WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT THE BALLOT MEASURE LANDSCAPE RIGHT NOW
December 2025
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.”
2026 Ballot Measure Landscape
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.
2026 Ballot Measure Trends: What’s Next?
Even as votes continue to be tallied Wednesday morning, BISC is closely tracking emerging trends that could impact next year’s election — both for better and for worse.
The success of California’s Prop. 50 could continue to weigh heavily on voters’ minds as advocates in Missouri attempt to repeal the state’s legislature’s gerrymandered map. But the fight extends well beyond redistricting, with other democracy-related measures showing a major divide between pro-voter expansion (same-day registration, rights restoration) and voting restriction (photo ID, citizenship proof). BISC’s role here is to defend the principle that direct democracy is a critical component of democracy itself. We must stay focused on the larger question: how can we ensure that every community has the power and the tools to shape a democracy that truly works for all of us?
A number of legislatively-referred measures on the 2026 ballot reflect a growing trend toward limiting the people’s initiative power, like increasing thresholds to pass measures, adding procedural hurdles like single-subject requirements, and more. While legislatures continue to undermine the will of the people, there is growing backlash from communities across the country against those attacks. There is a continued trend toward strengthening the initiative process and imposing supermajority requirements on legislative interference.
The reproductive rights measures scheduled for 2026 underscore the tension between widespread public support for reproductive freedom and governmental efforts to stifle bodily autonomy. One key example is in Missouri, where the legislature has referred a deceptive measure that would essentially overturn 2024’s voter-approved Amendment 3 with a near-total ban on abortion plus a ban on gender-affirming care for minors. And in Idaho, reproductive health advocates are fighting for a citizen-led initiative to restore reproductive freedom and void the state’s draconian anti-abortion laws.
As of December 2, 56 measures have already been certified for the 2026 ballot, while 249 initiative campaigns are circulating petitions, and 92 measures have been filed. At BISC, there is no such thing as an “off year” when it comes to elections. 2025 proves that sentiment, and it is clear that 2026 is already shaping up to be one for the history books. Amid rising authoritarianism, direct democracy is an increasingly vital tool for our liberation, and BISC continues to defend the will of the people in order to strengthen our democracy, center communities, and build, wield, and transform power.
Ballot Measure Progress
Progressive policies are passing at the ballot in Red, Blue, and Purple states such as Florida, Arizona, Missouri, and Ohio. Through the power of direct democracy, the people are transforming power, advancing racial equity, and galvanizing a new progressive base.
Through the power of direct democracy, citizens have passed policies such as:
- Minimum wage increases
- Protecting and expanding reproductive freedoms
- Decriminalization of marijuana
- Paid Family Leave
- Medicaid expansion
- Taxing the wealthy
- Restoration of voting rights
- Reparations
- Transforming public safety
Attacks on the Ballot Measure Process
In 2017, BISC monitored just 33 bills relating to the ballot measure process. Compare that to 2023 legislative sessions in which 165 bills were introduced in 39 states that would impact the ballot initiative process, 76 of which sought to restrict or undermine the process.
As of November 30, BISC has tracked 295 bills across 43 states and Washington D.C. from 2025 legislative seasons related to direct democracy. At least 156 of these have featured some level of attack on the People’s Tool. We continue to monitor 22 active bills across six states and Washington D.C. related to direct democracy (at least nine of which feature some level of attack). 53 bills have already passed in state houses and three others have been vetoed by governors.
What does an attack on direct democracy look like?
Some tactics used by lawmakers who are attempting to weaken the ballot initiative process include:
- Proposing legislation to make the ballot process harder to access
- Bringing forth legal challenges against initiatives that have been already been approved by voters
- Blocking the implementation of ballot measures that have already passed
Why are the attacks happening?
Efforts to undermine and weaken ballot measures have been increasing since the 2016 election in response to progressive wins and people-powered democracy at the ballot box.
In many states, some politicians and wealthy special interests are trying to make it harder for voters to propose and pass ballot initiatives under the cover of so-called “reforms.” These attacks have escalated and have become more nuanced, sophisticated, and would have deeper impacts on the initiative process. These restrictive measures take a variety of forms, but they all serve the same function: to undermine the will of the people and diminish their decision-making power. BISC and our partners are fighting back against these attacks and spearheading the movement to #DefendDirectDemocracy.
As we continue to face rising restrictions on voting rights, reproductive freedoms, and civil liberties, it is more important than ever to protect our freedom to shape the laws that govern us — especially through ballot initiatives. Together, we can fight against the anti-democracy initiatives that threaten our livelihoods and work to build a democracy rooted in equity and justice, where all people are treated with dignity and thrive.
For more information on our analysis or to schedule an interview with one of our policy experts, please email [email protected].