In the latest attack on direct democracy, Ohio legislators on Wednesday voted to advance a supermajority threshold for future ballot measures, co-opting a tactic being pushed by extremist officials in multiple states to limit voters’ decision-making power.
In the wake of several attacks on direct democracy by state lawmakers this year, several media outlets have highlighted the Fairness Project and its work to defend ballot measures from extremist attacks.
“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.
For the second straight legislative session, Mississippi state legislators have refused to restore the state’s ballot measure process — leaving voters without the right to put issues on the statewide ballot themselves.
In recent years, the ballot initiative process has seen many traditional progressive policy ideas pass, even in red or purple states. According to the Fairness Project, a nonprofit organization that helps support progressive ballot measures, dozens of initiatives have passed with bipartisan support in recent years
“I call these bills ‘death by a thousand cuts,’” said Kelly Hall, the executive director of the progressive ballot initiative group The Fairness Project. “When you hear about each one in isolation, they seem like not that big a deal. But taken together, they have an exclusionary effect on people’s participation in democracy.”
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