In the News

The Fairness Project has worked with campaigns and local partners to pass minimum wage increases in Arkansas, Arizona, California, Colorado, Maine, Massachusetts, Missouri, and Washington State — all through ballot measures. We have helped to put more than $22 billion in the pockets of the American people.

“This model of protecting more working families from the impacts of even small amounts of debt will be a big part of what we see go to the ballot in the upcoming cycle or two,” said Kelly Hall, the Fairness Project’s executive director.

Groups like the Fairness Project, which has backed the South Dakota and other Medicaid expansion ballot efforts, see the ballot initiative campaigns as a model for addressing reproductive law in other states, said the group’s executive director, Kelly Hall.

“In swing states and red states alike,” Hall says, “we have to assume that voters are coming to a ballot measure with a different frame of mind than any candidate choice, and keep open minds ourselves about who is on the table for a ballot measure.”

Contributions came from several progressive nonprofits: Notably $450,000 from the Fairness Project of Washington and $150,000 from Article IV, a New York nonprofit. The League of Women Voters of Arkansas contributed $21,105.

The Medicaid expansion campaign is backed by the progressive Fairness Project, which has supported expansion ballot campaigns across the country.

“The expanded use of ballot measures in recent years is a direct response to the increasing polarization of our political system,” said Kelly Hall, executive director of the Fairness Project, a group that funds and organizes state ballot measure efforts across the country.

“What we’re seeing is red states trying to curtail this tool that citizens have used really successfully to move policies that are otherwise stuck for, usually, political reasons,” said Hannah Ledford, deputy executive director and campaigns director for the Fairness Project.