December 2025 Hot Sheet: The Rising Authoritarian Tactics Against Citizen-Led Initiatives

12/17/2025

Facebook Created with Sketch. Twitter Created with Sketch.

Welcome back to The Hot Sheet!

Here, we give you a quick rundown of what you need to know about the ballot measure landscape — the trends, legislative analysis, highlights of what’s on the ballot, and why it all matters. 

For more in-depth analysis, our latest voter attitudes research, and information on the measures we’re tracking, head to our Ballot Measure Hub.

2026 Qualified Ballot Measures

As of December 2, there are 56 measures qualified for 2026 ballots. 249 initiative campaigns are circulating petitions while 34 measures have been filed with state legislatures.

The Toplines

  • Lawmakers across the country are growing bolder in their authoritarian tactics to sabotage direct democracy and silence voters’ voices.
  • A landmark decision by the Arkansas Supreme Court will allow the state legislature to overturn or amend voter-approved, citizen-initiated constitutional amendments.
  • People Not Politicians Missouri have submitted more than 305,000 petition signatures for their referendum challenging the legislature’s gerrymandered redistricting map — nearly triple the amount required to qualify. But Sec. of State Hoskins is refusing to count the signatures of roughly 103,000 Missouri voters.

Emerging Trend

Increasingly Authoritarian Tactics Deployed Against Citizen-Led Initiatives: It was just over a year ago that officials with Gov. DeSantis’ office ordered the Florida Department of Health to threaten TV stations with criminal charges for airing paid campaign ads for Amendment 4, a citizen-led initiative that nearly restored abortion rights in the state. That news shocked free speech and election integrity advocates across the country last fall, but lately these kinds of authoritarian antics almost seem par for the course:

    • Missouri Attorney General Catherine Hanaway is siccing I.C.E. on workers gathering signatures for the citizen-led referendum effort to repeal the legislature’s gerrymandered redistricting map. Without providing evidence to back up her claims, Hanaway alleged that the campaign’s signature collection firm is using undocumented immigrants to gather initiative petition signatures. She’s requested that immigration officials investigate whether the firm is creating “an environment for exploitation and human trafficking to thrive.”

Her office is demanding details on all of Advanced Micro Targeting workers since July 2023 — everything from identity documents to payroll records and internal emails. Richard von Glahn, director of the People Not Politicians campaign behind the referendum effort, calls the state attorney general’s actions “just the latest example of desperate politicians seeking to silence the voices of Missourians. It is outrageous and dangerous.”

    • A Utah judge is facing threats of impeachment — and threats of violence — for upholding a 2018 voter-approved ballot initiative that created an independent, nonpartisan commission for drawing congressional district maps. This fall the GOP-controlled legislature proposed a map that would once again solely favor Republican candidates. But Judge Gibson ruled their map failed to abide by Proposition 4 and instead selected a map drawn by grassroots groups that features one Democratic-leaning district and three Republican-leaning districts. (A map that Utah Senate President Stuart Adams insists is the “most partisan and thus the most gerrymandered map in the history of the state”.)

In response to Gibson’s ruling, Rep. Matt MacPherson announced that he was in the process of drawing up articles of impeachment against Gibson. Utah judges can be impeached if the state legislature determines that they have committed high crimes, misdemeanors, or other misconduct while in office. Lawmakers’ outrage soon spilled over into the public sphere, forcing the Utah Judiciary to make a rare public statement after Gibson and other court officials began receiving violent threats. 

    • A federal court judge has ruled against several new anti-initiative laws in Arkansas, repeatedly stressing concerns about free speech violations. U.S. District Judge Timothy Brooks has blocked state officials from enforcing six new laws that would have made it nearly impossible for Arkansans to use the ballot initiative process. These include an affidavit requirement that the judge called ‘draconian’, an 8th grade reading level requirement that’s already been weaponized against several initiative campaigns this year, and unnecessary burdens placed on voters trying to sign petitions. 

In his 77-page ruling, Brooks wrote, “The State does not have an interest in infringing First Amendment rights for the duration of this litigation merely because an election lurks in the distance.”

Following the success of citizen-led initiatives that have improved millions of lives with improved working conditions and benefits, expanded access to Medicaid, restored reproductive rights, and more, some lawmakers have only doubled down on their attempts to sabotage the People’s Tool. It’s all part of a wider authoritarian scheme to silence voters’ voices and undermine our democracy. 

But state-based advocates are fighting back. Already, groups in Missouri, Montana, and Nebraska have launched citizen-led initiative campaigns to shore up their right to the ballot measure process. And no matter what authoritarian tactics may crop up, BISC remains committed to defending direct democracy not just as a critical means of collaborative governance but as a tool for re-imagining what American democracy can and should be.

Defending Direct Democracy

Arkansas

The Fight: A unanimous opinion from the Arkansas Supreme Court has granted legislators the power to overturn or amend citizen-initiated constitutional amendments.  

Why It Matters: The ruling not only upends 74 years of legal precedent, but overrules the voices of voters and the very spirit of direct democracy. Notably, the legislature already had the power to overturn or amend a voter-approved statute with two-thirds support in each chamber. So while citizens have to jump through even higher hoops for an initiated amendment versus a statute, legislators must only meet the exact same bar to override either. Arkansans already face one of the most challenging ballot initiative qualification processes in the country, a fact that the legislature only double-down on in 2025 with a slate of new restrictions (some of which have been at least temporarily blocked in court — though state officials quickly appealed). Bill Kopsky with Protect AR Rights, a group pursuing an initiative to defend direct democracy in the state, says that, “The Legislature is wanting to make the process so confusing and make people so pessimistic that people just abandon it and give away their power. Their whole thing is trying to strip the people of their power, and the easiest way to do that is to get people to give up on it themselves.” League of Women Voters of Arkansas with another campaign pursuing a pro-direct democracy amendment, Save AR Democracy, released a statement saying, “Protecting the direct democracy process from interference by politicians is more important than ever.” Both campaigns’ proposals include language that would explicitly bar the legislature from amending voter-approved constitutional amendments. 

Missouri

The Fight: People Not Politicians Missouri have submitted more than 305,000 petition signatures for their referendum challenging the legislature’s gerrymandered redistricting map — nearly triple the amount required to qualify. However, Missouri Secretary of State Denny Hoskins is still refusing to count or validate any of the signatures collected before Gov. Kehoe officially signed the map into law in mid-October. Advocates took him to court, but a circuit court judge says he won’t make his decision until it’s determined whether People Not Politicians has enough post-October 14 signatures to qualify and render the whole case ‘moot’.

Why It Matters: After the legislature passed the gerrymandered map, People Not Politicians immediately set to work and in a matter of weeks collected 103,000 petition signatures for their referendum. With Hoskins’ refusal to count those signatures, the voices of those 103,000 Missourians are being silenced in what will surely prove to be yet another failed tactic by the State to block the powerful, citizen-led referendum effort. People Not Politicians executive director Richard von Glahn argues that, “The referendum process is about Missourians’ voices being heard, and we shouldn’t have a state official seeking to silence those voices arbitrarily.”

In Case You Missed It

Winning With Equity: Meet BISC’s Updated Declaration of Equity & Accountability Toolkit: BISC is excited to share the newly updated Declaration of Equity & Accountability Toolkit: a resource designed to help coalitions run ballot measure campaigns that reflect their values of equity, inclusion, and accountability from start to finish.

BISC’s New Podcast: Direct Democracy Diaries: The entire first season of our podcast is LIVE! Hosted by BISC’s Executive Director Chris Melody Fields Figueredo and Director of Strategic Communications Caroline Sánchez-Avakian, this show spotlights the inspiring stories of activists, organizers, and campaign leaders from across the country and their tenacious efforts to turn grassroots momentum into lasting policy change. This show touches on everything from fighting for reproductive rights via the ballot, to pushing back on authoritarianism through the power of community organizing, to the breakthrough narratives that bridge cultural divides.

BISC’s Resource Library: Our Partner Portal Resource Library houses ballot measure information ranging from campaign tools, templates, and past campaign materials (Values, MOUS, RFPs, etc.) —  to campaign debriefs and memos highlighting best practices. This library is a unique resource that can help campaigns and organizations build strategies and operationalize racial equity. To request access to the library, please email [email protected]