Voters don't always have final say -- state legislatures and governors are increasingly undermining ballot measures that

[In It to Win It]

Voters don't always have final say -- state legislatures and governors are increasingly undermining ballot measures that win

Less than half of Americans trust elected officials to act in the public’s interest.

When voters want something done on an issue and their elected officials fail to act, they may turn to citizen initiatives to pursue their goals instead. The citizen initiative process varies by state, but in general, citizens collect signatures to have an issue put directly on the ballot for the voters to voice their preferences. Nearly half the states, 24 of them, allow citizen initiatives.

These measures, also called “ballot initiatives,” often focus on the controversial issues of the day. Citizen initiatives on same-sex marriage and marijuana legalization have been on many state ballots through the years. Abortion rights have repeatedly been on the ballot since 2022, after the Supreme Court overturned the constitutional protection for abortion, and more voters can expect to vote on the issue in 2024.

I am an American politics scholar who studies the connection between representation and public policy. In American democracy, the people expect to have a voice, whether that comes through electing representatives or directly voting on issues.

Yet it is becoming increasingly common for lawmakers across the country to not only ignore the will of the people, but also actively work against it. From 2010 to 2015, about 21% of citizen initiatives were altered by lawmakers after they passed. From 2016 to 2018, lawmakers altered nearly 36% of passed citizen initiatives.

[Demsrule86]

1. Voters do have the final. Say can vote the idiots out in state wide elections which will

lead to control of the legislative part as well. You have to vote period.

[gratuitous]

2. Some ballot initiatives are poorly written

And they need legislative help to set out a regulatory framework so that the measure passed by voters can be properly administered. That's one reason legislatures might "undermine" a citizen-approved ballot measure.

But other times - and I'd bet a shiny nickel on who controls those legislatures - the legislature intervenes to nullify the voter's initiative. One example is the Florida initiative meant to restore voting rights to citizens who had served their criminal sentence. The Republican-controlled legislature weighed the measure down with so many regulations it became near impossible to determine when a citizen had fully served his sentence.

One very effective nullifying measure was the payment of all outstanding court costs and incarceration fees. Since Florida has no central database of those debts, it was up to the citizen seeking to restore his voting rights to prove that he didn't owe any money for his time in jail, and if it a citizen tried to register to vote and those debts hadn't been paid, guess what? Yep, illegally trying to register to vote!

It's quite important to distinguish between legislative action to facilitate the enactment of a ballot measure and action designed to nullify it.