State Politicians Broaden Attacks on Direct Democracy

Democracy experts have rightly focused in recent months on democratic backsliding at the federal level, including the president’s attacks on independent agencies and civil society, Congress’s abdication of its role as a co-equal branch, and the courts’ mixed response to this crisis. Meanwhile, however, a parallel democratic crisis is unfolding less visibly at the state level, as state legislators across the country pass laws to undermine or effectively eliminate citizens’ power to change their laws or constitutions by popular vote.

In this year’s state legislative session, at least nine state legislatures have passed or were considering laws making it harder or potentially impossible for citizens to place initiatives on the ballot and put them to a popular vote. Another state, Missouri, is cutting back on the courts’ power to intervene when state officials spread disinformation about initiatives they oppose. These new laws are notable for their extremism, their inconsistency with hard-won state constitutional protections, and the openly anti-democratic rhetoric of their proponents.

This state-level attack on direct democracy merits more national attention — both in its own right and because it’s part of the national struggle between elected officials and the constitutionally enshrined rule of law that exists to constrain them.

Twenty-four states’ constitutions allow their citizens to amend their laws directly, without the involvement of state legislatures. This progressive reform particularly swept western states during the early 20th century as a response to various governmental scandals and the dawning public realization that state legislatures are susceptible to capture by moneyed interests.

In virtually every state that has direct democracy, the process is onerous. Not only do an initiative’s sponsors have to persuade the electorate, but even to qualify an initiative for the ballot they first need extensive funding and manpower to collect the required volume of signatures. They also need legal resources to comply with various restrictions on drafting and signature collection. Nonetheless, over the past century, citizens have successfully used this tool to enact popular reforms. 

Politicians often view direct democracy as a threat to their power, and many fought it from the start. For example, when delegates to the 1912 Ohio constitutional convention proposed direct democracy to voters, one contemporary described how “every ruse and trick known to Big Business politicians was employed to frighten the people of Ohio from adopting” it. (Despite this fear campaign, the amendment passed with 58 percent of the vote.) Even after reformers managed to enshrine a constitutional right to direct democracy in many states, politicians worked to undermine it.

In recent years, this conflict between citizens and their representatives has escalated. As advocates increasingly turn to direct democracy for policies long blocked by their legislatures — such as abortion legalization, Medicaid expansion, and minimum wage increases — politicians, backed by moneyed interests, work to thwart their efforts.

This legislative term was particularly bad for direct democracy — and arguably the worst in Oklahoma, Florida, and Arkansas. In a disturbing new twist, some of the legislators sponsoring these new restrictions openly attacked the concepts of direct democracy and popular sovereignty enshrined in their own state’s constitution. For example, even though the Oklahoma Constitution provides for this right, Oklahoma state Sen. David Bullard urged his colleagues to restrict ballot initiatives. “Your democracy does not need you right now,” he said. “Your republic needs you . . . The Republican form of government says that you’re ruled by your elected officials.”

Bullard was speaking in support of a new Oklahoma law that appears to target liberal initiatives. By requiring that no more than 10 percent of signatures for a ballot measure come from counties with 400,000 or more people, it essentially gives rural, conservative areas the power to block an initiative from appearing on the ballot. Some courts in other states have struck similar geographic requirements as inconsistent with the fundamental state constitutional right to direct democracy. This new provision is particularly likely to block ballot initiatives in Oklahoma, which is already an outlier in how few days it gives sponsors to collect signatures (90 days).

Florida and Arkansas legislators also took aim at signature canvassing this term. In Florida, already one of only a few states that require a 60 percent supermajority for an initiative to pass, a new statute bans noncitizens, non-Florida residents, and individuals with a felony conviction from collecting signatures in support of petitions. It also requires personal identifying information for voters signing petition forms and for petition circulators, tightens the timeline for canvassers to turn in their signatures, imposes new registration requirements on canvassers, and creates chilling new felony penalties for failures to strictly conform to these Byzantine procedural requirements.

The state of direct democracy is particularly dire in Arkansas. Last year, the Arkansas Supreme Court sided with the attorney general when he used a thin technical pretext to block a popular limited abortion rights initiative with over 102,000 signatures from 53 counties. (Not coincidentally, an even more ambitious abortion rights initiative passed that year in neighboring Missouri.) In a further blow to citizen initiatives, the legislature has just passed a new wave of restrictions on signature collection — including banning non-resident canvassers; requiring canvassers, on pain of criminal prosecution, to review signatories’ photo IDs and warn them about the penalties for election fraud; compressing the time period for signature collection; and making it even easier for state officials to throw out signatures or even prosecute canvassers over technicalities.

Advocates in all three of these states have sued, arguing that these legislatures are violating state constitutional rights to direct democracy and federal rights to free political speech.

In some other states, to reduce the risk of legal challenges or gubernatorial vetoes, state legislators are opting to propose new restrictions to voters in the form of legislatively referred ballot measures. Voters usually recognize such measures as a power grab and reject them. But because this tactic doesn’t cost legislators anything and enables them to run up costs for advocates opposing restrictions, they can run similar measures year after year and occasionally win, as when Florida voters in 2006 approved the supermajority requirement for future constitutional amendments.

North Dakota legislators are trying this tactic to raise the state’s passing threshold to 60 percent. Utah legislators are doing the same (in addition to passing legislation requiring sponsors to spend vast amounts of money publishing initiatives in local newspapers). Arizona legislators were considering a similar measure — one that notably would have raised the threshold for passing initiatives but not for repealing them — but ended their session last week without passing it.

While official attacks on direct democracy are not new, they are reaching disturbing new heights, at a time when federal officials are making similar moves to undermine democratic checks on their power. In some states, voters have the power to elect representatives with greater respect for direct democracy. In others, like Arkansas, Florida, and Ohio, they face the structural barrier of partisan gerrymandering. More immediately, these issues will be actively hashed out in state and federal courts.

Alice Clapman is a reproductive rights litigator and former senior counsel at the Brennan Center, where she worked on voting rights and election security.

Suggested Citation: Alice Clapman, State Politicians Broaden Attacks on Direct Democracy, Sᴛᴀᴛᴇ Cᴏᴜʀᴛ Rᴇᴘᴏʀᴛ (Jun. 24, 2025), https://statecourtreport.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/state-politicians-broaden-attacks-direct-democracy