(C) Daily Kos
This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered.
. . . . . . . . . .
How GOP lawmakers are trying to undermine ballot initiatives [1]
[]
Date: 2025-06-11
By Jeremy Kohler for ProPublica
Across the country, Republican lawmakers have been working to undermine or altogether undo the will of the voters by making it harder to pass amendments and laws through citizen-led initiatives.
In Missouri, the 2025 legislative session was dominated by Republican lawmakers trying to reverse two major measures that voters had put on the ballot and approved just months before; one made abortion in the state legal again, while the other created an employee sick leave requirement.
People in support of abortion rights protest on May 14 outside the Missouri Senate chamber after the Senate voted to approve a referendum seeking to repeal an abortion-rights amendment.
GOP lawmakers in Alaska and Nebraska also have moved to roll back sick leave benefits that voters approved last year, while legislators in Arizona are pushing new restrictions on abortion access, despite voters six months ago approving protections.
At the same time, Republican leaders in Florida, Utah, Montana, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Arizona, Ohio, North Dakota and South Dakota have approved efforts to restrict citizen-led ballot initiatives or are considering measures to do so, essentially trying to make it harder for voters to change laws outside legislatures.
In some cases, legislators aren’t just responding to measures that voters approved; they’re acting shortly after citizen-led efforts failed but came too close for comfort, such as an abortion-rights initiative in Florida, which in November fell just short of the 60% of votes needed to pass and loosen the state’s ban on the procedure.
Republican elected officials across these states make strikingly similar arguments: They say the initiative process is susceptible to fraud and unduly influenced by out-of-state money. What’s more, they say that they, as elected officials, represent the true will of the people more than ballot initiatives do.
In his opening speech on the first day of Utah’s legislative session in January, Senate President Stuart Adams urged lawmakers to push back against citizen-led ballot initiatives, warning that “unelected special interest groups outside of Utah” were using the process to “override our republic” and “cast aside those who are duly elected.”
Utah lawmakers then passed a law tightening the process. They required initiative sponsors to detail how their proposal would be funded and, if it makes the ballot, pay for costly publication of the ballot language in newspapers across the state — potentially adding $1.4 million in expenses. They also voted to put a 2026 measure before voters that would require a 60% supermajority for any tax-related initiatives.
The battle between direct democracy and representative government isn’t new, and it hasn’t always been the domain of just Republicans. Democrats have done the same thing, although perhaps not with the same frequency, when voters have taken steps they had campaigned against.
What’s different now, political observers say, is that the tension has reached a new level. State lawmakers, primarily Republicans the past few years, are routinely trying to undermine voter majorities.
“This is very much connected to the rise of authoritarianism that we’ve seen across the country,” said Chris Melody Fields Figueredo, executive director of the Ballot Initiative Strategy Center, a nonprofit that tracks and supports ballot measures across the 26 states and the District of Columbia that allow some form of direct democracy. “They can’t win fairly, so they’re trying to rewrite the rules to get their way no matter what a majority of folks in their state wants.”
[END]
---
[1] Url:
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2025/6/11/2327123/-How-GOP-lawmakers-are-trying-to-undermine-ballot-initiatives?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=top_news_slot_5&pm_medium=web
Published and (C) by Daily Kos
Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified.
via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds:
gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/
