Republicans are desperate to crack down on direct democracy

Across the country, a growing number of Republican-led state legislatures are moving to gut the direct democracy process — stripping voters of their power to use ballot measures to pass laws when elected officials refuse to act. 

These attacks aren’t happening in isolation. They are part of a coordinated national effort to kneecap the citizen-led ballot initiative, once a cornerstone of popular reform and a tool for the people to check legislative power.

In recent years, red-state voters have approved initiatives to end partisan gerrymandering, raise the minimum wage, expand healthcare access and protect reproductive rights, among other progressive steps. In 2026, GOP lawmakers are pushing back harder by rewriting the rules: proposing higher vote thresholds to pass ballot measures, manipulating ballot language, burying petitions in red tape and working to overturn or ignore results.

“This is part of the coordinated effort around rising authoritarianism across the country. This is how authoritarianism works,” Chris Melody Fields Figueredo, executive director of the Ballot Initiative Strategy Center, told Democracy Docket. “This has been a symptom of a larger problem across the United States where politicians who are in power cannot win fairly, so they change the rules of the game, even if it undermines the very constituents that they are supposed to represent in government.”

Fields Figueredo called it “a form of retaliation” by lawmakers — targeting the same constituents who have used ballot initiatives to “improve the material conditions for their communities” in defiance of politicians. 

This year, the fight over direct democracy won’t just be about how the process works but whether voters still have any real power to shape the laws that govern them.

Supermajority thresholds: the simplest way to shut down majority rule

In state after state, Republican lawmakers have embraced a blunt tool to block citizen-led reforms: moving the goalposts. Where once a simple majority of voters was enough to pass reforms or amend a state constitution, GOP-controlled legislatures are increasingly demanding that 60% or more of voters must vote in favor for initiatives to be successful.

In 2026, voters in at least four states will face measures that would raise the bar for passing future ballot initiatives. In North Dakota and South Dakota, lawmakers have placed constitutional amendments on the ballot that would require a 60% supermajority to approve any future constitutional change — effectively giving a minority of voters veto power over the rest. Utah will also include a ballot measure requiring tax-related citizen initiatives to clear 60% to be successful.

But perhaps no state better illustrates the GOP’s extreme hostility towards direct democracy than Missouri, where Republican legislators have placed a measure on the 2026 ballot that, if successful, would require citizen initiatives to win a majority not only statewide — but in every single congressional district. Just one district’s opposition could doom a proposal backed by over 90% of the state. Given the makeup of the state’s congressional districts, the rule would make it all but impossible to use the initiative process at all.

The Missouri measure doesn’t apply to amendments placed on the ballot by the legislature itself, only those placed by grassroots campaign efforts — highlighting a growing trend of asymmetric rules designed to hamstring voters while preserving lawmakers’ own powers. 

“They’re trying to stop progress by creating these barriers.” Fields Figueredo added. “Politicians and wealthy special interests are undermining the will of the people to consolidate minority rule.”

The power of these rules isn’t hypothetical. In 2024, Florida voters cast ballots on Amendment 4, a citizen-initiated measure to protect abortion rights in the state constitution. It won over 57% of the vote — more than 1.5 million more yes votes than no — but still failed because Florida requires a 60% supermajority.

In the same election, Amendment 3, which would have legalized recreational marijuana, drew nearly 56% support and also failed for the same reason. 

Since Florida adopted the 60% requirement in 2006, 13 citizen-led amendments have won a majority of voters but failed to become law. 

Twisting the language and rigging the process

Not all attacks on direct democracy are as blunt or transparent as supermajority proposals. In many states, the threats by lawmakers are quieter but just as dangerous — manipulating ballot language, limiting what issues citizens can address or burying campaigns under technical rules that make it nearly impossible to qualify for the ballot.

An increasingly favorite tactic by the GOP is writing misleading or biased ballot summaries.  

In Missouri again, Republican lawmakers have emerged with some of the most aggressive rewrites.

A proposed 2026 measure would repeal Missouri’s 2024 voter-approved constitutional right to abortion and replace it with a 12-week ban, with limited exceptions. But the original ballot summary — written by GOP Secretary of State Denny Hoskins — was so riddled with omissions, errors and misleading phrasing that a state appeals court was forced to rewrite it entirely. 

The GOP-led measure that would require a supermajority for successful initiatives and a referendum effort to block the GOP’s 2025 congressional gerrymander are also being challenged in court as biased, inaccurate and “intentionally deceptive.”

But Missouri is not alone. In Montana, Republican Attorney General Austin Knudsen is under fire for rewriting summaries of citizen initiatives aimed at creating nonpartisan judicial elections. His revised language misleadingly suggests the measures would ban terms like “independent,” in what opponents say is an effort to discredit the reforms.

The Montana Supreme Court has twice ruled against Knudsen for overstepping his authority regarding the writing of ballot measure summaries. 

In some states, lawmakers have gone further — restricting what topics citizen initiatives can address altogether. Proposals on fair redistricting and abortion are often singled out for bans or extra scrutiny.

In 2024 and 2025, while the Mississippi House attempted to revive the state’s citizen initiative process, GOP lawmakers repeatedly passed resolutions that would explicitly prohibit initiatives related to abortion. These proposals aimed to prevent voters from challenging the state’s near-total abortion ban via direct democracy.

Mississippi remains without any functional citizen initiative process, showcasing how GOP lawmakers are willing to sacrifice direct democracy altogether if it poses a threat to their agenda. 

Then there are the evermore procedural choke points — rules about signature gathering, petition circulators and filing deadlines that function less as safeguards and more as sabotage. Arkansas, for example, has passed a string of laws in recent years that limit who can collect signatures, impose strict residency requirements  and criminalize common campaign practices. Much of those GOP provisions were struck down by a federal court last year for infringing on free speech. 

Overturning and ignoring the will of voters

The most brazen attacks on direct democracy sometimes come after voters have already spoken. In state after state, Republican lawmakers are working to ignore, override and repeal voter-approved initiatives.

In Utah, GOP leaders are seeking to repeal Proposition 4, the 2018 voter-approved initiative that created an independent redistricting commission and banned partisan gerrymandering. After the state supreme court reinstated the commission and struck down GOP gerrymandered maps, Republicans responded by launching a new 2026 ballot initiative to eliminate it entirely. They’ve raised millions — much of it from a single donor — and are collecting signatures to put the repeal before voters again.

Never to be outdone, in Missouri, the 2024 abortion rights amendment that passed with 52% support is now under direct threat from a Republican-led repeal effort scheduled for the 2026 ballot. GOP lawmakers there have also nullified a 2024 initiative that expanded worker protections, repealing the sick leave and wage hike provisions via legislation. 

Not to forget, GOP officials are continuing to pull out all the stops, no matter how extreme, to impede a wildly successful referendum effort to block the GOP’s latest congressional gerrymander for the 2026 elections. 

And in Florida, after nearly two-thirds of voters passed a 2018 amendment to restore voting rights to people with past felony convictions, Republican lawmakers quickly imposed additional fines and fees as a condition of eligibility — effectively neutralizing the reform and keeping hundreds of thousands disenfranchised.

Citizens are fighting back

Despite an escalating campaign to limit ballot access and overturn voter decisions, citizens across the country are pushing back — and often winning. Voters across states have organized to defend their power and reject anti-democratic proposals.

Voters in South Dakota, Arkansas and Ohio have beaten supermajority threshold measures that would have made it harder to pass future initiatives. These votes were not just about procedure — they were resounding statements that voters want to keep their final say. Ohio’s rejection of a 60% threshold, for example, was widely viewed as a precursor to its successful abortion rights amendment later that year. 

Pro-democracy coalitions have also taken to the courts. Judges have blocked egregious restrictions in states like Arkansas and Idaho, including laws that added readability mandates and signature district quotas to disqualify petitions. Legal fights remain active in notorious Florida and Missouri, where citizens argue that lawmakers are violating basic constitutional rights by obstructing the initiative process. 

In several states, citizens are going further — using initiatives to defend initiatives. In Missouri, activists are collecting signatures for a 2026 amendment that would enshrine protections for the initiative process itself and prevent future legislative sabotage. In Arkansas, similar campaigns are underway to reverse a state Supreme Court ruling that gave lawmakers broad authority to rewrite voter-passed laws. 

“I think what is positive about what we’re seeing is people are being proactive. They are saying, this is important to our state, this is important to the citizens of our state, and we know that ballot measures are wildly popular. We are going to take the initiative. We’re going to fight back,” Fields Figueredo said. “In states like Missouri, Nebraska, Arkansas there are a coalition of organizations that aren’t waiting, they are looking for opportunities to protect the will of people, to respect voters.”