Voters in five states weighed ballot measures banning slavery in all circumstances in the 2022 elections: Vermont, Oregon, Louisiana, Alabama and Tennessee. Of that group, Louisiana is the only state that rejected the change — but before Election Day, the measure's sponsor had already withdrawn his support for it, after it underwent changes that he said threatened to do the reverse of what he intended.

The Louisiana vote was roughly 61% to 39%, as of early Tuesday. On the ballot, the proposed amendment’s title didn’t use the term “slavery.” Instead, it referred to “involuntary servitude.” The final language also would have provided an exception for “the otherwise lawful administration of criminal justice.”

State Rep. Edmond Jordan, who first proposed the change, had said, “involuntary servitude, in this case, is just a sanitized version of slavery,” as member station WRKF reported. But after his proposal was revised, he urged people to vote against it.

Opponents of Louisiana's slavery proposal had warned it would threaten the state’s ability to compel prisoners to serve their time “at hard labor.” As WRKF noted, “Inmate labor is ubiquitous in the Louisiana criminal justice system.”

"Jordan said the way that his proposal was tweaked would actually broaden the state's authority to use involuntary servitude — not limit it," Capitol Access reporter Paul Braun said on WRKF last month. If voters approved the measure, Braun added, Jordan planned to file another proposal next year to fix it.

The U.S. officially abolished slavery with the 13th Amendment — but it also has an exception allowing slavery as "punishment for crime." Many state constitutions also include that exception, and advocates have been pushing to change that. Systems of involuntary servitude for prisoners, they say, is equivalent to slavery.