Voters across seven states stepped up to the ballot box on Tuesday, delivering a resounding rejection of legislative attempts to curb citizen-led initiatives. Rather than surrendering their policymaking authority, electorates in conservative and progressive strongholds alike protected direct democracy by wide margins.
Politicians in Republican-led states have spent years deploying what advocates describe as a “thousand cuts strategy,” rolling out restrictive rules, onerous signature requirements, and litigation to derail popular ballot campaigns on abortion rights, Medicaid expansion, and ethics reform. Yet whenever those same lawmakers were forced to put their restrictive rules directly to a popular vote, citizens struck them down.
The Dakotas Reject Supermajority Hurdles
Republican lawmakers in South Dakota and North Dakota introduced legislation that would have mandated a 60-percent supermajority from the electorate to pass any future changes to the state constitution. Voters soundly rejected both proposals—by 14 points in North Dakota and 16 points in South Dakota. Had those restrictions been active earlier, monumental past victories like North Dakota’s 2018 ethics commission or South Dakota’s 2022 Medicaid expansion, which extended health coverage to more than 50,000 residents, would have failed under the higher threshold.
“I don’t know if they will ever give it up, trying to make it harder to use direct engagement by the citizens to petition the government,” said Rick Weiland, co-chair of Dakotans for Health, a grassroots network that campaigned for Medicaid expansion. “But this is the third time at the altar, and they were resoundingly rejected.”
Missouri and Montana Voters Approve Constitutional Amendments Protecting Direct Democracy
Rather than merely playing defense, organizers in Missouri and Montana took the offensive. Following years of legislative interference and court battles, both states placed constitutional amendments on the ballot to explicitly guarantee a fundamental right to direct democracy.
Missourians approved Amendment 6 by a margin of 20 percentage points, while Montanans approved Initiative 133 by a margin of 30 percentage points. Judicial specialists point out that these fresh safeguards will mandate that the judiciary apply a rigorous legal benchmark known as strict scrutiny whenever ballot access obstacles are challenged. To prevent state authorities from weaponizing lawsuits to run out the clock on filing deadlines, the constitutional change in Montana establishes a definite schedule for judicial resolution of petition controversies. Meanwhile, the Missouri measure introduces an 80 percent-supermajority hurdle for lawmakers attempting to alter voter-endorsed initiatives or revive rejected statutes, while also prohibiting state authorities from embedding biased summaries into ballot descriptions.
“The thread through all of these states is that politicians were trying to take rights away from voters at an epic scale,” says Hanna Ledford, executive director of the Fairness Project. “Overwhelmingly, voters said ‘No way.’”
Tax and Drug Policy Fights in Idaho, Utah, and California
Voters also pushed back against narrow legislative carve-outs targeting specific issues. House Joint Resolution 4 in Idaho represented a legislative push that would have barred citizens from using the ballot initiative process to pursue the legalization of marijuana and other regulated drugs. Idaho voters rejected the measure 66 to 34 percent.
Similarly, Utah voters rejected Amendment B by almost 25 points. The proposal would have required support from 60 percent of voters for citizen initiatives that raise taxes—a hurdle that would have failed the Medicaid expansion Utah voters passed in 2018. Meanwhile, California’s measure is down, but the slow count means there is no final call yet.
The message from the electorate on Tuesday was remarkably uniform. When given the choice between trusting legislative bodies to guard the rules of democracy or keeping those powers firmly in their own hands, voters chose themselves.
