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“They are coming up with new tricks,” Kelly Hall said of the Missouri proposals, a trend she attributes to voters rejecting straightforward attempts to raise the ballot initiative vote threshold from a majority to 60 percent in Arkansas, Ohio and South Dakota over the last two years. “There’s a new creativity that we’re seeing."

Ballot supporters here raised $4.2 million as of March 12, according to campaign finance records. Money has come from national groups including the American Civil Liberties Union and the Fairness Project, which has supported ballot efforts on various progressive causes. Kansas City-based Health Forward Foundation has also donated.

The panelists include Love, ACLU of Missouri’s Luz María Henríquez, Ohio Organizing Collaborative’s Prentiss Haney, who spearheaded the successful abortion access measure in Ohio, and the ballot measure fundraising/consulting group Fairness Project’s Kelly Hall, who has won over 30 ballot measures in multiple states.

“It’s hard to overstate the momentum, the wind that’s at the back of abortion rights advocates using ballot measures to pass constitutional amendments,” said Kelly Hall, executive director of the Fairness Project, a group that supports state ballot measure efforts.

“What we have learned from this growing drumbeat of opposition to citizen-initiated ballot measures from elected officials is that they continue to innovate, they continue to get more creative at how they want to deny voters the opportunity to vote on these questions,” said Kelly Hall, executive director of the Fairness Project.

Kelly Hall, the executive director of the Fairness Project, which promotes progressive ballot measures in red and purple states, told me, “A victory in Ohio really does tell all of us in the abortion-rights movement that this is possible almost everywhere.”

"Winning in red states is inspiring. Ohio really has taken this ballot measure strategy to protect abortion rights to the next level," said Kelly Hall, executive director of The Fairness Project, a progressive nonprofit."

“Ballot measures are one of – if not the most – powerful tools we have to defend reproductive rights in a post-Roe nation, and this work will continue," Fairness Project Executive Director Kelly Hall said in a statement. "Next, we are ready to fight alongside Arizona for Abortion Access in 2024 to secure reproductive freedom for all."