Dem
51
GOP
49
Pro-choice groups got pro-choice initiatives on the ballot in half a dozen states last year starting in deep red Kansas in the summer and all of them won. Republicans are scared to death of a repeat performance in 2024, so Republican-controlled legislatures are naturally trying to thwart the will of the people by keeping similar measures off the ballot in 2024.
One key battle is in Ohio, where pro-choice groups are trying to get a measure on the ballot that would keep abortion legal in the state for pregnancies of 24 weeks or less. That would put the cutoff back where it was pre-Dobbs. So what are the Republicans in the state legislature doing? They know that it will easily get 50% in the vote, so they are working on a law that would raise the threshold to 60%. It has already passed the state Senate and is expected to pass the state House. Legislators love to hear from the people—except when the people have something to say that they don't like. However, the legislature can't change the threshold all by itself. The change would have to be approved by the voters in a special election... in August. This ensures low turnout. Also, the August measure is obscurely worded and does not even mention abortion.
Kelly Hall, the executive director of the Fairness Project, which supports citizen initiatives, said: "There are a lot of elected officials leading state legislatures that are being unapologetic, brazen, relentless—choose your adjective—about the fact that they don't care what voters think on this issue and that their ideological stance on this is going to dictate the outcome."
Ohio isn't the only state working at this. North Dakota just approved a bill making it more difficult to get measures on the ballot and more difficult to approve them. Now they must be approved by the voters in both the primary election and in the general election. In Arkansas, the voters solidly defeated an initiative that would have made it harder to get future initiatives approved. So the legislature just passed it as a law on its own and Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders (R-AR) signed it. In Missouri, the legislature is about to put an initiative on the ballot to raise the threshold for approval of future initatives from 50% to 66.7%. It's the same pattern everywhere in red states: try to keep the voters out of the loop. They are nothing but trouble.
The red-state legislatures are trying to make the initiative process harder because those annoying voters keep approving things the legislatures don't like, like making abortion legal, making marijuana legal, allowing ex-felons to vote, raising the minimum wage, and so on. (V)