Dem
47
GOP
53
The folks who wrote many of the state constitutions were apparently clairvoyant, and didn't have much faith in the state legislatures. Consequently, many states have a provision in their constitutions to allow the voters to make an end-run around the legislature and directly pass laws by popular vote or even amend the Constitution by popular vote. State legislators never really like this, but in recent years, the people have been using this power to pass laws or amendments that the legislators REALLY don't like. This has been most notable in states where right-wing Republicans control the legislature but the people keep voting for laws or amendments that the legislators hate. Abortion is one area of conflict, but it is not the only one.
Now the legislators are fighting back. Who do the people think they are? What do they know about laws? NOTHING! That's our job. We'd abolish the people and just go it alone except our state Constitution doesn't give us that power.
Here are some examples. In Missouri in 2024, the voters approved a measure making abortion legal and a second measure providing for employee sick leave. This made the Republicans in the legislature furious and they are working to undo the "damage." Legislators in Alaska and Nebraska are also working on rolling back sick-leave benefits passed by the voters. In Arizona, the voters approved protections for abortion last year, but the legislature is busy trying to undo them.
In Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Montana, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Dakota, and Utah, the Republicans are tired of fighting the symptoms of democracy. They want to go after the cause and remove it, root and branch: the initiative process itself. In these states, the Republican-controlled legislatures are trying to restrict citizen initiatives in various ways, either by making it harder to get initiatives on the ballot or requiring supermajorities for them to pass. In many cases, the legislators say that they represent the will of the people better than the people do.
What is actually the case is that these legislatures are heavily gerrymandered so that conservative Republicans in rural areas have much more representation in the legislatures than their numbers should give them. Chris Melody Fields Figueredo, executive director of the Ballot Initiative Strategy Center, which tracks ballot measures in D.C. and the 26 states that allow them, said of the Republicans: "They can't win fairly, so they're trying to rewrite the rules to get their way no matter what a majority of folks in their state wants."
In some states, the voters are counterattacking. In Missouri, a citizens group is trying to get an amendment initiative on the ballot in Nov. 2026 that would ban lawmakers from overturning the results of ballot initiatives.
Here is a map showing where initiatives are allowed:
As you can see, most of the states where initiatives are allowed are in the Midwest or West and most of them are controlled by the Republicans. That is where the battles are happening. (V)