How lawmakers are restricting citizen-led ballot initiatives

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• John Yang:

  Right now, voters in 24 states and the District of Columbia can bypass their legislatures by gathering signatures to get proposed laws or constitutional amendments on the ballot. But according to the Associated Press, about 40 bills in roughly a dozen states are being considered or have already been signed into law to restrict this citizen initiative process.

  Dane Waters is head of the University of Southern California's nonpartisan Initiative and Referendum Institute. Mr. Waters, in your view, what's the role of this citizen ballot initiative in our American democracy?

  Dane Waters, Chair, Initiative and Referendum Institute: Well, it's a check and balance on representative government. It's not a replacement for it. And this is what a lot of people don't understand is that they think that when we have direct democracy or in the states where it does exist, that somehow is trying to circumvent or bypass normal representative government.

  But it's not. It's always been designed to be a check and balance and a safety valve for the people to use when the legislature, for whatever reason, is unwilling or unable to do things that the people want.

• John Yang:

  And why are legislatures why are lawmakers elected lawmakers trying to restrict it?

• Dane Waters:

  Well, there's always been this animosity by lawmakers against direct democracy in the United States ever since the process has been around. They see it as an affront to their power. But what they seem to forget is that when they are elected, the people aren't giving away their sovereign rights, they're just loaning those rights to the lawmakers, and they reserve the right to make laws with the initiative process or direct democracy.

  And so this this confrontation between lawmakers and the people has always been there. And this is why we see that the affront and the assaults on the process that we're seeing, what sorts of.

• John Yang:

  Restrictions are we talking about that are being proposed or actually enacted in some laws?

• Dane Waters:

  Well, you know, everything from shortening the circulation period, the amount of time you have to collect signatures, putting in place distribution requirements, saying that you have to from every congressional district or state legislative district, limiting who can collect signatures, saying that they can only be registered voters or they must be living inside the state, limiting the amount of money that can be in the process, you name, you know, the size of the font, pretty much any restriction that you can think of.

  The state legislatures have been pretty creative, but the courts throughout time have struck down many of these restrictions as unconstitutional, which is why lawmakers are getting even more creative in the restrictions that they're placing on the process.

• John Yang:

  Now, some lawmakers who are proposing these restrictions say they're trying to prevent a special interest from hijacking the process. What do you say to that?

• Dane Waters:

  Well, first of all, every human being on this planet has a special interest. Everyone has their own interest and special interests, just like any interest have the right to propose anything. At the end of the day, it doesn't matter who is behind a ballot measure. Only the citizens of a specific state can vote for it.

  But it's just like the state legislature. You have special interests. Whether it's insurance companies, gambling organizations, or people who are pro LGBT rights or anti-LGBT rights. They're always lobbying the state legislature. So it makes sense that the same interest would try to influence whether a ballot measure passes or not.

• John Yang:

  We spoke to Kelly Hall, the executive director of the Fairness Project, which is a progressive group that's backed dozens of ballot initiatives across the country. Let's hear what she had to say.

• Kelly Hall, Executive Director, The Fairness Project:

  Instead of having a fair fight, a really public conversation about the issues, where politicians or other citizens who disagree on an issue say, let's persuade each other, let's have a debate. Instead, they're making changes to font, size of petitions and how many you can carry and who's allowed to carry them. And that's the way democracy dies.

• John Yang:

  What's your reaction?

• Dane Waters:

  I think she's 100 percent right. I mean, when you, when state legislatures are trying to silence the people's ability to use direct democracy or be a check and balance on them, democracy will suffer. So she's spot on in what she's saying.

• John Yang:

  You advised ballot campaigns in about 20 countries around the world. How do attitudes about this compare with attitudes in the United States?

• Dane Waters:

  Well, globally, the expansion of the direct democracy is there. I mean, you know, most lawmakers around the world seem to not have this animosity toward the citizens, and they're actually trying to expand the process. Even Ukraine, just before the war, they had just put in place a national initiative process there to deal with issues, and then the war took place, and so they haven't had the chance to use it.

  In the United States, there's this — as we've talked about, this constant animosity between lawmakers and the people where the lawmakers try to shut the people out of the process. So around the world, lawmakers tried to include the people. In the United States, lawmakers seem to try to exclude the people.

• John Yang:

  Dane Waters, thank you very much.

• Dane Waters:

  Thank you for having me.