed petitions to put a measure on the ballot to add abortion rights to the state constitution.
In the two months before election day, thousands of volunteers made phone calls and knocked on doors more than 1 million times, and talked with more than 100,000 voters, according to organizers. And on Tuesday, Michiganders stood in the cold for hours to vote, including at the University of Michigan, where so many waited in line that the final ballots were not cast until roughly 2 a.m.
When all those ballots were counted, the abortion amendment passed with 57% of the vote — one of four such measures that passed on Tuesday, including one in California. The fate of a fifth measure, in Montana, remains undecided.
In Michigan, the impact cascaded down the ballot. Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, who made abortion rights a major focus of her campaign, handily won reelection, and for the first time since Ronald Reagan was president, Democrats appear to have won control of both houses of the Michigan legislature.
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