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There have also been recent successes with ballot measures for economic and social justice, owing to the work of the Fairness Project. Founded in 2015 by SEIU-United Healthcare Workers West, the project has won 31 of 33 ballot measures (affecting 18 million people) to raise wages, stop predatory payday lenders, expand health-care access, and more.

Kelly Hall, executive director of the Fairness Project, which backs progressive state ballot measures across the country, described last year’s abortion rights victories as “accelerant on an already burning fire.” But Hall also pointed to recent triumphs on issues such as Medicaid expansion and minimum wage hikes as driving factors.

“People's enthusiasm for ballot measures has to also include space for protecting the process itself,” said Kelly Hall, executive director of the Fairness Project, which funds and organizes progressive state ballot measure efforts across the country.

“We continue to see a wide gulf between how voters are expressing their desires and how many extremist legislatures are acting,” Kelly Hall, the executive director of the Fairness Project, an advocacy group that backs progressive ballot measures, says.

Republican lawmakers have sought to make it harder to get citizen-led initiatives on the ballot. “Those lawmakers know their ideological views are out of sync with their voters,” Kelly Hall, executive director of the Fairness Project, told The Guardian. “They are trying to change the rules of the game.”

"The editorial board is right. Ballot measures are a critical tool for voters to defend reproductive rights. But the editorial misses one big point: The window of opportunity to use them is already closing."

“We’re pretty close to the end” of expansion by way of citizen initiatives, said Kelly Hall, executive director of The Fairness Project, a national organization created to promote Medicaid expansion and other progressive goals through ballot initiatives.

“There are so many different ways this process can get disrupted or delayed or basically be terminated altogether. This is one of the most obvious,” said Kelly Hall, the executive director of the Fairness Project, a nonprofit organization that helps progressive groups advance citizen-led ballot initiatives.