In the News

Citizen-led ballot measures triumphed on Tuesday, even as Democrats flopped — and could offer hope of progress in the next Trump era.

“It is incredible that in a country that has such a deep rightward shift, almost coast to coast, voters in Missouri — one of the reddest states in the country — rallied together, put a question of a right to abortion on the ballot and passed it, [said Kelly Hall of the Fairness Project.]

By several counts, momentum is on the abortion-rights side. One in five registered voters in Arizona signed the petition to put Proposition 139 on the ballot, said Kelly Hall, executive director of the Fairness Project, an abortion rights group.

Part of what makes Missouri attractive, according to Hall, is that the state is “smack dab in the middle of the country that many progressives think is so dark red. In a state that many progressives and Democrats have written off, it’s an incredibly attractive moment to show both the power of direct democracy..."

“This is our first presidential year since the fall of Roe. It means that voters are turning out for a lot of other reasons beside the ballot measure,” said Kelly Hall, executive director of the Fairness Project, which supports abortion rights ballot measures in red and purple states.

“Ballot measures really enable voters to isolate a particular issue and the values that they hold around that issue, and maintain their other partisan identities,” Kelly Hall, executive director of the Fairness Project.

“Rather than fulfilling their constitutional roles to be stewards of a ballot measure process in which voters get to decide issues of fundamental rights for themselves,” Hall told me, “anti-abortion politicians abuse their power to try to impose their own beliefs on the entire state.”

“Every time our opponents say the policies we have in place are fine and not as extreme as you think, this continual drumbeat of headlines illustrates the reality and galvanizes voters,” said Kelly Hall, executive director of the Fairness Project.