Election results: Ohio voters approve abortion protections; Kentucky re-elects Democrat

Democrats have flipped control of the Virginia House, The Associated Press projected. The turn is a loss for Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin, who had hoped Republicans would take control of the Legislature.

NBC News projects that Republican Tate Reeves has won the Mississippi race for governor, beating Democrat Brandon Presley.

See the latest results here.

Democrat Brandon Presley conceded in the Mississippi governor’s race, saying he wishes Republican Tate Reeves the best.

“Unfortunately, it looks like we came up a little short, and I spoke with Governor Reeves just a minute ago and congratulated him on his victory,” he told supporters. “I respect the decision of the voters of Mississippi because that’s what makes our democracy what it is.”

NBC News has not made a projection in the race.

Meg Bryce, the daughter of the late conservative Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, was losing her race for the school board in Albemarle County, Virginia, by a significant margin with 30 out of 31 precincts in.

Bryce was down by 24 percentage points to Allison Spillman, a mother of five children in public school. Bryce has four children, all of whom are in private school.

Book bans became an issue in the race. Both candidates said they were against them, but Bryce said she believed there should be a way for parents to object to material assigned in school.

As the Virginia Democrats rack up wins in Virginia, Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin's team has been unusually quiet.

Social media accounts for Youngkin and his Spirit of Virginia PAC were radio silent for several hours — they’re usually constant with praise for Republicans.

At 11:23 p.m., the PAC's chair, Dave Rexrode, posted on X: "We are still monitoring a couple key races and will fully assess where things stand in the morning. We had hoped for a stronger outcome this evening but are proud of the effort all of our candidates put in to these extremely competitive districts."

Voters rejected Republican efforts to take full control of Virginia’s state government, according to The Associated Press, keeping Democrats in power in the state Senate as a counterweight to GOP Gov. Glenn Youngkin and his policy proposals, which included new restrictions on abortion.

Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie said in an interview on CNN tonight that he thinks Republican Daniel Cameron lost the Kentucky governor's race because of his alliance with Trump.

"I mean, let’s face it, Donald Trump is political and electoral poison down ballot," said Christie, who's running for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination. He also pointed out that dozens of candidates whom Trump endorsed in the last midterm elections lost their competitive races.

Trump-backed candidates lost in four crucial Senate races: Herschel Walker in Georgia, Blake Masters in Arizona, Adam Laxalt in Nevada and Mehmet Oz in Pennsylvania.

"Daniel Cameron made a huge mistake by embracing Donald Trump and selling his soul to him," he said. "That’s what he did."

He said Kentucky voters, in a very red state, gave their verdict on politicians "who sell their souls to Donald Trump."

The battle to be the next mayor of Houston is headed to a runoff next month, NBC News projects, pitting Democratic state Sen. John Whitmire against Democratic U.S. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee after neither candidate received a majority in the all-party primary.

Virginia Democratic Del. Danica Roem is projected to win her election to the Virginia state Senate, according to an Associated Press race call. Roem will become the state’s first openly transgender state senator.

Roem defeated the Youngkin-endorsed Bill Woolf, a former Fairfax County police officer.

An exonerated member of the Central Park Five, Yusef Salaam, has won a seat on the New York City Council, according to The Associated Press.

Salaam will represent a district in central Harlem as a Democrat.

He was one of five teenage boys who were convicted of assaulting and raping a white woman jogging in Central Park in 1989. They variously served seven to 13 years in prison.

Their convictions were vacated in 2002 after a man who was already in prison for attacking women confessed to the crime.

Democrats flipped multiple assembly seats in New Jersey and held on to some competitive state Senate seats, according to election results from The Associated Press.

The communications director for Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy, Mahen Gunaratna, said on X that both Biden and Vice President Harris spoke to him tonight to congratulate him on the Democratic wins in New Jersey and in the Kentucky governor's race (Murphy is the chair of the National Governors Association).

As polls in Mississippi’s most populous county, Hinds, extended their hours because of balloting issues, supporters of the Democratic nominee for governor, Brandon Presley, began arriving at the campaign’s watch party in downtown Jackson.

Inside a packed reception hall, Luigia Hodge, 57, gestured to her friends, showing a selfie she took with Presley this summer. Hodge, an architect from Jackson, said Presley’s push for better funding for schools is desperately needed.

School leaders in Jackson have recommended closing several schools, citing declining enrollment and budget strain. Hodge acknowledged that a teacher pay raise passed during Republican Gov. Reeves’ first term but said a further investment is needed. Some educators, she said, work part-time jobs to make ends meet. Schools can also lack funds for needed maintenance.

“What happened to funding public schools?” she said. “What are we funding in Jackson, Mississippi?”

About 15 minutes away in Rankin County, a Republican stronghold in Central Mississippi, supporters of Reeves gathered at a hotel in Flowood to await returns. 

Ohio voters today cast ballots to legalize recreational marijuana, NBC News projects, with support from most liberals and young voters.

Nearly three-quarters of Black voters also backed the measure, and two-thirds of Latinos voted yes, as well, according to the NBC News Exit Poll of early and Election Day voters.

Other voting blocs that helped the measure pass were Democrats, independents, voters who are not married and those who live in households where someone belongs to a labor union.

Beshear spoke to his supporters at his headquarters tonight, saying in his victory speech that Kentucky made a choice "not to move to the right or to the left, but to move forward for every single family."

"We’re building the two biggest battery plants on Planet Earth and the cleanest, greenest recycled paper mill in this country," he said. "We have record high budget surpluses and record low unemployment. We created almost 50,000 new jobs, $27.8 billion in new private-sector investments. So tonight, I stand here excited and optimistic about what we’re going to do these next four years together."

Over the next four years, Beshear said, teachers should get a pay raise and universal pre-K should be made available to every child.

"I pledge tonight to continue to be a governor who serves all our people, regardless of your party and regardless of who you voted for," he said. "This is our chance to build that commonwealth we have always dreamed of, to stop the fighting, to push away the division, to recognize that we have more that unites us than can ever pull us apart and that the opportunity right in front of us is more promising than at any time in our lifetimes."

Biden spoke with Gabe Amo, a former White House aide, to congratulate him on his victory in the Rhode Island special congressional election. Amo is the first Black person to represent the state in Congress.

Republican Lynn Fitch was re-elected attorney general of Mississippi, defeating Democrat Greta Kemp Martin. In her second term, Fitch was the first woman to be elected Mississippi attorney general and the first Republican since Reconstruction. Before she was elected attorney general, she spent two terms as the state treasurer. 

Martin is the litigation director for the advocacy agency Disability Rights Mississippi.

Mississippi Secretary of State Michael Watson won re-election, NBC News projects, defeating Democratic challenger Ty Pinkins for a second term. Watson campaigned on election security and fighting human trafficking.

Mississippi Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann, a Republican, has won re-election to a second term, NBC News projects. Mississippi elects the governor and the lieutenant governor separately.

Biden celebrated a victory for abortion rights in Ohio today, saying in a statement, "Tonight, Americans once again voted to protect their fundamental freedoms — and democracy won."

He added: "Ohioans and voters across the country rejected attempts by MAGA Republican elected officials to impose extreme abortion bans that put the health and lives of women in jeopardy, force women to travel hundreds of miles for care, and threaten to criminalize doctors and nurses for providing the health care that their patients need and that they are trained to provide."

He dubbed the agenda of abortion foes "extreme and dangerous" and vowed to "protect access to reproductive health care and call on Congress to restore the protections of Roe v. Wade in federal law once and for all." 

The Kentucky governor's race, held one year before presidential elections, has tracked closely with the partisan outcome of the last five presidential contests.

2019: Andy Beshear (D) wins, one year before Joe Biden (D) wins.

2015: Matt Bevin (R) wins, one year before Donald Trump (R) wins.

2011: Steve Beshear (D) wins, one year before Barack Obama (D) wins.

2007: Steve Beshear (D) wins, one year before Barack Obama (D) wins.

2003: Ernie Fletcher (R) wins, one year before George W. Bush (R) wins.

The 1999 contest was the last time a gubernatorial candidate won in Kentucky only to see the opposing party win the presidential election the following year.

In Virginia, The Associated Press has called Senate District 16, which encompasses part of Henrico County north of Richmond, for Democrat Schuyler Van Valkenburg, a current member of the House of Delegates.

Flipping Senate District 16 out of Republican hands is not a good sign for Republicans and Gov. Glenn Youngkin. Republican state Sen. Siobhan Dunnavant, first elected in 2016, was seeking re-election. She’s also a practicing OB-GYN, and largely because of that, her race was considered a “unicorn” by close Virginia political watchers.

It was seen as one of the most competitive races in the state, and Youngkin and his PAC, Spirit of Virginia, put a ton of resources into it — both financially and with staffing on the ground. 

In a small election night bright spot for the GOP, Republican Jay Ruais defeated Democrat Kevin Cavanaugh to become mayor-elect of Manchester, New Hampshire — the largest city in the first-in-the-nation primary state.

"Thank you to Manchester for giving me the opportunity to serve the city that I love, and thank you to everyone that supported our campaign," Cavanaugh said. "I congratulated Mayor-Elect Jay Ruais on winning a hard-fought race. I look forward to working together on our shared values."

In the 2021 mayoral race, Democratic Mayor Joyce Craig handily defeated GOP challenger Victoria Sullivan. Craig was first elected s mayor in 2017 — defeating a Republican incumbent — and is running for governor to succeed the popular Chris Sununu, a Republican who is not seeking re-election.

Democrat Gabe Amo's (expected) victory tonight in a Rhode Island House special election means the House breakdown is now 221 Republicans to 213 Democrats, cutting the GOP margin to just three votes to spare to pass measures on party lines.

President Biden spoke with Beshear tonight to congratulate him on his re-election win, according to the White House.

The Democratic Governors Association celebrated Beshear's re-election, saying in a statement that he has shown over the last four years "his deep commitment to bringing people together and helping every Kentucky family on the biggest issues impacting their lives."

"Gov. Beshear’s victory tonight also makes clear that voters across party lines want strong Democratic leaders who focus on a positive vision and lifting people up — instead of the division and anger we too often see from the other side," the DGA said.

The group noted that it invested more than $19 million in Kentucky to help Beshear "and build on our record of winning critical races in some of the most challenging political environments."

Ohio voters approved a ballot measure to legalize recreational marijuana, NBC News projects — the 24th state to do so, in a push that’s growing to include more conservative territory around the country.

See the latest results here.

Ohio voters cast ballots today in support of adding the right to an abortion to the state's constitution, NBC News projects, with overwhelming backing from liberals and Black voters.

Other key groups that propelled the ballot measure, known as Issue 1, included voters under age 30, women under age 45 and those who identify as independent, according to the NBC News Exit Poll of early and Election Day voters.

A polling place just outside Philadelphia was relocated and its hours were extended after police responded to an emergency at a high school, a county official said.

The Associated Press reported that a bomb threat forced an evacuation of the high school and its polling location, which was shifted to a nearby elementary school.

The Pennsylvania State Department posted on social media that a court order had extended voting to 9 p.m.

Kentucky Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear won re-election tonight in no small part because he focused his campaign on his support for abortion rights.

His win means candidates and ballot measures supporting abortion rights remain undefeated in the roughly 17 months since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade.

Tamarra Wieder, the Kentucky state director of Planned Parenthood Alliance Advocates, one of the national reproductive rights group’s political arms, told NBC News that Beshear's win provided even more evidence that support for abortion rights has emerged as a major political force for Democrats.

"Abortion played a key role in Andy Beshear’s victory tonight," Wieder said. “You cannot underestimate the power of abortion access and how it impacts the daily lives of people across the country."

“Even in states that are considered red, this is a winnable issue, across religious identities, political identities, because it impacts everybody’s lives in very fundamental ways. And we are going to continue to see this play out in elections to come — until we have access restored," she added.

Democratic-aligned groups bombarded voters with ads and other messaging attacking Beshear's opponent, Republican Attorney General Daniel Cameron, who has supported Kentucky's near-total abortion ban.

Wieder said that if Republicans, even in deep red states, don’t learn from their losing streak, their fortunes won't change.

If they don't change their messaging, she warned, "you better be prepared to continue to lose.”

Ohio voters have added the right to access abortion care to the state’s constitution, NBC News projects — another major political victory for abortion-rights advocates in the nearly 17 months since the Supreme Court struck down Roe v. Wade.

See the latest results here.

NBC News projects that Democratic incumbent Andy Beshear has won the Kentucky race for governor, beating Republican Daniel Cameron.

See the latest results here.

Democrat Gabe Amo, a former Biden aide, won a House special election in Rhode Island, holding a district after former Rep. David Cicilline resigned from Congress this year.

Democrat Cherelle Parker will be Philadelphia’s next mayor after she easily dispatched her Republican opponent, NBC News projects, making her the city’s first female chief executive.

Polls closed at 8 p.m. ET in Mississippi, Houston and Philadelphia. Voters in Mississippi are selecting a governor, lt. governor, attorney general and secretary of state. Houston and Philadelphia are choosing mayors.

Those races were too early to call as of 8 p.m. ET.

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, the country's top tech wathdog, is in touch with officials in Northampton County, Pennsylvania, over a glitch that gave voters inaccurate receipts for whom they voted for, an agency spokesperson said.

County election officials said at an Election Day news conference that the issue didn’t actually change voters’ selections and affected only a single race, a retention race for the state’s superior court.

In a call with reporters Tuesday evening, a senior CISA official said the agency had not seen evidence that the issue was more than a glitch.

“We continue to see no deliberate nefarious activity that would cause that should cause anyone to question the security, integrity or resilience of the election,” she said.

NBC News has tracked a variety of minor issues affecting some polling locations, all of which are common on election days. In Hinds County, Mississippi, a judge ruled polls could stay open until 8 p.m. because of ballot shortages.

Women and younger voters in Ohio strongly backed a ballot measure that would enshrine the right to an abortion in the state's constitution, the NBC News Exit Poll of early and Election Day voters found.

Three-quarters of voters under age 45 cast ballots for "Yes" on Issue 1, which supports abortion rights. Voters ages 45 and older, however, were evenly split on the issue.

Among young voters, a majority of both men and women voted to support the ballot measure. But among older voters, men were more likely to vote "No," while women were more likely to vote "Yes."

Shortly after polls closed, NBC News characterized the results as too early to call, with "Yes" leading.

The Kentucky governor's race is too close to call.

Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear is leading, NBC News projects.

Republican Russell Coleman defeated Democrat Pamela Stevenson in Kentucky’s race for attorney general, NBC News projects, keeping the office in GOP hands after a campaign focused on supporting law enforcement and opposing the Biden administration.

Kentucky’s race for governor is too close to call, but a positive sign for Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear is emerging in the counties that are nearly done counting their votes. He’s running slightly ahead of his 2019 vote share so far in those counties — and, of course, Beshear won the governorship in 2019.

Take Bell County, where 29 of 30 precincts are in. Republican Daniel Cameron leads Beshear there so far, 59.8% to 40.3% — but that’s a county where Beshear got only 36.5% of the vote when he narrowly won statewide in 2019.

Another example: Taylor County, where 18 of 20 precincts are in. Again, Cameron leads: 59.2% to 40.8%. But again, Beshear is running ahead of his 2019 vote share in the county (36.9%).

The Ohio propositions, Issue 1, to establish the constitutional right to an abortion, and Issue 2, to legalize recreational marijuana, are too early to call as of 7:30 p.m., ET when polls closed.

On both ballot questions, NBC News characterized "yes" as leading.

Follow live results on NBCNews.com.

Glenn Youngkin’s election as governor two years ago was supposed to spell the end of so-called woke ideology in Virginia’s public schools.

But halfway through his term, his policy changes have met resistance in Fairfax County, the state’s largest school district and one of its most racially diverse communities.

After Youngkin, a Republican, signed an executive order that prohibits teaching “divisive concepts” or critical race theory, Fairfax County Public Schools adopted an equity policy that commits to creating a “culturally responsive environment” and surveyed students about how well their schools help them “speak out against racism.”

The Democratic-led district also pushed back against the Youngkin administration’s proposed social studies standards, saying, in part, that they focused on white men at the expense of women and people of color. The state rewrote the standards to address the criticisms.

And this summer, the district announced it wouldn’t follow the Youngkin administration’s guidance to require students to use bathrooms and play on sports teams aligned with their sexes assigned at birth.

Now, conservatives in the district hope to end the Democratic blockade, with all 12 school board seats in this suburban Washington, D.C., community on the Nov. 7 ballot. 

Read the full story here.

Republican Secretary of State Michael Adams won re-election in Kentucky, NBC News projects, earning another four years as the state’s chief election officer.

Adams, who worked to pass a bipartisan election law in Kentucky after having managed the state’s voting during the Covid-19 pandemic, faced GOP primary challengers who charged he wasn’t doing enough to combat voter fraud.

An Ohio voter spoke to NBC News about the state's Issue 1 and Issue 2 ballots. Issue 1 would establish a constitutional right to an abortion and Issue 2, would legalize recreational marijuana.

Dana Kletcha said Issue 1 is racial, socioeconomic, about women and about the general public. She said she hopes her vote in favor of Issue 1 sends the message that a majority of Ohio voters supports reproductive rights.

Kletcha also said she's also voting for Issue 2, saying there are a lot of people who get in trouble for using marijuana in ways that aren't legal simply because of their racial or socioeconomic backgrounds. Kletcha said she thinks it's silly for people to be concerned that more people will be walking around high.

The Kentucky governor's race between incumbent Democrat Andy Beshear and Republican Daniel Cameron is too close to call.

As of 7 p.m. ET, Beshear led Cameron about 58% to 42% with 15% of the vote in.

Polls closed in Virginia at 7 p.m. ET. Voters who are in line can stay in line to cast their ballots.

Ohio will vote on whether to guarantee access to abortion in the state constitution. NBC News’ Stephanie Gosk speaks with Republican women in the suburbs of Columbus about how the issue affects how they vote. 

Polls closed in eastern Kentucky at 6 p.m. ET.

Four in 10 Ohio voters said that their families’ financial situations are worse today than they were three years ago, according to the NBC News Exit Poll of early and Election Day voters.

Only 21% said their financial situations are better, while 35% said they’re about the same.

Voters who backed Joe Biden in 2020 were far more likely to say their financial situations are better today or the same as they were three years ago, with 83% saying so, compared to just 26% of those who backed Donald Trump. By contrast, 72% of 2020 Trump voters said their finances are worse today than three years ago, compared to 16% of Biden voters.

NBC News’ Steve Kornacki previews the governor’s races in Kentucky and Mississippi and decisions over abortion rights in Ohio and Virginia and breaks down how this year’s Election Day results could affect the 2024 election cycle.

OXFORD, Miss. — In Mississippi’s first governor’s election since the fall of Roe v. Wade — which shuttered clinics across the South and drove pregnant women across state lines for care — abortion rights aren’t on the ballot.

Republican Gov. Tate Reeves and his Democratic challenger, Brandon Presley, both support the state’s sweeping abortion ban.

That has left some Democratic voters here wrestling with deeply held convictions about abortion rights in a surprisingly competitive governor’s race: Should they support Presley’s “pro-life” campaign, which promises to provide a desperately needed lift for vulnerable families? Or should they withhold their vote in protest, which could help Reeves, a conservative who critics say hasn’t done enough to address some of the state’s most persistent socioeconomic challenges, win a second term?

Read the full story here.

Brad Benson, a Granbury City Council candidate in Texas' Hood County, was arrested yesterday and accused of possession of child pornography, according to a police report obtained by NBC News.

The Republican Party of Granbury said in a statement that it was notified this morning of a law enforcement operation involving Benson.

It said that "the Executive committee has conferred, spoken with law enforcement, confirmed more substantial information and unanimously withdraws their support for Mr. Benson."

"Crimes of this degree tear at the heart and soul of society, and we condemn them in the strongest terms. The Republican Party stands for conservative, family values and the protection of children. These heinous acts are antithetical to what Republicans stand for," the party said. "It is time for the justice system to act and if Mr. Benson is proven guilty, the punishment needs to be swift and severe."

Benson did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Clad in a hot-pink campaign T-shirt, Kathy McDade waved a campaign sign as polling traffic started to pick up late this afternoon at a precinct in Flowood, Mississippi, about 10 miles north of Jackson.

McDade was there to support Brent Bailey, a Republican running for re-election to the state’s Public Service Commission. McDade, whose family once owned a local grocery store chain in Jackson, said she voted for Republican Gov. Tate Reeves before her volunteer shift.

“He’s always had that support, because we are businesspeople,” she said.

After he cast his ballot, Terry Beck, an independent, said he struggled with whether to vote for Reeves before he made a final decision this morning. He ultimately voted for Reeves, he said, because the state is in “fair shape economically.”

On the campaign trail, Reeves has touted investments in workforce development and major economic projects expected to bring jobs paying above the state’s average salary.

“He has the ability to work with industry and other income-generating entities,” said Beck, a retired State Health Department employee.

He acknowledged one policy area, however, over which he disagrees with Reeves: “We need to pass Medicaid expansion. Period.”

Nearly half of Ohio voters today said that when it comes to the economy, they trust the Republican Party more than the Democratic Party, according to the NBC News Exit Poll of early and Election Day voters. By contrast, 42% trust the Democratic Party more to handle the economy.

Self-identified Democrats and Republicans sided with their own party on the issue. Among independents, 44% said they trust the Republican Party more to handle the economy, while 38% said they trust the Democratic Party more, the poll found.

Sixty percent of Ohio voters today said they are dissatisfied or angry about the Supreme Court decision last year that overturned Roe v. Wade, according to the NBC News Exit Poll of early and Election Day voters.

Thirty-five percent had positive views of the Supreme Court’s decision, with 18% saying they were enthusiastic and 17% more saying they were satisfied.

Issue 1 on the ballot today asks whether the right to an abortion should be added to Ohio's constitution. NBC News has not projected the outcome.

How election denialism is affecting a county in Virginia.

Ohio voters today largely disapprove of the way Joe Biden is handling his job as president, according to results from the NBC News Exit Poll of early and Election Day voters. Fifty-seven percent said they disapprove of the job he's doing, compared to 41% who said they approve.

Negative views of the president extend to his re-election campaign, with just over 7 in 10 Ohio voters saying they do not think he should be running for another term.

The Republican front-runner, former President Donald Trump, has more support for 2024, but not much more, the poll found. Only about one-third of Ohio voters said he should be running again.

Abortion is on the ballot in Ohio today, and a majority of voters think it should be legal in all or most cases, according to the NBC News Exit Poll of early and Election Day voters.

About 6 in 10 voters said they think abortion should be legal, with 29% saying it should be legal in all cases and 33% saying it should be legal in most cases. About a quarter said they think abortion should be illegal in most cases, while 11% said it should be illegal in all cases.

Issue 1 on the ballot today asks if the right to an abortion should be added to Ohio's constitution. Polls close at 7:30 p.m. ET; NBC News has not made a projection on the outcome.

Ohio Republican Senate candidate Bernie Moreno falsely claimed in a recent interview that Issue 1 — the ballot measure seeking to enshrine abortion rights in the state constitution — would allow a rapist to “force” a woman to have an abortion.

The remark by Moreno, a businessman, is the latest from groups and individuals opposed to Issue 1 to mischaracterize the proposal by tying it to parental rights.

“As a dad of two girls, it’s about having that girl be able to be raped and having a rapist force her to have an abortion — all without your consent — as a minor,” Moreno said in an Oct. 12 episode of the RestoreLiberty.US podcast.

Earlier in the podcast, Moreno mischaracterized Issue 1 as being about “on-demand abortion, late-term abortion, stripping parental rights.” If passed, he said, it will have “opened a door to transgender surgeries, transgender mutilation of children.”

Nonpartisan legal experts say his remarks are rife with inaccuracies and falsehoods.

Read the full story here.

Speaking to NBC News outside of a polling location, GOP presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy said he would vote against major ballot measures on abortion rights and marijuana legalization.

“I’ll be voting 'no' on both,” he said when asked about how he intends to vote on both issues, adding he thinks "it is appropriate for the abortion issue to be handled by states.”

“But I think it’s also important for the states to come up with the correct answer here," he added. "And I reject any constitutional measure, like the one being proposed today, that could be interpreted to allow abortion up to the life, up to the time of birth. That’s wrong.”

"Parental consent is also paramount," he said. "The fact that this would strip back parental consent rights, I do think parents have rights over minors to be able to help them make those right decisions."

Asked about the ballot measure on marijuana legalization, Ramaswamy said the issue should only be discussed at the federal level.

“I think that there’s room for reasonable discussion at the federal level about what these policies should be, but I don’t think we’re doing a service to the rule of law in this country, where we have continual departures" between state laws and federal law, he said.

“I am open to a rational discussion about what, for example, veterans who suffer from certain conditions of pain or PTSD might be have available to them. Let’s have that discussion at the federal level," he said. "That’s where the federal drug laws are. But right now, at the state level, I do not think it is healthy for our country to see further chaos and confusion and conflicts between state and federal law.”

The NBC News Exit Poll was conducted with voters as they left polling places across Ohio on Election Day.

To account for the high number of early and absentee voters and to ensure a sample that represents the ways Americans cast their ballots, the exit poll also includes extensive interviews with in-person early voters at 80 voting centers across the state, as well as a telephone survey to capture the estimated 25% of Ohio voters who cast an absentee ballot.

The Ohio exit poll will include about 3,600 voters in all: approximately 2,800 Election Day voters and 800 early voters.

One of the marquee Election Day contests is in Ohio, where voters will decide whether to enshrine abortion rights in the state constitution.

A victory would continue a winning streak for abortion rights supporters. In the nearly 17 months since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, candidates and ballot measures backing abortion rights have won in every election, including in conservative states like Kentucky and Kansas — as well as in an August special election in Ohio that served as a proxy battle ahead of today's vote.

At stake is Issue 1, a proposed amendment that would insert language in the state constitution codifying the right “to one’s own reproductive medical treatment, including but not limited to abortion” and barring the state from “burdening, penalizing or prohibiting” those rights. The proposed measure specifies that abortion would remain prohibited after fetal viability, but includes exceptions to protect the mother’s life or health.

Read the full story here.

Tuesday’s legislative elections in Virginia will provide key tests for both parties’ messaging ahead of 2024, as well as the state’s GOP governor. 

“I think they’re the most important elections in America because these issues that are so important to Virginians are also the ones that are going to be so important to Americans next year,” Virginia GOP Gov. Glenn Youngkin told ABC’s “This Week” on Sunday.

The battles for the state House of Delegates, which Republicans control, and the state Senate, which Democrats control, could come down to a handful of districts. And they’ll test Youngkin’s own political power as he’s brushed off questions about his presidential ambitions.

NBC’s Gary Grumbach and Katherine Koretski caught up with Youngkin over the weekend while he was campaigning in the Senate’s competitive 10th District, where GOP state Sen. Siobhan Dunnavant is running against Democrat Schuyler Van Valkenburg. 

Read the full story here.

Last fall, voters in deep-red Kentucky delivered a win for Democrats when they rejected an amendment that would have written opposition to abortion into the state constitution.

This year, state Democrats are again banking that voters will side with protecting abortion rights. They’re putting the issue front and center in the closely watched governor’s race on Nov. 7, hoping it will help boost Gov. Andy Beshear to another term.

The race between Beshear, the popular Democratic incumbent, and his Republican challenger, Daniel Cameron, the conservative attorney general, has emerged as yet another test of whether abortion rights can help Democrats in otherwise tough political terrain.

Read the full story here.

Of the 3,200 people who are registered to vote at one precinct in Henrico County, outside of Richmond, more than 1,200 people have already voted today, and 800 people voted during the 45-day early voting period.

Election officials at this polling location say they’ve been doing this for more than a decade here and are “very impressed” with this level of turnout.

Youngkin’s team is predicting this area’s Senate race to be one of the closest in the state. Republican state Sen. Siobhan Dunnavant, an OB-GYN, is running for re-election against Democratic Delegate Schuyler Van Valkenburg.

Youngkin is hoping to hold the Assembly and flip the Senate, which would allow for many of his conservative priorities to move through the General Assembly with ease.

For some voters in here Mississippi’s capital, the state’s high uninsured rates and struggling hospitals were defining issues in today's gubernatorial election.

At a precinct in Jackson’s Fondren neighborhood, Evan Parker, 35, said he’s backing Presley, the Democratic nominee who has made Medicaid expansion a focal point of his campaign.

Republican incumbent Gov. Reeves opposes expansion.

As an alternative, Reeves announced a plan that his administration estimates will send nearly $700 million to the state’s hospitals, but unlike expansion wouldn't provide health insurance.

Parker, a professor at a local college, said Medicaid expansion provided him with coverage while he was “a poor graduate student” living in Louisiana. He said moving back to Mississippi and seeing people “suffering without health care” was a “grave injustice.”

“I think health care is a right,” Parker said.

Mississippi is one of 10 states that has not expanded the public health insurance program. Almost 11% of the state’s residents lack health insurance.

The federal Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, which is responsible for providing cybersecurity aid to election officials, has not seen any issues of concern so far in today's elections.

“We continue to see no specific or critical threat to disrupt election infrastructure or Election Day operations,” a senior CISA official said on a press call this morning.

That doesn’t constitute a guarantee that every election will run smoothly, the official said.

“Things are going to come up. And with 30 states conducting elections across numerous jurisdictions, we should expect to see some examples of standard operational disruption, whether it’s from Mother Nature or human error,” she said.

The 3,400 Virginia voters erroneously purged from the rolls by state authorities have been re-registered to vote, a spokesperson for the Virginia Department of Elections said today.

Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s elections staff said last month they had purged thousands of voters during list maintenance operations. The purged voters all had felony convictions but had had their voting rights restored; they were purged after state police reported probation violations as new felonies.

Nearly all states bar those serving felony prison sentences from voting, but Virginia is one of a handful of states that permanently bars those with felony convictions from voting unless they have their rights restored by the governor.

The Virginia State Conference NAACP and the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law sued Youngkin’s administration for more information on the state’s felony rights restoration process. They said in a Monday release that the documents they received reveal an arbitrary and opaque process.

Dorian Spence, a vice president at the Lawyers Committee, told NBC News they’ve encouraged voters who fear they may be affected to bring paperwork like their rights restoration letter with them to the polls.

If they are not on the voter rolls as expected, he said, they can use same-day voter registration and cast a provisional ballot. 

Virginia could be a bellwether for abortion measures ahead of the 2024 election cycle as voters head to the polls Tuesday. NBC News correspondent Gary Grumbach reports.

The county executive in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, doesn’t have much, if any, power when it comes to abortion rights. And the ongoing war between Israel and Hamas doesn’t fall under its purview, either.

Yet it’s those national issues that are likely to play a huge role in Tuesday’s election for the most powerful local office in the state’s second-most populated county.

Insiders and strategists on both sides have cautioned against drawing too many conclusions from the results of the Pittsburgh-area battle between Democratic former state Rep. Sara Innamorato and Republican former banking executive Joe Rockey, as well as a hotly contested district attorney battle in the county. But the races will take the temperature of a pivotal voting bloc ahead of next year’s presidential contest and test whether progressive momentum in this Democratic enclave of western Pennsylvania can march on or be met with blowback after years of advances.

Read the full story here.

Voters across the country head to the polls for state and local elections on Tuesday — and there are particularly competitive races in four states that will give signals about what voters are thinking and where the national political environment stands ahead of 2024.

Here’s what we’re watching in the key elections in Kentucky, Mississippi, Ohio and Virginia.

Read the full story here.