How to Put a Citizen Initiative on Your State's Ballot

A few days after the 2016 election, a young woman in Michigan named Katie Fahey posted something on Facebook that sounded like the kind of thing people post and forget. She wanted to take on gerrymandering, and she asked whether anyone wanted to help. She was not a lawyer, a legislator or a consultant. The post found people anyway, and the people found each other, and the group they formed, Voters Not Politicians, went on to draft a constitutional amendment, defend it in front of the Michigan Supreme Court and collect hundreds of thousands of signatures, largely with volunteers carrying clipboards to farmers' markets, football games and church parking lots. In November 2018 Michigan voters approved Proposal 2 by a wide margin, taking the drawing of legislative and congressional maps away from the legislature and handing it to a citizens' commission. The detail worth keeping in your pocket is that the amendment was almost knocked off the ballot before anyone voted on it. Getting the words right turned out to matter as much as getting the signatures.

In short: About half the states let citizens put a law or constitutional amendment directly on the ballot, and the process runs on three things: careful drafting, valid signatures gathered under strict rules, and a legal review that can kill a measure on a technicality. Michigan's 2018 redistricting amendment shows that volunteers can do it, and that the hardest fights often happen in court before Election Day.

The states where the people can write the law

The citizen initiative is a Progressive Era invention, and it was built on suspicion. At the turn of the twentieth century, reformers looked at legislatures they believed were owned by railroads and timber companies and decided voters needed a way around them. South Dakota adopted the initiative and referendum in 1898, Oregon put it to heavy use soon after, and a wave of mostly Western states followed. That history explains the map today. The process is common west of the Mississippi and rare in the East and South, where it never took hold.

Roughly half the states have some form of statewide initiative or popular referendum. The forms differ, and the differences decide what you can do:

1. Constitutional initiatives let citizens amend the state constitution directly. Fewer states allow this, and it is the tool reformers reach for when they want a change the legislature cannot quietly undo.
2. Statutory initiatives create an ordinary law. In some states the legislature can amend or repeal it soon after, sometimes with a simple majority.
3. Direct versus indirect. In a direct system, a measure with enough valid signatures goes straight to voters. In an indirect system, it goes first to the legislature, which can pass it, ignore it or offer a competing version; only then does it reach the ballot.
4. Veto referendums let citizens collect signatures to put a law the legislature just passed in front of voters for repeal.

If your state is not on the list, there is still local work. Many cities and counties have their own initiative processes, and charter cities in particular often allow them even when the state does not. Missouri voters showed in 2026 how far a referendum can reach when they repealed the congressional map the legislature drew in 2025.

How Michigan's volunteers built Proposal 2

The Michigan story is useful because it was not a ballot measure bought from a signature firm. Voters Not Politicians held public town halls across the state to ask people what a fair map process should look like before they wrote a word of legal text. That was slow, and it was deliberate. A measure people helped design is one they will stand outside a grocery store in February to collect signatures for.

The finished amendment created a thirteen-member Independent Citizens Redistricting Commission: four Democrats, four Republicans and five people affiliated with neither party, chosen from applicants by a process that included random selection. Maps needed support across those groups to pass. Legislators, their staff, lobbyists and party officials were barred from serving.

Then came the lawsuit. Opponents argued that the amendment changed so much of the state constitution that it was not an amendment at all but a general revision, which in Michigan requires a constitutional convention. The state Supreme Court rejected that argument in a closely divided decision in 2018, and the measure stayed on the ballot. Voters approved it, and the commission drew Michigan's maps for the first time after the 2020 census.

Whatever you think of the commission's maps, which drew criticism from several directions, the process proved something. A group that began with a social media post wrote a constitutional amendment, survived a legal challenge and won.

Drafting: the part that sinks most campaigns

Most failed initiatives do not lose at the polls. They lose earlier, because of the text. Courts and state officials review measures against rules that vary by state, and a single drafting error can end a campaign after months of work.

The rules you will meet most often:

1. Single-subject rules. Many states require a measure to deal with one subject. Courts read "one subject" differently, and a measure that bundles a tax change with an unrelated reform is at risk.
2. Amendment versus revision. As Michigan showed, some constitutions limit how much an initiative can change at once.
3. Ballot titles and summaries. In many states an official, often the attorney general or secretary of state, writes the short title and summary that voters will actually read. Those words can be challenged, and campaigns fight over them because they shape the vote.
4. Fiscal notes. Some states attach an official estimate of cost to the ballot. Plan for how yours will read.
5. Pre-circulation review. Several states require the petition form itself to be approved before a single signature is collected. Collect on an unapproved form and the signatures may be worthless.

The honest advice is to hire, borrow or recruit a lawyer who has done ballot measures in your state before you finalize anything. State bar associations, law school clinics and allied organizations sometimes help. Draft, then ask hostile readers to attack the text the way opponents' lawyers will.

Signatures: the arithmetic and the rules

Every initiative state sets a signature threshold, usually a percentage of votes cast in the last election for governor or another statewide office. In Michigan, a constitutional amendment needs signatures equal to 10 percent of the last vote for governor, and a statutory initiative needs 8 percent. Because the threshold is tied to turnout, it moves after every election.

The raw number is only the start. Here is how the work actually goes:

1. Find your real target. Officials reject signatures from people who are not registered, who signed twice, whose address does not match, or whose handwriting cannot be read. Campaigns routinely aim for far more than the legal minimum to cover that loss. Ask experienced organizers in your state what margin they use.
2. Check the distribution rule. Some states require signatures from across the state, not just from one big city. Ohio, for example, requires a share of signatures from at least half of its 88 counties. Map your volunteers against that rule early.
3. Know the deadline and the window. Some states limit how long a petition can circulate; others tie the deadline to a fixed number of days before the election. Signatures that arrive late are not counted.
4. Train circulators. Many states require circulators to sign an affidavit, and some require them to be residents or registered voters, though courts have struck down several such limits. Every sheet must be filled out correctly, and one bad affidavit can void a page.
5. Count and verify yourself. Run your own checks against the voter file as sheets come in. You want to know you are short in March, not in July.
6. Paid versus volunteer. The Supreme Court held in Meyer v. Grant in 1988 that states cannot ban paying circulators, and many campaigns now mix paid and volunteer work. Volunteers cost less and build lasting organizations, but paid crews can reach a number on deadline. States can regulate paid circulation, so check the reporting rules.

Officials typically verify signatures by checking them against registration records, sometimes all of them and sometimes a random sample. Expect challenges from opponents, who are entitled in many states to examine your petitions.

The other side's case, and the legislatures pushing back

There is a serious argument against government by initiative, and progressives should hear it out. Ballot measures are blunt. Voters face a yes or no on text they did not write and could not amend. Complex budget questions get reduced to slogans, and well-funded interests can put measures on the ballot as easily as volunteers can. California's long ballots and its history of locking spending formulas into law are the standard exhibit. Representative government, the argument goes, exists so that trade-offs get worked out in committee rather than in a thirty-second ad.

That critique deserves a real answer, and here is ours, offered as opinion. The initiative is a check, not a replacement. It works best on exactly the questions where legislators have a conflict of interest: how districts are drawn, how elections run, how lawmakers are paid and how money moves through campaigns. A legislature will rarely give up its own power to draw its own maps. Michigan's voters had no other door.

Legislatures in several states have answered successful measures by trying to make the next one harder. Ohio's legislature put Issue 1 on an August 2023 ballot asking voters to raise the vote needed to pass constitutional amendments to 60 percent; voters rejected it. Other states have added new distribution requirements, shorter windows, tougher rules for circulators or a higher threshold for passage. Some changes were upheld and some were struck down. If your state is debating one, it is worth showing up, because rules about the process decide every fight that follows.

It is also fair to say that progressives have used the initiative to win things the legislatures would not give them: minimum wage increases, Medicaid expansion in several conservative states, and abortion rights measures after 2022. Some of those wins passed in states that also elected Republicans. That is the strongest case for the tool. It lets voters split their tickets on issues, and they do.

Money, disclosure and the campaign after you qualify

Qualifying for the ballot feels like the finish line. It is the halfway mark. Once a measure is certified, a second campaign begins, and it looks much more like a candidate race: fundraising, advertising, endorsements, debates and a field program aimed at voters who have never heard of the issue.

Ballot measure committees usually have to register with the state and report who gives them money and how they spend it. The rules differ, but most states require some disclosure of contributions above a set amount, and many require the top donors to be named on advertising. A group of volunteers needs a treasurer who understands those rules from the first donation, not the first audit. Late or sloppy reports become news stories, and opponents use them.

Contribution limits rarely apply in the same way they do for candidates, because courts have generally treated spending on ballot measures differently from gifts to candidates. That cuts both ways. A citizen campaign can accept large gifts from allies, but so can the opposition, and well-funded opponents sometimes spend many times what the sponsors raise. Michigan's sponsors had to answer an organized legal challenge before a single ballot was cast, and organized opposition usually brings money with it.

Three habits help a volunteer campaign hold its ground:

1. Keep the coalition broad. Measures that pass with support across parties are harder to paint as one side's project. Voters Not Politicians recruited volunteers who were Republicans, Democrats and neither.
2. Say what the measure does in one sentence. The opposition will describe it for you if you do not.
3. Bring the signers back. Every person who signed a petition is a likely voter for the measure. Campaigns that keep those names, with permission, and contact them again in the fall start with a head start.

After the vote

Winning is not the end. Courts hear challenges to measures that pass, and legislatures in some states can change a statutory initiative. Implementation matters most. Michigan's commission had to be recruited, funded and staffed, and the amendment's authors stayed involved to defend it. Plan for the year after the election as carefully as the year before it: who will watch the rulemaking, who will testify when the legislature takes up implementing laws, and who will raise money for the inevitable litigation.

A measure that passes because a coalition built it will usually have defenders. A measure that passes because a single donor bought it may find it has none.

What you can do

The most useful first step is learning your own state's rules, then finding the people who already know them.

1. Confirm your registration and your state's deadlines at our state-by-state voting guide, since many petitions only count signatures from registered voters and circulators sometimes must be registered too.
2. Look up your state legislators with the representative finder and ask them, in writing, where they stand on any bill that would change the initiative process. Their answers become part of the record.
3. Find the groups doing this work near you through our directory of nonprofits, under voting and civil rights. Many need volunteers to collect and check signatures.
4. Follow the fights over maps and ballot access on the voting rights and redistricting page, where news about measures in other states will help you plan yours.
5. Before your group writes anything, read three or four measures that passed in your state and one that was thrown off the ballot. The difference between them is the course you need.

Katie Fahey's post started with a question, not a plan. The plan came from the people who answered.