In 2025, state legislators have introduced 148 bills designed to curb direct democracy. At the same time that Congress and the Supreme Court are abdicating their powers to the president, voters’ ability to pass laws via ballot measures is being stripped out from under our noses in state capitols across the country.
Citizen-led ballot measures are voters’ most powerful tool for making change when politicians fail them. As our representative democracy becomes increasingly dysfunctional, ballot measures are more important than ever — and it’s no surprise that politicians intent on consolidating power find direct democracy threatening. But if we shine a light on this power grab and hold our politicians to account, we can still preserve democracy in its purest form.
Citizen-led ballot measures are voters’ most powerful tool for making change when politicians fail them.
The Fairness Project, which released a report Tuesday on the way direct democracy is being attacked, is on the front lines of this fight. As the national leader in ballot measures, we have helped win 40 campaigns across 20 states to protect reproductive rights, raise wages, expand health care access, secure paid leave and enact other life-changing policies for more than 23 million people.
We see firsthand that voters regularly check their party affiliation at the door to vote for ballot measures that will improve their lives. We also have learned that the more citizens use their power to advance their interests, the more some lawmakers attack the process.
The 148 bills my organization counted have been filed across 15 states, and each of them, in one way or another, was drafted to break the mechanisms by which voters initiate ballot measures. The 148 bills represent a 95% increase in anti-democratic legislation by state lawmakers since 2023. Put simply, politicians’ attempts to weaken direct democracy have nearly doubled. This assault on ballot measures has no precedent. From 2000 to 2023, there was an average of 16 such bills a year. An increase to 148 isn’t a trickle. It’s a deluge.
These attempts to subvert direct democracy in the states come in several forms, but each of them aims to make it harder for people who aren’t politicians to qualify their issue for the ballot or for citizen-initiated measures to win on Election Day.
The most straightforward attacks are undemocratic supermajority requirements that impose a 60% threshold for a ballot measure to succeed, which essentially empowers a minority of voters to defeat the will of the majority. Florida already has this requirement in place, which is why Florida’s 2024 measure to overturn the state’s abortion ban failed despite being supported by 57% of voters. Now, the Missouri Legislature, at the same time it has convened a special session to gerrymander the state mid-decade, has passed a bill limiting voters’ power to amend their state constitution by ballot measure.
More insidious are the changes to the rules about how ballot measures qualify for a vote. These include requiring more signatures on petitions or requiring that they be collected from more counties in a state and imposing severe limitations on who can collect them. Some states are trying to drown advocates in red tape, requiring every petition to be notarized, every volunteer to pass a background check, every form regulated down to font size — and any mistake subject to hefty fines or criminal penalties. Taken together, these seemingly small changes add prohibitive costs to grassroots campaigns and chill citizen participation.
These seemingly small changes add prohibitive costs to grassroots campaigns and chill citizen participation.
None of these bills are “reforms.” Rather, each represents a cowardly attempt to make it harder for voters to access direct democracy. This intent to exclude citizens from lawmaking is evident in the increasingly open disdain many conservative lawmakers are showing for their own voters. When asked about his vote to repeal the paid sick leave voters had approved, one Missouri lawmaker smugly replied: “Of course the people voted for it. It would be like asking your teenager if he wanted a checkbook. They’re going to vote for it every time.”
The timing of this acceleration in anti-voter legislation is no mystery. It’s a direct response to recent cross-partisan victories in conservative states on progressive issues that voters care about — living wages, reproductive freedom, access to health care — all things that conflict with some legislators’ unpopular agendas.
The lawmakers attempting to undermine citizen-initiated ballot measures are counting on this issue being too esoteric, too weedy, too dull to catch voters’ attention. We must prove them wrong and bring every ounce of our political energy to protecting these voting rights before they’re gone.
This means shining a light on legislative fights, litigating against the unconstitutional laws that pass and voting against attacks on our rights at the ballot box. Most of all, we can’t let new hurdles in the process deter us from participation. If we can’t make change in Washington right now, then we have to get a clipboard and get to work passing changes in our home states while we can.
