In Alabama, roughly two-thirds of voters supported Amendment 4, which will rewrite the state's constitution to excise racist and obsolete language. As a product of the Jim Crow era, Alabama's 1901 constitution includes a number of provisions that no longer carry legal force but remain on the books. Section 256, for example, says that "no child of either race shall be permitted to attend a school of the other race." Section 102 forbids the state legislature from passing laws that "authorize or legalize any marriage between any white person and a negro, or descendant of a negro." Alabama won't rewrite the constitution from whole cloth, but the state will now "recompile" it without the bigoted provisions.

Next door in Mississippi, voters overwhelmingly voted in favor of a new state flag to replace the one discarded by state lawmakers earlier this year. Mississippi's previous state flag was the last in the Union to feature the Confederate battle emblem, a highly visible reminder of the state's segregationist past. The new flag, which was designed by a commission chosen by state leaders that include tribal leaders, features a magnolia blossom (the state flower) as well as a five-point star that symbolizes the state's indigenous communities. It sailed to victory with more than 70 percent of the vote. (Had it lost, the state would've simply chosen a new design instead of returning to the old one.) [...]

Utahns approved two constitutional amendments that also carried symbolic weight. Amendment A will revise the state's constitution to replace terms like "husband" or "wife" or gendered pronouns with gender-neutral language. Amendment C tightens Utah's state constitutional ban on slavery by forbidding it as a punishment for a crime. While the Thirteenth Amendment abolished slavery and involuntary servitude at the federal level in 1865, it included an exception "as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted." The proposed amendment from Utah lawmakers removes the exception from its similarly worded state-level ban. Voters in Nebraska also approved a similar anti-slavery amendment this week.