‘Our constitution is easy prey’: Republican-led states try to shut down liberal ballot initiatives
CNN
Republican lawmakers are working to cut off ballot measures that enact progressive policies by making it harder for citizen-led measures to qualify for a vote or be enforced.
In 2018, Toni Easter held a party in her yard in St. Louis to promote what would become a successful ballot initiative on redistricting — only to see it overturned when Republican lawmakers in Missouri put a competing initiative on the ballot. Then last year, she collected signatures in the successful effort to enshrine abortion rights in the Missouri Constitution. This year, the legislature approved a new referendum to try to reverse it. “Our civil rights are being taken away,” said Easter, a retired fashion industry executive and co-founder of Respect Missouri Voters. Her group is working to put another measure on the Missouri ballot in 2026, one that would bar the state’s lawmakers from overturning citizen-approved initiatives. Liberal activists in conservative-led states are facing similar challenges around the country. Republican lawmakers are working to cut off ballot measures that enact progressive policies by making it harder for citizen-led measures to qualify for a vote or be enforced. Locked out of power in Washington and in many statehouses, progressive activists have launched citizen initiatives to try to notch wins. Eleven states, for example, have backed abortion rights through citizen-approved initiatives since the Supreme Court’s Dobbs ruling in 2022 ending a federally guaranteed right to abortion. “State lawmakers have been using their power to subvert the will of the people,” said Chris Melody Fields Figueredo, the Ballot Initiative Strategy Center’s executive director. The center tracks and helps promote ballot measures. “They can’t win fairly, so they’ve been rewriting the rules, no matter what the majority wants.”
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