Ballot Initiatives Activate Voters, Change the Landscape
Convergence is pleased to be collaborating with the Ballot Initiative Strategy Center on a series of articles spotlighting progressive initiatives in play this election season. This is the first article in the series.
As we head into the Fall and the critical final stage of the 2024 election, a large contingent of voters are grappling with feelings of fear, uncertainty, and disillusionment. While the recent shift in the presidential race has helped galvanize a new generation of voters and evoke a sense of hope and excitement, it hasn’t quieted all of the anxieties that have built up over the last several years.
We are mobilizing people to vote at a time when more than 80% of adults in the US don’t believe their elected officials care what they think and alarmingly, roughly one-third of Americans say an authoritarian leader or military regime would be a good way of governing. Additionally, we are advocating for popular, life-changing policies in a landscape where Republicans control the governorship and both chambers of the state legislature in 23 out of 50 states. While those conditions are not ideal, ballot initiatives are steadily activating the electorate. In places where marginalized communities are centered and grassroots organizations are leading campaigns, ballot initiatives shift culture and narrative so that we can create long-term, sustainable progress for our people and our democracy.
Ballot initiatives are the tool we need in this moment to not only block authoritarian rule and ideology, but to build a world where all of us thrive and live with dignity — the world we deserve.
Direct democracy and collaborative governance
Ballot initiatives were originally popularized in the US during the Progressive Era of the early 1900s by the labor movement, populists, and progressive activists who shared the belief that people needed a tool that would allow them to fight back against corporate greed and political corruption. From the 1970s to the early 2000s, ballot initiatives were used by conservatives to attack environmental protections, public education, and the rights of workers, women, immigrants, and queer people. But in recent history, voters across the ideological spectrum have harnessed the power of direct democracy to pass progressive policies such as marriage equality, raising the minimum wage, expanding healthcare, protecting reproductive freedom, legalizing marijuana, and so much more.
Voters have the opportunity to keep the momentum going in 2024, as an exciting range of ballot measures have qualified for statewide ballots in red, blue, and purple states alike. There are 12 confirmed and potential reproductive freedom ballot measures in play that demonstrate the nationwide mobilization in response to the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2022 Dobbs v. Jackson decision that repealed Roe v. Wade. Voters in Alaska, California, Missouri, and Nebraska will have the opportunity to raise wages, secure paid sick days, or both. Ohioans could help create fair redistricting maps, and California, Colorado and Hawaii have measures to proactively enshrine marriage equality in their state constitutions. At a time when voters increasingly feel that unpopular decisions are being made for them, ballot measures like these give communities a direct say on the issues that matter most in their day-to-day lives.
Time and time again, ballot measures have proven to be powerful tools for collaborative governance that transcend party lines and often receive higher vote percentages than candidates. This trend started in 2014 when four states, Alaska, Arkansas, Nebraska, and South Dakota, raised the minimum wage through ballot measures; another four states, Arizona, Colorado, Maine, and Washington, followed suit in 2016. Florida made headlines across the country in 2018 when nearly 65% of Florida voters approved Amendment 4 to restore voting rights to Floridians with past criminal convictions.
In 2020, Missouri and Oklahoma expanded Medicaid to low-income adults, which has proven to significantly benefit individuals who gain healthcare coverage as well as their communities as a whole. Since the overturning of Roe, voters have successfully protected reproductive rights every time the issue has been placed on the ballot. In Ohio—a state that Trump won with more than 53% of the vote in 2020—hundreds of thousands of voters mobilized in the 2023 elections to pass Issue 1, enshrining the right to abortion in the state constitution just months after they successfully defeated a ballot measure that would have blocked that victory. These are just a few instances that showcase how voters have used the power of direct democracy to support progressive policies, even in Republican trifecta states. Ballot measures are bypassing partisan politics and turning people-power into policies that transcend divides and improve lives.
Make no mistake, these successes are hard-fought and often led by grassroots groups who know that those in political power in their states are not representing the needs of their communities.
Creating movement infrastructure
That’s why the Ballot Initiative Strategy Center (BISC) was created. BISC ensures that state and national advocates have the tools and skills they need to harness the power of ballot measures to make transformational changes in communities. BISC knows that this vital work does not start or stop with any single election. In order to build long-term, sustainable, grassroots power, BISC supports campaigns through every campaign phase, also known as the 360 Ballot Measure Lifecycle. Reimagining the definition of success is paramount to BISC’s work, which is focused on helping state leaders build a new way of working together — one that moves away from the traditional “win at all costs” mentality and into a space where equity and sustainability are centered in all aspects of campaign work.
It’s not just if we win, it’s how we win that builds power, which means BISC helps partners disrupt race, power, and privilege dynamics engrained in how campaigns are traditionally run. This way, we can not only achieve success on Election Day — but continue to build state-based power that centers those who are the most impacted by systems of oppression. These guiding principles are at the center of BISC’s work.
We support leaders and partners across the country to pass ballot measures that work for people of color, LGBTQ+ people, women, and working families. Yet, as BISC continues to work with partner organizations to implement these victories and secure future wins, creating and running ballot measure campaigns has become increasingly difficult.
Backlash to democracy
Backlash to ballot measures as a form of governance started nearly a decade ago when ballot measures gained significant momentum as an avenue for enacting popular policies that fare well with voters across the political spectrum. Policies that are considered progressive, like expanding healthcare and raising the minimum wage, began to win at the ballot — even in deep-red states like Oklahoma, Montana, Missouri, and South Dakota — and anti-democratic politicians and wealthy special interest groups responded by coordinating a sophisticated effort to aggressively target and undermine the citizen-led initiative process.
These attacks take on a variety of forms; some aim to subvert the will of the people by refusing to implement voter-approved initiatives, while others seek to make it nearly impossible for grassroots groups to qualify an initiative for the ballot by placing undue legal burdens and restrictions on the process itself. Ultimately, these attacks all serve the same function: to undermine the will of the people and diminish their decision-making power.
This level of resistance to ballot measures is escalating. When Democrats controlled a majority of state legislatures around the country, Republican lawmakers and right-wing voters often used direct democracy to spearhead initiatives like restricting collective bargaining, enacting voter ID laws that disenfranchise traditionally excluded groups, restricting the freedom to marry, and rejecting health insurance mandates.
In recent years, big-moneyed interest groups have tried to use the ballot measure process for nefarious purposes like undermining workers’ rights. One such instance played out in California in 2020 when tech giants including Uber and Lyft bankrolled Prop. 22, which designated gig workers as independent contractors rather than employees under state law — repealing state legislation that recognized some gig workers as employees under state law, giving them access to rights and protections like overtime pay.
This year in Arizona, the state’s GOP-controlled legislature referred a discriminatory, anti-immigration ballot measure that would allow local law enforcement officials to arrest people who they even suspect may be crossing the border illegally. Although far-right politicians and corporate interest groups have used ballot measures to try and advance their own agendas in years past and present, it hasn’t stopped them from mounting a multi-pronged attack against the process.
Attacking the ballot initiative system is part of a larger movement by far-right politicians and corporate interest groups to dismantle democracy by undermining our elections, usurping the will of the people, and moving us further toward authoritarianism and minority rule. Luckily, these efforts have proven to be wildly unpopular with voters across the political spectrum.
BISC’s recent 11-state survey found that 92% of voters agree that the ballot initiative process is an important way for citizens to pass policies they care about, and 93% of voters agree that legislators have an obligation to carry out the will of the people.
Another notable finding showed that voters have the highest confidence in ballot measures as a form of governance. Voters are more confident in citizen-led policymaking than in other forms of government — with 55% of voters having confidence in ballot initiatives as a lawmaking method versus 40% having confidence in state Supreme Courts, 39% having confidence in elected officials or state legislatures, and only 24% having confidence in governors enacting laws. The data paints a clear picture: voters want to have a direct say in our democracy, and they don’t want legislators to bypass majority rule.
At a time when voters feel disenfranchised and disconnected from democracy and our power in it, ballot initiatives give us the opportunity to directly engage in our democracy and make a tangible impact in our day-to-day lives. A recent study from Pew Research found that only 4% of U.S. adults say the political system is “working extremely or very well,” making it all the more important for voters to have a tool that allows them to take power into their own hands. Direct democracy is also an important check against lawmakers who, all too often, don’t feel obligated to listen to their own electorate.
Lead with love
However, ballot measures will only serve as a tool for liberation when we choose to center love in the ways we work together. We have a choice to make: we either accept the conditions as they are — allowing the status quo to develop a world of dominance and control — or we can make a different choice. We can come together to design a new world — showcasing what collective power looks like, feels like, and sounds like. This must be an act of radical love, not dominance.
Guided by the words of bell hooks: “Without love, our efforts to liberate ourselves and our world community from oppression and exploitation are doomed. Without an ethic of love shaping the direction of our political vision and our radical aspirations, we are often seduced, in one way or the other, into continued allegiance to systems of domination—imperialism, sexism, racism, classism,”I issued a call to action to our partners and the larger community: Make ballot measures love letters to our people.
As you read future installments of this series, we hope you will take away why ballot initiatives offer us an opportunity to course-correct the values that rule our democracy—rooted in love and community.
Chris Melody Fields Figueredo has been BISC’s Executive Director since June 2018, bringing two decades of experience in advocacy, creating collaborative spaces, and movement building. She has devoted her career to social justice and ensuring our democracy works for “We the People.” She is the first queer woman of color to lead BISC, where she focuses on organizational vision, strategic planning, and fundraising. She believes ballot measures can be a tool for liberation, if we use them to build power, dismantle systems of oppression, and center the communities most impacted by the change we seek. Chris is Venezuelan-American, raised in Texas. She lives in Washington, D.C. with her daughter and border collie.