For abortion rights advocates in Florida, it was a turbulent day with ups and downs.
On April 1, the Florida Supreme Court ruled paved the way for the state to ban nearly all abortions after six weeks of pregnancy. But it also approved a ballot proposal that would allow Florida voters to repeal the ban this November.
“I was thrilled and devastated,” said Natasha Sutherland, communications director for Floridians Protecting Freedom, a coalition by state and national organizations that collected nearly 1 million signatures for a proposed draft constitution the change Enshrining the right to abortion.
“Many women don’t even know they’re pregnant until the six-week deadline to get an abortion has passed,” said Sutherland, who lives in Tallahassee. “Given that there’s so much at stake with the abortion ban that we have now, it was really important for us to make sure we gave everything we had.”
In November of this year, voters up to nine states could bypass their legislatures and decide directly on expanding abortion access through citizen initiatives. Constitutional amendments in Colorado, Florida and South Dakota are already approved for the ballot, while coalitions in Arizona, Arkansas, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska and Nevada are still collecting signatures or waiting for state approval of their measures.
Two other states, Maryland and New York, have initiated votes on abortion rights by their state legislatures, with New York state currently embroiled in litigation.
In June 2022, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the constitutional right to abortion and sent the matter back to the states. Fourteen states have banned abortion almost without exception, while another seven states prohibit abortion before or after 18 weeks of pregnancy. after to the Guttmacher Institute, a research organization that supports abortion rights.
Nevertheless, access to abortion remains popular. even in conservative statesSince the Supreme Court’s decision in 2022, voters in six conditions have approved access to abortion by referendum, including in red states like Kansas and Kentucky.
“The point of the initiative process is to put pressure on state legislators when there appears to be support for an issue that the average voter in the district may want but the average legislator may not,” says Daniel Smith, a professor and chair of the political science department at the University of Florida who has written books and articles on popular initiatives.
In several states, Republican lawmakers opposed to abortion rights have tightened the signature requirements or increased the number of votes needed to pass ballot initiatives. Supporters of stricter rules say they want to prevent out-of-state interests from manipulating the process by pouring money into ballot initiatives. They also say they want to ensure that populous urban centers do not have too much power. But in several cases, GOP backers have accepted that their aim is thwart Measures on abortion rights that enjoy broad support.
Mat Staver, an Orlando, Florida, attorney, said out-of-state organizations pouring money into ballot initiatives like those expanding reproductive rights may make it harder to pass constitutional amendments. Staver is co-founder of Liberty Counsel, a Florida-based nonprofit that opposes abortion-related ballot measures in Florida and other states.
“Although we have a 60% limit [in Florida]if you have the financial means, you can put pretty much anything you want on the ballot,” he said. “That’s not good for Floridians because it doesn’t allow for debate.”
Critics argue that lawmakers’ attempts to impose fresh restrictions undermine one of the purest forms of direct democracy available to citizens.
“Democracy requires compromise,” said Alice Clapman, senior counsel at the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law, a nonprofit organization dedicated to progressive law and policy. “I’m concerned that there seems to be a resistance to leaving these issues to the democratic process. Some people in power in these states believe that certain issues do not belong in the democratic debate.”
‘Monopoly Power’
For decades, lawmakers from both camps have tried to make it harder for citizens to get their proposals on the ballot, Smith says. It all depends on who controls the levers of government power.
“The popular initiative takes away the monopoly power of the legislature,” he said. “We can now look at the Republicans’ restrictions on the initiative process, but that is short-sighted. It’s happening on both sides.”
In today’s polarized political climate, voters’ support for a ballot proposition does not necessarily mean they support the candidate who supports that proposition. Smith’s research has found that many people will vote for a ballot proposition while also voting for candidates from the party that opposes it.
“And they’re OK with it,” Smith said. “There’s no cognitive dissonance in the voter’s mind.” [The ballot measure] is a one-time thing.”
In presidential election years, referendums typically do not boost voter turnout as much as they do in midterms and special elections. But 2024 could be different, Smith said, because of muted public enthusiasm for the rematch between President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump. A referendum could encourage more people to vote.
“Not unlike gerrymandering”
Last month, the Missourians for Constitutional Freedom campaign filed more than twice as many signatures as probably required for his measure to be approved for the Missouri ballot in November. The proposed constitutional amendment the changelike Florida, abortion would be allowed up to Viability of the fetus – the time at which a fetus can survive outside the womb is often considered to be around 24 or 25 weeks of pregnancy.
“The signature collection for this campaign has been the most incredible thing I have ever been a part of,” said Mallory Schwarz, executive director of Abortion Action Missouri, one of the organizations involved in the campaign. “I have never seen such enthusiasm for the issue as I have this year.”
The coalition organizations trained more than a thousand volunteers who, in less than three months, canvassed votes in their communities, hosted house parties and knocked on tens of thousands of doors, Schwarz said. They ultimately collected more than 380,000 signatures. The state must now certify the petition for it to appear on the ballot.
Voters of all political stripes in Missouri are deeply connected to the popular initiative process, which has a tradition dating back more than a century, said Schwarz: “We have seen year after year that issues that are presented as partisan political resonate with people across the board.”
In recent years, voting in Controlled by the Republicans Missouri has raised the state minimum wage, expanded Medicaid, repealed a so-called right-to-work law and decriminalized cannabis exploit.
This year the Republicans of Missouri make several suggestions aimed at preventing initiatives for abortion rights, including one that Reconciliation measures require not only to win the majority of votes in the entire state, but also to win the majority of votes in Missouri’s congressional districts.
After heated debateThe bill was passed by the Senate, the House of Representatives could not agree different versions of the bill before the end of the session.
“This is not unlike electoral district manipulation,” said Schwarz. “You can only break the will of the people by changing the rules of the game.”
Florida lawmakers introduced a similar bill last year, proposing a constitutional amendment to raise the number of votes needed to pass a ballot measure from 60% to a two-thirds majority. The bill passed in the House but failed in the Senate.
In 2023 referendums in eight states attracted more than $205 million in donations, according to OpenSecrets, a nonprofit that tracks campaign finance and lobbying. Sutherland, of Floridians Protecting Freedom, pointed out that the campaign raised nearly $12 million in April and May, but about 70% of the contributions came from Florida itself.
A range of tactics
According to abortion rights advocates almost 500,000 signatures collected in Ohio to put a reproductive rights amendment on the ballot for the November 2023 election, the Republican Secretary of State and the Ohio Ballot Board changed the wording summarizing the amendment in a way that opponents called incomplete and incorrect. Ohio voters nevertheless approved the ballot proposal, Enshrining access to abortion in the state constitution of last November.
A similar scenario played out in Missouri, where Republican Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft tried to change the wording of a proposed abortion rights ballot measure to ask voters whether they supported “dangerous and unregulated abortions until live birth.” A Missouri court later ruled that struck down the language.
In Arizona, GOP lawmakers have their own Constitutional amendment on the November 2024 ballot, which would require organizers to collect a certain percentage of signatures from each of Arizona’s 30 precincts, rather than the entire state. They have also considered a strategy to introduce your own voting measures on the issue of abortion to compete with the abortion rights measure.
The popular initiative deprives legislators of their monopoly power.
– Daniel Smith, professor and researcher at the University of Florida
If the reproductive rights ballot amendments are passed, they will likely face legal challenges that extend well beyond the election.
Liberty Counsel’s Staver said his organization will explore legal options to prevent the law change from being implemented in Florida.
“There could be litigation showing that existing constitutional rights override this amendment,” said Staver, who believes the amendment is too broad.
Clapman of the Brennan Center expects lawmakers to continue to oppose the ballot measures: “This fight will not simply end even if the initiatives pass.”
