Republicans Push For Legislation Limiting Ballot Initiatives

Hi, this is Sarah, Baby Ivan, and John from Beatrice, Nebraska. We're taking our first tractor ride as a family this planting season. This podcast was recorded at... 117 p.m. on Monday, May 19th, 2025. Things may have changed by the time you hear this, but we'll still be complaining about the weather no matter what it is. Here's the show.

Is there like a car scene for a tractor situation? Or do we think that's like just in the lap? Or what does that look like, do you think? I like that first tractor ride is a... By the way, one I have not cleared yet. That hasn't happened yet. Everyone should have a trophy run when they're a baby. Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Miles Parks. I cover voting. I'm Ashley Lopez. I cover politics. And I'm Mara Liason, senior national political correspondent.

And today on the show, direct democracy. We've talked a lot in recent years about ballot measures allowing voters to weigh in directly on things like reproductive freedom and rank choice voting.

But now, Ashley, you are reporting that a number of Republican-led states are making it harder to get these sort of initiatives on the ballot. So I want to take a step back and just talk about the process of how things get on the ballot more broadly. Can you walk us through how something becomes... kind of a vague political idea to actually getting something voters weigh in on.

Yeah, so there are about two dozen states in this country that allow citizens to petition their state to change its laws, usually by amending their constitution. And how this works, for the most part, is fairly straightforward. You have to get a certain number of voters to sign a petition to get an issue on a ballot. and depending where you live there are rules about who collects those signatures how and how much time they have

And then if state officials and, you know, oftentimes the courts get involved, if they say that the language passes legal muster, then that will appear on a ballot before voters. And typically if a measure gets the majority approval and then it passes.

Okay, so then how are some of these states trying to change that? Well, there are quite a few states looking to change the rules for pretty much every aspect of this process. This is an effort, as you mentioned, being carried out most by Republicans.

For the most part, proponents say this is a way to combat fraud in the process of signature gathering. Arkansas is a good example. That state recently passed several laws. One of those laws requires that the title of a proposed ballot measure be read in full and out loud by either the person signing the petition or the person gathering.

I talked to a Republican state lawmaker in Arkansas who pushed for this legislation. His name is Mark Johnson. And he told me that this is so that voters know that what they're signing. And they can't be misled about what a ballot measure would do. But I should say ballot titles can get pretty long. The League of Women Voters, who is suing Arkansas over this law, told me that they estimate it could take now up to like 10 minutes.

to gather one signature with this new rule, which I'm sure you guys have watched signature gathering before. The quick pitch is, this will only take a minute. Don't walk away. You can do this really fast. That will not be as easy to sell. And anyways, the state is also requiring voters to show a photo ID and confirm that they know fraud is a crime before they sign a petition, which can be a little intimidating. And if they sign without doing any of this.

the person collecting signatures could be charged with a crime. And all of this is going to make it tougher, voting rights advocates say, to both gather signatures and recruit people to gather signatures, which is already kind of tough to do. One other notable law, Florida is...

prohibiting people from gathering more than 25 signatures for a petition beyond their own and those belonging to their immediate family. And if they collect something like 26, they could face criminal penalties. I mean, these kind of laws aren't new, but

People who are, you know, keeping an eye on these kinds of laws say they are seeing more this year than ever before. Mara, what do you make of this kind of new development? How does it fit into other things that Republicans have been prioritizing in recent years?

Well, I think it fits into the Republican kind of self-identity as a minority party. In other words, Donald Trump once famously said during his first term that the more people vote, the bad it is for Republicans. And Republicans really relied on minoritarian institutions like the Electoral College or extreme partisan gerrymandering. And statewide referenda are the opposite of that. That is plain old majority rule.

You know, the people go to the polls and they pass a constitutional amendment or they change a law. And Republicans in the past, especially in the state of Florida, have been trying to make the bar much higher, make it harder for voters to enact laws on their own with a simple majority. Florida, for example, made the bar 60% to pass a referendum. So it doesn't really surprise me. What is interesting is that Donald Trump won a majority of the popular vote. He was the first Republican since

George W. Bush in 2004, who had won the popular vote. So it had been a very long time, 20 years. But the Republicans have not shed their... real fear of majoritarian rule. And this is to me just part and parcel of that. Yeah, Trump did win 56% of the vote there.

The abortion rights measure, you know, it would have enshrined abortion rights in the state, won by 57. So this is a place where Republicans do not have majority support on an issue. And even some of their voters, just looking at that, even some of their voters. don't agree with the party on this and and even though it got 57 it didn't pass because it didn't clear 60 which is the rule i'm shocked

that more Republican states haven't tried to just outright ban referenda. Well, that is part of the slate of changes that are being proposed. I think they do face a little more pushback because they are harder to sell as purely combating fraud. But there are states, North Dakota has proposed legislation that would increase the threshold to 60%.

But I think it's just like the packaging of it to voters is a little tougher. Well, what's interesting too, Ashley, to your point about being able to connect this to fraud, I will say... Whereas when we talk about actual voter fraud, we know from every possible study that has been done that it is minuscule and there's been no evidence of widespread voter fraud. But... When it comes to signature gathering, there is a little bit more there there, right?

Yeah, I mean, this is a part of elections that gets a little less attention. I mean, to be fair, we're talking about signatures versus votes, like the results of an election. This is something that happens downstream a little earlier in the process. But Republicans say they take that as seriously as votes. So, I mean, whether that...

Fair or not, I think is up to anyone's interpretation there. But yes, this is a part of elections that does have some issues. Most of these issues, experts have told me, stem from the paid gatherers. There seems to be much fewer issues with volunteer efforts.

But states that allow people to be paid, for example, for every signature they gather as opposed to by the hour, those states seem to see more problems with people committing signature fraud. I mean, because there's like a pretty clear incentive there, right?

And, you know, while states are looking at the ballot measure initiative process, I think actually there's evidence of more prevalent petition signature gathering issues when you look at like the sort of candidate qualifying side of that. So like an independent. candidate trying to get on the ballot has to also get petitions and there seem to be more issues there. And this is why critics are skeptical. They're like, well, why aren't you looking?

That sort of part of it and just focusing on stuff that is mostly volunteer effort. This is not about fraud. Let's be clear. This is about making it harder to have statewide initiatives on the ballot. i mean there are many ways to attack fraud you can set up systems that make it easy to vote and hard to cheat but that is not what this

It does just make me feel a little bit of pity for those signature gatherers who are going to be, if it truly does take 10 minutes to get a signature, I'm like, oh man, that is a tough job. I don't know who's. in for 10 minutes in front of a grocery store to get everything read to them. But let's leave it there for now. Let's take a quick break. We'll be right back. And we're back. So Ashley, what are critics of these developments saying?

Well, I mean, they're really concerned that this is, you know, in particular in these Republican led states, that this is a way to consolidate power. I mean, petition or direct democracy, as you mentioned. It was created to give voters the ability to circumvent their state legislatures to deal with issues that politicians just don't have the political will to address.

But it goes further than that. I mean, since we talk about elections a lot, statewide petition is also how voters are attempting to address the sort of structures of our elections that aren't working for them. Things like.

independent redistricting commissions, rank choice voting, primary form, things that election officials largely don't want to touch with a 10-foot poll because they don't have the incentive to. You know, advocates told me this is really concerning because it's just going to make it harder to address the sort of like...

bigger structural issues that are making democracy not work for people. And, you know, getting rid of the few ways that people can make their legislatures focus on issues that matter to them, to them is a real shame.

I do want to switch gears here for a second. We should note before we go that former President Biden announced this weekend he's been diagnosed with an aggressive form of prostate cancer. And Mara, I was curious about your reaction to that news, specifically at a time when the Biden administration and the former president has been really under a microscope this week due to a new book out there.

from CNN's Jake Tapper and Axios' Alex Thompson that really looks at what was happening, what was being communicated about Biden's health over the last year. How much do you feel like the former president's health will end up being a part of his legacy? I think it will be the biggest part, no doubt.

The Biden office announced that he has this aggressive form of prostate cancer. It has metastasized to his bones. But they say the cancer appears to be hormone sensitive, which means there are some options for managing it. And we know that over time, prostate cancer is no longer a death sentence. People live with it for many years. It has just reignited the whole debate about whether Biden was forthcoming and his staff was forthcoming about his health issues.

whether his age was affecting his ability to function. The reaction among Republicans has been really, really interesting. Donald Trump issued a very anodyne statement that we would expect from any previous president, which is that he and Melania were concerned about Biden and they were wishing him the best and their thoughts and prayers were with him, more or less.

while MAGA, the MAGA world, including Donald Trump's son, Don Jr., were attacking Biden for covering this up. Now, we don't know if that's true or not. But this, at least in the initial reaction, Donald Trump was able to be empathetic and caring, which is unusual for him because he has been attacking... Biden for his health for years. That's what I was going to say. It almost feels like the normalcy of the statement felt like it could have come from any president but it only felt...

It's odd because he just never issued statements like that. Okay, well, we can leave that there for now. I'm Miles Parks. I cover voting. I'm Ashley Lopez. And I'm Mara Liason. And thank you for