“From abortion and Medicaid expansion, to raising the minimum wage and enacting police accountability, there is enormous potential for progressive issues to win big in November regardless of which candidates prevail."
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 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.
In response to the success of progressive ballot measures on issues like Medicaid expansion and minimum wage, several state legislatures have moved to make citizen-initiated ballot measures more difficult to pass.
“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.
“It’s easy to lose sight of how long of a fight it has been for Medicaid expansion in so many states around the country,” said Kelly Hall, executive director of the Fairness Project, which supports Medicaid expansion ballot measures across the country. “We’re almost working ourselves out of a job.”
Alexis Magnan-Callaway, communications and digital strategy director with the Fairness Project, says her organization planned to back a measure in Mississippi to expand Medicaid, but had to put the effort on hold after the state Supreme Court’s decision on medical cannabis.
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