While HERO’s defeat in Houston stings like hell, progressives picked up a number of wins on ballot initiatives around the rest of the country that should prove to be equally instructive for issue-based campaigns going forward.

Last night, voters approved ballot initiatives in Seattle and Maine that will mark major changes to the way candidates in their respective communities raise, disclose and spend money. They also approved a ballot initiative in Ohio that, while falling short of being a major reform, signal a frustration with the way in which legislative districts are currently drawn in the state.

First up, Seattle, where Initiative 122 won by a wide margin. As I wrote yesterday, Initiative 122 calls for an overhaul of the city’s campaign finance system by allocating four $25 democracy vouchers to all registered voters each year, which they can distribute to qualified candidates as they see fit.

Seattle has been serving as a proving ground for progressive priorities of late (which was actually one of the main cases against the measure), as the city is in the process of implementing a $15 minimum wage. If these policies prove to be as good as progressives hope and think they will be, we could be citing Seattle as a model for years to come.

Next, Maine, which passed a referendum that strengthened the state’s Clean Elections Act by increasing the pool of money available for public financing and tightening disclosure rules. The original version of the law, first passed in 1996, allows candidates who forego private donations to qualify for public campaign funds. Now, not only is more money available for these candidates, but they are also allowed to solicit private donations…$5 at a time.

But wait, there’s more! Not only does the bill improve public financing in the state, it also requires political communications to disclose the campaign’s top three donors. So for campaigns that forego public financing and instead solicit private donations, voters will get to know who paid for the ads. Especially in local or issue-based races, where normal signals and cues are weak or nonexistent, that can be immensely helpful for voters hoping to make an informed decision.

Finally, Ohio, which rejected its poorly-crafted marijuana legalization referendum and passed its slightly-better-but-also-not-perfect redistricting reform proposal. While redistricting reform is, in general, a good thing, Ohio’s version does not provide for a truly non-partisan process. This means that as long as the state is dominated by one party (which it has been, and likely will be, for quite some time), there still won’t be a mechanism in place to prevent district maps from being drawn in a hyper-partisan manner. While the provision does ensure that contested maps at least need to be reconsidered by the legislature, without a sea-change election in the middle of a given decade, all it means is that the same bad map will have to make it through the redistricting process twice.

But while Ohio’s redistricting reform plan may not be great, what its victory does show is that voters, when asked, like the idea of redistricting reform. At the end of the day, people recognize that the way in which we draw district lines doesn’t make any sense, and is open to partisan and incumbent-friendly exploitation. That’s a lesson worth taking out of Ohio and into the rest of the country.