Republicans Work to Undermine Ballot Initiatives

Ballot initiatives are one way voters can get around state government—for example, voters have used ballot measures to fight for abortion access in red states. But Republicans in many GOP-led states have been working to undermine such citizen-driven ballot initiatives, CNN reports. In Missouri, for example, where voters recently overturned the state's abortion ban (spurring a legal fight), lawmakers put a new referendum on the ballot aiming to repeal the voter-approved measure. In other states, lawmakers are looking to make it harder for citizens to even get initiatives onto the ballot, NPR reports. ProPublica took an in-depth look at some of those efforts last month.

In some states, GOP lawmakers are attempting to tighten up rules about who is allowed to collect signatures, how petitions must be submitted, how much out-of-state funding can be used, and how long organizers have to gather signatures. Some are attempting to raise the bar for the amendments to actually pass, or to give lawmakers more power to overturn or change the measures if they do pass. Their argument is that citizen-led ballot measures are subject to fraud. Those on the left, however, argue that the fight against ballot measures is a sign of the rising tide of authoritarianism in the US, as Mary Ellen Klas writes in a piece at Bloomberg. (More ballot measure stories.)