SPRINGFIELD — Illinois House Democrats approved legislation Wednesday aimed at boosting turnout by party faithful in the Nov. 5 election by offering voters nonbinding advisory questions on securing in vitro fertilization, protecting election workers and targeting those earning $1 million a year or more with higher taxes to pay for property tax relief.

The comprehensive measure, which now moves to the Senate, also would afford some incumbent protection for legislators in November by preventing political party committees from appointing challengers to fill out legislative ballots if the party didn’t field a candidate in the March primary.

The referenda package was approved without debate on a 67-4 House vote, with nearly 40 Republicans voting “present.”

Ballot propositions to promote voter turnout is a tactic that has been used nationwide, particularly in presidential election years. Around this country, this year’s focus has been on state constitutional amendments securing abortion rights following the U.S. Supreme Court’s reversal of Roe v. Wade that returned the issue of legality of the procedure to the individual states.

Democratic Gov. J.B. Pritzker, through his Think Big America non-profit, has provided funding to several states considering constitutional amendments to legalize abortion rights, including a donation of $500,000 to groups in Florida.

Pritzker said Wednesday that there is no pressing need for a state constitutional amendment like that in Illinois, where a Democratic majority has enshrined abortion rights into state law.

“We’re focusing on states where those rights have either already been taken away or they’re highly at risk,” Pritzker said at an unrelated news conference. “That’s not the case here in the state of Illinois. And we’re going to continue to expand the rights that we have here. I think it’s less important here than it is in other states that we pass a constitutional amendment.”

But Wednesday’s vote by House Democrats did attempt to capitalize on one bit of fallout of the high court’s abortion decision, a ruling by the Alabama Supreme Court to effectively end in vitro fertilization in that state, with one of the three nonbinding advisory questions they approved for the fall ballot.

Dubbed the “Assisted Reproductive Health Referendum Act,” the measure would ask voters if insurers who cover pregnancy benefits should also cover “all medically appropriate assisted reproductive treatments, including, but not limited to, in vitro fertilization” without a limit on the number of treatments.

Amid the outcry from the Alabama high court decision on IVF, the state’s legislature effectively nullified the ruling. But Democrats have used the Alabama decision as an example of Republican-backed efforts to curb reproductive rights.

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