In the News

“This is an unprecedented number of serious pieces of legislation moving forward quickly,” to make it harder to put an initiative on the ballot, said Kelly Hall, executive director of the Fairness Project, which advocates for ballot measures across policy areas.

“Legislators cannot change that law without going back to voters for a whole other campaign to change the constitution,” said Kelly Hall, the executive director of the Fairness Project, a nonprofit that helped put the constitutional amendments on the ballot in all three states.

Expanding Medicaid in red states has built political salience for the program and made it more difficult for Republican lawmakers to cut it, said Kelly Hall, executive director of the Fairness Project, which helped launch the Medicaid expansion ballot initiative campaigns.

“The places that have expanded Medicaid are at real risk of losing their rural hospital infrastructure if the program is rolled back, and that is not just devastating to people who are beneficiaries of the Medicaid program, but anyone who lives in those communities, regardless of their type of insurance,” said Kelly Hall of the Fairness Project.

“Ballot measures have been a lifeline to working people in red and purple states, allowing them to make change even when politicians fail to represent their interests. Legislators are trying to systematically take that power away,” Kelly Hall, of the Fairness Project, a nonprofit organization that helps advance citizen-led ballot initiatives, said.

In 16 of the 23 states that allow ballot measures, Republican lawmakers are trying to make it more difficult for voters to get voter referendums on the ballot, says Kelly Hall of the Fairness Project, which has been tracking ballot measure laws.

“Expanding Medicaid anywhere protects it everywhere, which is now what we’re seeing today,” said Kelly Hall, executive director of the Fairness Project, the nonprofit that organized the constitutional amendment campaigns. She noted that her group expected the expansions would broaden support for the program in Washington.

Kelly Hall, executive director of the Fairness Project, a union-back advocacy group that campaigns for progressive ballot initiatives, told Salon that even though the situation looks dire, the fact that 41 states have made Medicaid expansion a key part of their healthcare system gives residents there a way to fight back.