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“It’s important to situate the attacks on the ballot measure process as part of the broader set of attacks on voting rights and democracy writ large,” said Kelly Hall, executive director of the Fairness Project

Fairness Project executive director Kelly Hall said in a statement that Republicans are “threatened by the idea of voters being able to make progress without permission from the legislature.”

The Ohio back-and-forth comes amid similar Republican efforts to restrict direct democracy in Missouri, North Dakota and Mississippi, according to Fairness Project, a Washington-based group that pushes ballot measures across the U.S.

Kelly Hall, executive director of the Fairness Project, a group working on ballot measures around the country sees Missouri as a microcosm of a larger anti-democratic dynamic manifesting across the country. “Politicians are going well beyond their legal obligations in their roles, their legal responsibilities to faithfully execute their offices.

“This is not isolated to Ohio,” said Kelly Hall, executive director of the progressive ballot measure group The Fairness Project.

“There are a lot of elected officials leading state legislatures that are being unapologetic, brazen, relentless — choose your adjective — about the fact that they don’t care what voters think on this issue and that their ideological stance on this is going to dictate the outcome,” said Kelly Hall, executive director of the Fairness Project.

“Attacks, through state legislatures, on the ballot measure process have been pretty consistent and pretty aggressive for the last several (election) cycles,” said Kelly Hall, executive director of the Fairness Project, which has helped pass progressive measures in red states.

“This argument about rural hospital closures has been an incredibly compelling argument to voters,” said Kelly Hall, the executive director of the Fairness Project, a national nonprofit that has successfully pushed ballot measures to expand Medicaid in seven states.