Some voters are pushing back on lawmakers' efforts to overturn citizen ballot initiatives

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) — One by one, each of the more than 50 people seated on folding chairs at a public library explained why they were there.

“I'm just really upset about our voting rights being taken away from us,” one woman said.

“I'm mad, and I want to do something with my anger that protects my rights,” the next woman exclaimed.

“I want to understand how the heck they can do this,” added another.

The citizen activists, many of them heretofore strangers, had come together two days after the Missouri House passed legislation to overturn a voter-approved ballot initiative guaranteeing paid sick leave for workers and cost-of-living increases to the minimum wage.

The people weren't focused on how to stop the Senate from taking the same action. Rather, the group had something bigger in mind: Preventing the Legislature from ever reversing the will of the voters again.

Paid sick leave highlights a Missouri fight

As Republican President Donald Trump tests the Constitution's separation of powers with far-reaching executive orders, lawmakers in some states are engaged in a tug-of-war for power with the people who elected them.

In Missouri, Republican lawmakers not only want to reverse the workers' benefits law approved by voters in November, they're also proposing to undo parts of a new abortion rights amendment and make it more difficult to approve future constitutional amendments.

Missouri lawmakers have a history of such actions. They previously tried to block funding for a voter-approved Medicaid expansion and authored changes to voter-approved measures regulating dog breeders and legislative redistricting.

Frustrated citizen activists are fighting back. They are holding town-hall forums across the state seeking to build support to put a constitutional amendment on the 2026 ballot limiting the Legislature's ability to limit citizen initiatives.

“Our goal is to ban politicians from attacking the will of the people,” presenter Lindsay Browning told people gathered on a recent Saturday at the Missouri River Regional Library, blocks from the state Capitol.

Two days earlier, Republican state Rep. Mitch Boggs used a parental analogy while explaining to colleagues why they should overrule voters' desire for paid sick leave and annual minimum wage increases.

“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," Boggs said. But "if we don’t protect our businesses, there’s not going to be a job to go to to get a minimum wage.”

Nebraska lawmakers also are considering carving out exceptions to voter-approved minimum wage and paid sick leave laws.

100 bills that restrict citizen initiatives

About half the states allow citizens to place proposed laws or constitutional amendments on the ballot through initiative petitions. In recent years, activists have used that process to enshrine abortion rights in state constitutions, legalize recreational marijuana, raise minimum wages, expand Medicaid health care coverage and enact other measures that legislatures had been unwilling to approve.

Some lawmakers have responded by trying to make it harder to get initiatives on the ballot and tougher for voters to pass them.

The Ballot Initiative Strategy Center, which backs progressive ballot measures, is tracking about 100 active bills in 18 states that would “make it more difficult for citizen-led initiatives to succeed,” said the group's executive director, Chris Melody Fields Figueredo.

The abundance of such legislation is “an indictment of our representative democracy,” said Kelly Hall, executive director of The Fairness Project, another progressive group that has backed 43 state ballot initiatives since 2016.

In Idaho, a Republican lawmaker this year proposed giving the governor veto power over ballot initiatives approved by voters with less than two-thirds support. That bill stalled in a House committee.

But bills already have passed in other states. Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders signed several laws aimed at initiative canvassers, including ones requiring them to verify that petition signers have read the full ballot title and shown photo identification.

Utah lawmakers this month voted to place a proposed constitutional amendment on the 2026 ballot that would require 60% approval for future initiatives that raise or impose taxes. Arizona voters narrowly approved a similar measure in 2022.

South Dakota looks to rein in initiatives

In South Dakota, which gave birth to the initiative movement in 1898, lawmakers recently passed several measures seeking to rein in the initiative process. One would shorten the time for gathering petition signatures. Another would require a minimum number of signatures from all 35 state Senate districts — in addition to the current statewide threshold — to qualify a proposed constitutional amendment for the ballot.

Yet another measure, which will go before voters in 2026, would set a 60% threshold for approving constitutional amendments instead of a simple majority.

In 2022, South Dakota voters rejected a legislative proposal to require 60% approval for new taxes and multimillion-dollar spending measures. That same year, voters approved a Medicaid expansion initiative by a 56% vote.

This year, lawmakers placed a proposed constitutional amendment on the 2026 ballot that would end the expanded Medicaid coverage if the federal government doesn't continue to pay at least 90% of the costs.

Republicans who control the Legislature noted that amendments to the U.S. Constitution require approval from three-fourths of states. They also asserted that out-of-state groups have bankrolled initiatives pushing “radical agendas," citing recently defeated ballot proposals for abortion rights and open primaries.

“Our constitution must be protected from the transient political influence and whims of a bare majority," South Dakota state Sen. Sue Peterson said during debate.