Republican pressure to regulate voting measures has escalated in recent years as citizen initiatives have been used to legalize marijuana, expand Medicaid, establish independent reclassification committees and raise the minimum wage in purple and red states.
“This new tool in our box to protect reproductive rights and freedom will give our opposition even more incentive to take that away from us and make it harder to pass voting measures.”
But the tactic is being re-examined after Kansas’ scarlet anti-abortion referendum failed by a wide margin, giving abortion rights advocates across the country hopes that ballot measures could be a viable way to liberate GOP-controlled legislatures. bypass and restore access to the procedure.
Some progressives worry they could lose one of their last remaining tools to defend or promote abortion rights in a post-roe country.
“Red states know this is the only lever that reproductive rights advocates have left in many of these states — where we’ve lost both chambers of the legislature, we’ve lost governor’s seats, and we don’t have much hope in the justice system.” said Kelly Hall, executive director of the advocacy group The Fairness Project. “Voices remain the only real muscle people have yet to flex.”
Conservative groups in North Dakota are expected to try again next year to impose a majority vote for voting initiatives after their efforts to gather signatures to put such a measure on the November ballot failed earlier this summer. Republican lawmakers in South Dakota are also expected to make it more difficult to approve voting initiatives after voters rejected a 60 percent voting requirement in the state during the June primaries.
In Florida, a state where proposed constitutional amendments are already 60 percent approved, lawmakers recently imposed restrictions on fundraising for voting campaigns, though that policy was blocked by a judge this summer. In Nebraska, lawmakers this year banned signature collection near ballot boxes as part of an omnibus election law.
Hannah Joerger, left, Amanda Grosserode, center, and Mara Loughman hugging after a Value Them Both Watch party after a question about a constitutional amendment that removed abortion protections from the Kansas Constitution failed, Tuesday, Aug. 2, 2022, in Overland Park, Can | Charlie Riedel/AP Photo
Lawmakers in Missouri, Oklahoma, and Utah are also expected to soon renew their push for other restrictions, such as raising the voting or signature threshold, requiring signatures from a certain number of counties in the state, restricting which subjects can citizen-initiated voting measures can be addressed, or dictate what font size canvassers should use.
“The Constitution is supposed to be a framework and then you have laws that operate within that framework. But increasingly, our Constitution is becoming a code of law in its own right,” said Missouri State Representative Bishop Davidson, who supports limits on the voting process.
Davidson added that the threat of a pro-abortion ballot — something activists are discussing after their victory in neighboring Kansas — may convince more of his Republican colleagues to support reforms to the initiative petition process next session.
“I would be shocked if there wasn’t a petition circulating from the pro-choice side of this debate,” he said. “I think it’s coming. I worry.”
Proponents argue that these changes, expected to be discussed by more states when lawmakers meet again in January, are intended to prevent money from outside the state from flowing into their states and to influence voters to change laws or amend their constitutions. modify.
“I know there are many paid applicants. Is it really the people who want these things, or are they just groups that pay for these things?” said Oklahoma state representative Carl Newton, a Republican.
The pattern extends beyond state legislature to other parts of government.
In Michigan, Republicans on the State Board of Canvassers voted to block the certification of a sweeping abortion rights vote initiative that received far more than the required number of valid signatures, following claims that the text of the proposed constitutional amendment contained spacing and formatting errors. The Supreme Court of the State overturned their decision on Thursday, meaning voters will have a chance to decide whether abortion remains legal in November.
And last year, a conservative-leaning court in Mississippi quashed the state’s entire ballot process.
“This new tool in our box to protect reproductive rights and freedom will give our opposition even more incentive to take that away from us and make it harder to approve voting measures,” said Corrine Rivera Fowler, director of policy and legal advocacy . at the progressive Ballot Initiative Strategy Center.
Of the two dozen states that allow citizen-initiated voting, 11 have laws banning most abortions, although some are temporarily blocked from court.
However, the attempts to thwart voting initiatives were not specifically aimed at abortion.
Arkansas lawmakers, for example, acted after liberal groups turned to voters to raise the minimum wage and legalize medical marijuana. But these policies could have their biggest impact on abortion rights, as lawmakers across the country consider not only if and when the procedure should be legal, but also what penalties to hand out to doctors and patients.
Arkansas Right to Life has not taken a position on the proposed majority requirement. But the group’s executive director, Rose Mimms, told POLITICO its approval would help prevent attempts to amend the state’s constitution to codify the right to abortion.
The lawmakers pushing for the higher threshold, she said, are “very good pro-life people, so I don’t think they’re just [abortion] but other conservative issues in mind when they wanted to prevent our constitution from being so easily changed by making that supermajority a requirement.
“We’ve seen it here in Arkansas with marijuana, that once you start amending the constitution, it doesn’t make sense anymore,” she added.
Opponents of the 60 percent demand argue that it would be much harder to implement progressive policies, including abortion protection, in a state where Republicans in the legislature are 3 to 1 bigger than Democrats.
“This is the only tool we have in a state like Arkansas,” said Kymara Seals, policy director for the Arkansas Public Policy Panel, one of the groups campaigning against the change. “That’s why we have to fight to protect our access to the ballot box, because we can’t get it in the legislature.”
Groups opposing the restrictions also argue that the process is already time-consuming and expensive. In Michigan, for example, tens of thousands of detectives — mostly volunteers with some paid staff — worked for months to collect hundreds of thousands of signatures to get the abortion rights amendment on the November ballot, and planning for the effort began years earlier.
Both SBA Pro-Life America and Students for Life, two national anti-abortion groups that have spent millions fighting for voting initiatives in Kansas and other states, told POLITICO they are not getting involved in debates about the voting process.
“Too many state and national leaders don’t respond to what voters really want, so the increase in voting initiatives as a trend comes from people taking advantage of the course open to them,” said Kristi Hamrick, the spokesperson for Students for Life. “I hope this isn’t about silencing voters.”
Polls show that roe‘s downfall helped Democrats close the enthusiasm gap and the Democratic candidates have benefited from a wave of donations since POLITICO published the Supreme Court’s draft opinion in May, but progressive groups fear not enough attention is being paid to the vote.
“We’re really raising the alarm about what’s happening in November,” Hall said. “Because if they succeed in one of these [states]it will be all the more fuel to the fire to say that they should introduce these restrictions everywhere else.”
The Fairness Project was behind a successful Medicaid expansion measure in Oklahoma in 2020, after which lawmakers introduced several bills to make it more difficult to approve citizen-led voting initiatives, including a proposal to raise the threshold for approval of constitutional amendments to 55 percent.
The legislation failed this year, but Newton said he plans to bring his bill back in the 2024 legislative session.
Newton added that while he’s not specifically concerned about an out-of-state group enacting a pro-abortion ballot in Oklahoma, “there is a possibility because there are some groups [like] Planned parenting… that would like to become a reality. So they can pick us as a target state.”
Abortion rights groups in Oklahoma, meanwhile, are considering lifting the state’s near-total ban by asking the question directly to voters. That’s why protecting access to ballots is so crucial, says Laura Bellis, executive director of Take Control Oklahoma, which advocates for access to reproductive health care.
“We need to protect voting initiatives in general before we can even think of having one to protect abortion rights,” she said.