Republicans in state legislatures across the country are increasingly worried about citizen-led ballot initiatives enacting Democratic Party policies or overturning Republicans’ own policies — and they’re working to clamp down on the right to get those issues on the ballot in the first place.
According to The New York Times, “In North Dakota, Utah and South Dakota, legislatures are sponsoring measures on the November ballot that would raise the threshold for approving citizen amendments to 60 percent, not a simple majority. In Missouri, the legislature placed a measure on the ballot that would set an even higher bar: Citizen-sponsored amendments to the state constitution would have to win in each of the state’s eight U.S. House districts. An initiative that wins 95 percent of the vote statewide could lose if it fails in a single district.”
Meanwhile, in Florida, where there is already a 60 percent threshold for citizen-led constitutional amendments, “Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a bill imposing a raft of new requirements, fees and criminal penalties around collecting signatures on petitions for ballot measures” — with the result that all 22 proposed citizen amendments this year failed to qualify.
All told, said the report, in the 24 states that allow citizen-led ballot initiatives, legislators passed 51 bills restricting the practice in some form last year — and they’re not shy about the reason. Utah Senate president Stuart Adams proclaimed, “We will not let initiatives driven by out-of-state money turn Utah into California” in a speech last year.
“Even after initiatives have passed, the legislatures have resisted the will of the voters,” said the report. “After 58 percent of Missouri voters approved a law establishing paid sick leave, the Missouri legislature passed its own law repealing it. In Nebraska, the legislature watered down a similar measure that 75 percent of voters had approved.”
Meanwhile, Missouri and South Dakota Republican legislators put their own measures on the ballot asking voters to overturn prior ballot questions approving abortion rights and Medicaid expansion, respectively, and Utah Republicans tried to put a measure overturning voter-approved anti-gerrymandering rules that struck down their congressional map last year — but that attempt ended in failure as they fell short of qualifying.
Chris Melody Fields Figueredo, who heads up the Ballot Initiative Strategy Center, told The Times, “They cannot win fairly so the are changing the rules of the game. They don’t cancel democracy outright, but they create a system that is so cumbersome and so expensive and hard that you’ve taken the teeth out of the will of the people and their ability to make change.”
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