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ballot initiatives
'Will of the People Should Be the Law of the Land': WI Gov. Says Fight GOP With Voter-Led Initiatives
Gov. Tony Evers' suggested priorities for state ballot measures include abortion rights, expanding public healthcare for low-income people, gun safety reform, and marijuana legalization.
Jan 08, 2025
Amid discussions across the United States about how to fight for progressive policies given the federal government's looming Republican trifecta, Democratic Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers on Wednesday renewed his call for letting voters in his state initiate ballot measures.
"Republicans' message to Wisconsinites is crystal clear—anything that gives the people of Wisconsin a voice and direct input on the policies of our state is 'dead on arrival,'" Evers said in a Wednesday statement. "That's breathtaking."
Wisconsin is among the two dozen U.S. states that don't allow citizen-initiated ballot measures, according to Ballotpedia. In the Badger State, only lawmakers can put a proposed constitutional amendment on the ballot, after it passes two consecutive legislative sessions.
Evers, who is halfway through his second term, is fighting for a citizen-initiated option, despite opposition from Republican state lawmakers. The governor is including his proposal for ballot measures from voters in his budget for 2025-27, as he detailed in a video posted on social media.
"The will of the people should be the law of the land. Republican lawmakers have repeatedly worked to put constitutional amendments on the ballot that Republicans drafted, and Republicans passed, all while Republicans refuse to give that same power to the people of Wisconsin. And that's wrong," Evers told reporters on Friday, according to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
Despite new political maps for the November elections, Republicans retained control of the Wisconsin State Legislature, with a 54-45 majority in the Assembly and 18-15 majority in the Senate. Key lawmakers, including Assembly Speaker Robin Vos (R-63) and Senate Majority Leader Devin LeMahieu (R-9), have made their opposition to Evers' proposal clear.
While opposing Evers' effort to boost direct democracy in the state, Wisconsin's Republican legislators have taken advantage of the state's existing process. The Senate on Wednesday voted along party lines for a proposed constitutional amendment to require voter ID for elections—continuing a trend from last year.
Evers' office explained that "Wisconsinites saw five statewide referenda questions in 2024—the most in a single year in over four decades, according to a report from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel—all of which were drafted, legislatively passed, and placed on the ballot by Republican lawmakers, largely without direct input from the people of Wisconsin."
The governor said Wednesday that "Republican lawmakers in the next week are set to add yet another constitutional amendment to the ballot while telling Wisconsinites they can't have that same power. If Republicans are going to continue to legislate by constitutional amendment, then they should be willing to give Wisconsinites that same opportunity. Pretty simple stuff."
His office also suggested some potential ballot measure priorities: "legalizing and regulating marijuana, ensuring access to safe and legal abortion, expanding BadgerCare, and enacting commonsense gun safety reform policies."
Amid a fresh wave of Republican policymakers' attacks on reproductive freedom in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court's right-wing majority reversing Roe v. Wade in 2022, several states have passed protections via ballot measures, including 7 of 10 states in November. Another top priority in recent cycles has been measures to help workers, including raising the minimum wage.
"As Americans prepare for the conservative headwinds in Washington, ballot measures offer a way to circumvent regressive political agendas and partisan gridlock to make change for working families, according to the Fairness Project, an advocacy group that supports progressive citizen-led initiatives.
The Fairness Project last month released a report detailing how it "has an unmatched number of victories on progressive ballot measure campaigns across the country, having won a total of 39 campaigns across 20 states since 2016," including nine efforts in the last cycle.
"We won in some of the deepest red, most conservative places in our country," noted Kelly Hall, the group's executive director, in a statement. "We won against vehement opposition and politicians who tried to stack the odds in their favor. And we won on issues like abortion, paid leave, and raising the minimum wage—issues politicians have failed to advance for their constituents for decades."
"We're not stopping. In fact, we're going on offense," Hall added. "The power of ballot measures is that the American people don't have to wait—they can make change themselves. And we intend to support them with everything we have."
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'All Power to the People': Nebraskans to Vote on Dueling Abortion Ballot Measures
Anti-abortion politicians, said one campaigner, "know Nebraskans want to end the harmful abortion ban and stop government overreach in their personal and private healthcare decisions."
Sep 13, 2024
A ruling by the Nebraska Supreme Court on Friday sets the stage for two separate abortion rights initiatives being on the state ballot this November.
The court ruled that two competing questions focused on abortion care can appear on voters' ballots: one that would enshrine the state's current 12-week ban and another that would affirm Nebraskans have the right to obtain abortion care until "fetal viability," around 24 weeks.
Campaigns for each of the ballot initiatives gathered more than 200,000 signatures in favor of the questions remaining on the ballot.
The Supreme Court decided that a constitutional amendment proposed by the reproductive rights group Protect Our Rights, allowing "all persons the fundamental right to an abortion without interference from the state" until fetal viability, did not violate the state's single-subject rule.
"The first right in our state constitution is for the people to engage in initiatives."
Opponents of the measure had claimed the wording was too vague and that it should not be permitted on ballots because it addressed abortion rights before and after viability as well as how the state should regulate abortion care.
The court said the question "has a singleness of subject" and noted that its ruling aligns with a decision made by the Florida Supreme Court this year.
Lawsuits were brought by an Omaha resident and an neonatologist, both of whom oppose abortion rights.
The state's 12-week abortion ban was passed by the Nebraska Legislature in 2023.
A recent poll by Pew Research found that 50% of adults in Nebraska believe abortion care should be legal in all or most cases, while 46% said it should be illegal.
State Sen. Megan Hunt (I-8) said she was "eager to see the outcome in November, when we will protect the right to abortion in Nebraska."
"All power to the people," said Hunt. "The first right in our state constitution is for the people to engage in initiatives."
Allie Berry, campaign manager for Protect Our Rights, told the Associated Press that "anti-abortion politicians forced an abortion ban into law and then coordinated with activists to launch desperate lawsuits to silence over 200,000 Nebraskans by preventing them from voting on what happens to their bodies."
"They know Nebraskans want to end the harmful abortion ban and stop government overreach in their personal and private healthcare decisions," said Berry. "Today, their plans failed."
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Beware the Republican Plot to Steal the 2024 Election
From Georgia to Arizona, Nevada to Michigan, Republicans are mounting an all-out assault on the election process that journalist Ari Berman refers to as a “five-alarm fire for democracy.”
Aug 31, 2024
The “Party of Lincoln,” as Republicans call themselves, seems intent on undermining just about everything President Abraham Lincoln lived and died for. This includes Republican efforts to upend the way elections are run, by restricting who gets to vote, how voting is conducted, and how votes are counted and certified.
The outcome of the tight presidential race between former U.S. President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris will hinge on the votes in a handful of swing states. From Georgia to Arizona, Nevada to Michigan, Republicans are mounting an all-out assault on the election process that journalist Ari Berman refers to as a “five-alarm fire for democracy.”
“It appears that Georgia Republicans are laying the groundwork not to certify the presidential election if Kamala Harris wins,” Berman said on the Democracy Now! news hour. “They’re doing exactly what Trump wanted them to do in 2020. Trump made Georgia the epicenter of the attempt to try to overturn the election. He asked local and State Board of Elections and election officials not to certify the election. They refused to do so; they followed the law. It seems like in 2024 they’re going to extraordinary lengths to try to implement the measures that failed in 2020, to try to rig the election for Trump.”
The Republican Party of today, desperate to suppress the votes of people of color, could not be further from the Party of Lincoln.
Georgia Republicans altered how counties count and certify votes. The Democratic Party of Georgia, the Democratic National Committee, and 10 Democratic county election officials from across Georgia have sued, seeking to roll back the changes. Their lawsuit argues, “Georgia’s State Election Board has passed a host of last-minute rules that threaten to sow chaos and impede the vote-canvassing process.”
Berman warns: “These state and local election boards have been taken over, in some cases, by election deniers, by MAGA extremists…The administration of elections matters so much because you can cast a vote, you can have your vote counted, but it doesn’t actually matter until votes are certified.”
In Texas, the Republican-controlled state government has for years tried to restrict voting in districts where Democratic candidates do well. Donald Trump won Texas by over five percentage points in 2020, but President Joe Biden won the cities of Dallas, Fort Worth, Houston, Austin, and El Paso as well as the Rio Grande Valley.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott announced this week that he has purged over 1 million voters from Texas voter rolls. This increasingly common tactic inevitably removes legally-registered voters, often through faulty data screens that target likely Democratic voters.
Meanwhile, Texas’ Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton, who’s currently agreed to do community service to avoid a felony criminal securities fraud trial, and survived an unrelated impeachment trial in the Republican-controlled state senate, has been raiding nonprofit organizations that provide services to immigrant and Latino communities.
Last week, under Paxton’s orders, the homes of a dozen members of LULAC, the League of United Latin American Citizens, were raided and searched by Texas authorities, including SWAT teams. One activist’s door was broken down. Texas House candidate Cecilia Castellano, running for an open seat to represent Uvalde, the town devastated by one of the worst school shootings in U.S. history, had her home raided. Government agents took her cell phone and, weeks ahead of election day, threw her campaign into chaos.
LULAC said in a statement, “Attorney General Paxton’s actions clearly aim to suppress the Latino vote through intimidation and any means necessary to tilt the electoral process in favor of his political allies.” LULAC has called on the Justice Department to investigate Paxton over the raids.
Juan Proaño, CEO of LULAC, said on Democracy Now!, “In the last U.S. Census, they reported 12.1 million Latinos in the state of Texas. For the first time, Latinos actually outnumber non-Hispanic whites, which is at 12 million. When you take into account not just the Latino population in the state of Texas, but the African American and Asian population… the minority community in Texas now stands at over 60%. Texas is and has been a majority-minority state. So, we see these, effectively, as tactics for the Republicans to actually stay in control of the government in Texas.”
If further evidence of Republican attempts to subvert the will of the voters were needed, Pluribus News, a nonprofit news organization, reports that Republican-controlled state governments are altering language on progressive state ballot initiatives to confuse or mislead voters. Arizona, for example, inserted “unborn human being” in place of fetus or embryo in the ballot initiative intended to guarantee the right to an abortion. Voters in Florida and Ohio will face similar confusing language in their ballot initiatives.
In President Lincoln’s final public address, three days before his assassination, Lincoln advocated that the right to vote be granted to formerly enslaved Black men (as only men could legally vote, until 1920). The Republican Party of today, desperate to suppress the votes of people of color, could not be further from the Party of Lincoln.
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