Despite Republican Party pushback, citizen-led abortion measures could come to a vote in nine states. • Stateline

“The whole idea of ​​the initiative process is to put pressure on state legislators when there appears to be support for an issue that the average voter in the electorate might want, but the average legislator doesn’t want,” said Daniel Smith, a professor and chairman of the political science department at the University of Florida, who has written books and articles on ballot initiatives.

In several states, Republican lawmakers opposed to abortion rights have tightened signature requirements or increased the percentage of votes needed to pass ballot initiatives. Supporters of stricter rules say they want to prevent out-of-state interests from manipulating the process by funneling money to initiative campaigns. They say they also want to ensure that densely populated urban centers don’t get too much power. But in several cases, Republican Party supporters have acknowledged that their goal is to thwart abortion rights measures, which are widely popular.

Mat Staver, an attorney based in Orlando, Florida, said it should be more difficult to pass constitutional changes as out-of-state organizations funnel money into ballot initiatives, such as those expanding reproductive rights. Staver is co-founder of Liberty Counsel, a Florida-based nonprofit that opposes abortion-related ballot measures in Florida and other states.

“Even though we have a 60% threshold (in Florida), if you have the financial resources, you can get pretty much anything you want on the ballot,” he said. “That’s not good for the people of Florida because it doesn’t allow for debate.”

Critics argue that lawmakers’ attempts to impose new restrictions undermine one of the purest forms of direct democracy available to citizens.

“Democracy requires compromise,” said Alice Clapman, a senior adviser at the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law, a progressive law and policy nonprofit. “I am concerned that there appears to be resistance to leaving these issues to the democratic process. Some people in power in these states believe that certain issues should not be the subject of democratic debate.”

‘Monopoly power’

For decades, lawmakers on both sides of the political spectrum have tried to make it harder for citizens to get various proposals on the ballot, Smith said. It just depends on who controls the instruments of state power.

“The ballot initiative takes away the monopoly power of lawmakers,” he said. “We can now look at the restrictions that Republicans are putting on the initiative process, but that is shortsighted. It happens on both sides.”

In today’s polarized political climate, voters’ support for a ballot measure does not necessarily translate into support for a political candidate who supports it. Smith’s research has shown that many people can vote for a ballot measure while also voting for candidates from the political party that opposes it.

“And they’re fine with that,” Smith said. “There is no cognitive dissonance in the mind of the voter. (The ballot measure) is a one-time thing.”

Voting measures generally do not increase turnout in presidential elections, as they do in midterm elections and special elections. But 2024 could be different, Smith said, thanks to tepid public enthusiasm for the repeated showdown between President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump. A ballot measure could encourage more people to go to the polls.

‘No different than gerrymandering’

Last month, the Missourians for Constitutional Freedom campaign delivered more than twice the number of signatures likely needed for the measure to qualify for the Missouri ballot in November. The proposed constitutional amendment, like Florida’s, would legalize abortion up to fetal viability — the point at which a fetus can survive outside the womb, often around 24 or 25 weeks of gestation.

“The signature gathering part of this campaign was the most incredible thing I have ever been a part of,” said Mallory Schwarz, executive director of Abortion Action Missouri, one of the organizations participating in the campaign. “I have never seen so much enthusiasm about the issue as I have this year.”

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Coalition organizations trained more than a thousand volunteers in less than three months who campaigned in their communities, held house parties and knocked on tens of thousands of doors, Schwarz said, ultimately collecting more than 380,000 signatures. The state must now approve the petition before it appears on the ballot.

Voters of all political stripes in Missouri have a deep attachment to the ballot initiative process dating back more than a century, Schwarz said: “We’ve seen issues presented as partisan really resonate with people across the board, year in and year out. out.”

In recent years, ballot measures in Republican-controlled Missouri have raised the state’s minimum wage, expanded Medicaid, overturned a so-called right-to-work law and decriminalized cannabis use.

This year, Missouri Republicans have introduced several proposals to thwart abortion rights initiatives, including a proposal that would require ballot measures to not only win a majority of votes statewide, but also a majority of votes in the Missouri congressional districts.

After heated debate, the bill passed the Senate, but the House was unable to reconcile the different versions of the bill before the session ended.

“It looks like gerrymandering,” Schwarz said. “The only way they can stop the will of the people is to change the rules of the game.”

Florida lawmakers introduced a similar bill last year. They proposed a constitutional amendment to increase the percentage of votes required for a ballot measure to pass, from 60% to a two-thirds supermajority. The bill passed the House but died in the Senate.

Ballot initiatives in eight states will have generated more than $205 million in donations in 2023, according to OpenSecrets, a nonprofit that tracks campaign finance and lobbying efforts. Sutherland, along with Floridians Protecting Freedom, pointed out that the campaign raised nearly $12 million in April and May, but about 70% of contributions came from Florida.

A range of tactics

Ohio voters approve a constitutional amendment to protect abortion and reproductive rights

After abortion rights advocates in Ohio collected nearly 500,000 signatures to get a reproductive rights amendment on the November 2023 ballot, the Republican Secretary of State and the Ohio Ballot Board changed the wording of the amendment’s summary in a way that according to opponents, it was incomplete and inaccurate. Ohio voters approved the ballot measure anyway, enshrining access to abortion in the state constitution last November.

A similar scenario unfolded in Missouri, where Republican Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft tried to change the wording of a proposed abortion rights ballot measure so that voters would be asked whether they supported “dangerous and unregulated live birth abortions.” A Missouri court later struck down the language.

In Arizona, Republican lawmakers have put their own constitutional amendment on the November 2024 ballot, which would require organizers to collect a certain percentage of signatures from each of Arizona’s 30 legislative districts, rather than the state as a whole. They have also been considering a strategy to introduce their own abortion-related ballot measures to compete with the abortion rights measure.

If the reproductive rights ballot amendments pass, they will likely face legal challenges that extend far beyond the election.

Staver, of the Liberty Counsel, said his organization would explore legal channels to block implementation of the Florida amendment.

“There may be litigation necessary to argue that pre-existing constitutional rights override this amendment,” said Staver, who believes the amendment is too broad.

Clapman of the Brennan Center said she also expects lawmakers will continue to oppose ballot measures: “It’s not a fight that will go away even if the initiatives pass.”