As federal voting rights legislation stalls in Congress, activists and lawmakers are increasingly looking to the ballot initiative process to allow voters to make political changes on their own.
tracked 93 bills introduced by Republican state legislatures that would make passing ballot measures more difficult. Thirteen of those bills passed in Arizona, Florida, Idaho, Arkansas and South Dakota.Democrats, meanwhile, have introduced their own set of bills to create ballot processes in Kentucky and Wisconsin, and expand access to voting in Florida, among other measures.
, a progressive group that funds ballot measure efforts across the country, is spending $5 million on voter-education campaigns and litigation to ward off efforts by Republican-controlled legislatures to put new restrictions on the ballot process.The referendum has been used in the U.S. since the late 1700s, while South Dakota — in 1898 —Over the past two decades, ballot initiatives have been used by Republicans in blue states to recall governors and ban same-sex marriage.
More recently, they've been used by Democrats to expand Medicaid, legalize marijuana, raise the minimum wage and restore voting rights to people with felony convictions in states. In both cases, the referendum process has given voters a voice where their elected officials lacked legislative juice.In swing states such as Pennsylvania, Michigan and Nevada, both parties are turning toward the ballot process to
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