In the News

“For reproductive rights, neither of the things that passed in 2022 are likely to impact that,” said Hannah Ledford, deputy executive director and campaigns director from The Fairness Project, a national nonprofit that works to pass ballot measures on issues such as increasing the minimum wage.

The Fairness Project, a national progressive group that specializes in ballot initiatives, has succeeded in 27 of 29 of its statewide campaigns since 2016. It has no equivalent on the right, and its budget has vastly grown since Dobbs.

Since the Dobbs decision, and as advocates for reproductive freedom have sought to use the ballot measure process to protect their rights in more states, legislatures in red states are fired up to strip voters of their right to direct democracy. We saw it in Ohio, and we will no doubt see it again.

According to a recent report by the nonpartisan Fairness Project, Ohio and five other states where Republicans control the legislature — Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Missouri and North Dakota — have either passed, attempted to pass or are currently working to pass expanded supermajority requirements for voters to approve statewide ballot measures.

Progressives are already worried about Issue-1 style restrictions: “Legislators in Arizona will try to make the process harder," says Hannah Ledford, deputy executive director and campaigns director at The Fairness Project, a left-leaning advocacy group. "No question.”

"The 111-year-old process tried and true in Ohio will continue to be the process for this core issue that opponents of abortion have said they wanted returned to the states, and now this decision is going to be made by the state of Ohio and the voters of Ohio come November," Kelly Hall, executive director of The Fairness Project, told CBS News.

“I wish we could call it an absolute one to one proxy, but I think that this is a pretty encouraging and positive sign for everyone paying attention to the November race,” said Kelly Hall, executive director of the progressive ballot measure group Fairness Project.

"When faced with the choice of whether to allow politicians and special interests to consolidate power and strip voters of their rights, Ohioans fought back,” Kelly Hall, the executive director of the Fairness Project, a group that campaigns for progressive ballot initiatives, said in a statement.