South Dakota, Oregon and the Progressive Invention of the Ballot Initiative

In November 1898, the voters of South Dakota, a state not yet ten years old, approved an amendment to their constitution that let ordinary citizens write laws themselves. If enough voters signed a petition, a proposed law would go on the ballot, and if a majority approved it, it would take effect whether the legislature liked it or not. Voters could also petition to force a law the legislature had passed onto the ballot for a yes-or-no vote. No state had done this before. The idea came from Switzerland, where cantons had long let citizens propose and veto laws, and it reached the Dakota prairie through a coalition of Populist farmers, labor activists and a Catholic priest named Robert Haire, who campaigned for it with missionary zeal. Four years later, Oregon adopted its own version, and a soft-spoken reformer there named William U'Ren turned it into the most ambitious experiment in direct democracy the country had ever seen. Almost every state ballot you have looked at in recent years, with its questions about minimum wages, abortion rights, Medicaid or redistricting, descends from those two votes.

In short: The citizen initiative was invented by Populists and Progressives who believed legislatures had been bought by railroads and banks. South Dakota adopted it first in 1898, and Oregon made it famous after 1902. Today about half the states have some version, and it has become one of the main ways voters pass measures their legislatures will not, which is exactly why some legislatures are working to make it harder.

Why reformers wanted to go around legislatures

To the reformers of the 1890s, the problem was simple. State legislatures chose United States senators, set railroad rates, chartered corporations and wrote tax laws, and in state after state, they appeared to be owned by the companies they were supposed to regulate. Bribery was common. Party machines picked candidates. A farmer or worker who wanted change could vote, but the choice was between candidates who had already been chosen by people he did not trust.

The initiative and referendum were meant to break that circuit. If a legislature would not act, voters could act on their own. If a legislature passed something that served a corporation at the public's expense, voters could veto it. The People's Party platform of 1892 had endorsed the idea. Labor organizations and single-tax reformers, who followed the economist Henry George, pushed for it in the cities.

The Oregon System

Oregon's version passed in 1902, when voters approved a constitutional amendment for the initiative and referendum by a lopsided margin. Its chief strategist was William S. U'Ren, a former blacksmith who had become a lawyer and devoted himself to the cause through an organization called the Direct Legislation League.

U'Ren was a patient coalition builder rather than a fiery orator. He worked with Republicans and Democrats, farmers and unions, and he was willing to trade support with whoever could help. And once the initiative was in place, he used it to build more democracy on top of it. In 1904, Oregon voters used the initiative to create a direct primary, taking nominations away from party conventions. They also created a system, known as Statement No. 1, under which legislative candidates pledged to vote for whichever candidate for the U.S. Senate won the popular vote, an end run around the rule that legislatures chose senators. In 1908 voters added the power to recall elected officials. In 1912, after several defeats, Oregon men approved women's suffrage by initiative.

The whole package became known as the Oregon System, and reformers across the West copied it. Most of the states that adopted the initiative did so between 1898 and the end of the First World War, and the great majority were west of the Mississippi. That geography still holds; the initiative is mainly a western and midwestern tool.

How it works today, step by step

The details vary a great deal from state to state, but the basic process looks like this.

1. Pick the type. In some states, an initiative can propose a statute, an ordinary law the legislature can later amend. In others, it can propose an amendment to the state constitution, which the legislature cannot change on its own. Some states allow both. A popular referendum, also called a veto referendum, lets citizens challenge a law the legislature just passed.

1. Direct or indirect. In a direct initiative, a measure with enough signatures goes straight to the ballot. In an indirect initiative, it goes first to the legislature, which can pass it, and only reaches the ballot if lawmakers refuse.

1. Draft and file. Sponsors write the text and file it with a state official, often the secretary of state. Many states have the attorney general or another official write a ballot title and summary, and these summaries are frequently fought over in court, because how a question is described can decide how people vote on it.

1. Gather signatures. Sponsors need a number of valid signatures from registered voters, usually set as a percentage of the votes cast in the most recent election for governor. Many states also require that signatures come from across the state, not just from the big cities.

1. Verification. Election officials check signatures, often by sampling. Measures can be knocked off the ballot if too many are invalid.

1. Legal review. Many states require that a measure address a single subject. Opponents often sue on that basis or on others before the vote.

1. Election. Most measures need a simple majority. Some states require more for constitutional amendments.

1. After the vote. Here is where states differ in ways most voters never notice. In some states, the legislature can amend or repeal a voter-approved statute right away by an ordinary vote. In others, it must wait, or needs a supermajority.

Each of those steps is a place where a measure can live or die. Signature thresholds, deadlines, summaries and single-subject rules are not neutral technicalities. They decide how hard it is for ordinary people to get a question in front of the public.

What voters have used it for lately

In the past decade, the initiative has been one of the most effective tools progressives have had in states where they do not control the legislature.

Voters have used it to expand Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act when legislatures refused. Maine did it in 2017; Idaho, Nebraska and Utah followed in 2018; Missouri and Oklahoma in 2020; and South Dakota in 2022. Hundreds of thousands of people gained health coverage as a result.

They have raised the minimum wage repeatedly. In 2020, Florida voters approved a measure raising the state's minimum wage in steps to fifteen dollars an hour by 2026, in a year when the same voters chose Donald Trump for president. Nebraska voters approved a similar step-up in 2022. Our minimum wage tracker shows how many current state wage floors trace back to ballot measures.

They have changed how districts are drawn. In 2018, Michigan voters approved a citizen redistricting commission through a campaign that began with a single social media post and grew into a statewide volunteer effort. And since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022, voters in several states, starting with Kansas that August, have used ballot measures to protect abortion rights, often in states that lean Republican.

The legislatures push back

The initiative's success has produced a counterattack, and a fair account should note that it comes from more than one direction.

Legislators have repealed or rewritten measures after voters approved them. South Dakota, the very first initiative state, offers the sharpest example. In 2016 its voters approved an ethics and campaign finance law. Early in 2017, the legislature repealed it, using an emergency procedure that prevented voters from forcing a referendum on the repeal. In Utah, after voters approved an independent redistricting commission in 2018, the legislature replaced it in 2020 with a weaker advisory version; the Utah Supreme Court later ruled that lawmakers' power to change voter-approved government reforms has limits. In Florida, after voters restored voting rights to most people with past felony convictions in 2018, the legislature required them first to pay off all fines and fees connected to their sentences.

Other states have tried to raise the bar for the next measure. In 2023, Ohio's legislature put a question on an August ballot that would have required a sixty percent supermajority for constitutional amendments. Voters rejected it, and that November approved an amendment protecting abortion rights with a simple majority.

Missouri shows how the back-and-forth can play out over a few years. In 2018, Missouri voters approved a measure called Clean Missouri, which tightened lobbying and campaign finance rules and created a nonpartisan state demographer to draw legislative maps. In 2020, the legislature placed its own amendment on the ballot that undid most of the redistricting changes, and voters, many of them reading a summary that led with lobbying limits, approved it. Nothing was illegal about that. It is a reminder that the initiative is not a single victory but a contest that continues after election day.

The tool closer to home

Statewide measures get the headlines, but the initiative also lives at the local level, and that is where many readers can use it most directly.

Many cities and counties have their own initiative and referendum powers, written into their charters, including in some states that have no statewide process. Local measures have been used to raise city minimum wages, create paid sick leave requirements, set up public financing for local campaigns, change how city councils are elected, fund parks and libraries, and approve or reject development projects. The rules are often less demanding than statewide ones, with lower signature counts, which means a few dozen committed volunteers can sometimes put a question before their neighbours.

Local measures also show the tool's limits in sharp relief. In many states, legislatures have passed preemption laws that bar cities from setting their own minimum wages, paid leave rules or other labor standards. A city can pass a measure only to discover that the state has already forbidden what it tried to do. Knowing whether your state preempts local action is the first step before any local campaign.

There is a quieter lesson here about the original reformers. U'Ren and the Populists did not imagine the initiative as a way for occasional big campaigns to bypass government. They imagined a citizenry that would routinely watch its representatives and step in when they failed. That kind of attention is easier to sustain in a city than a state, and it is often where people learn the skills, from writing ballot language to organizing signature shifts, that statewide campaigns later depend on.

The honest case against direct democracy

Opposition to the initiative is not only cynical. There are serious arguments, and some progressives share them.

Money is the first. Gathering hundreds of thousands of signatures usually requires paid circulators, and the Supreme Court ruled in 1988, in Meyer v. Grant, that states cannot ban paying them. Well-funded interests can put measures on the ballot and run enormous campaigns. In California in 2020, app-based ride and delivery companies spent more than two hundred million dollars to pass Proposition 22, which kept their drivers classified as independent contractors rather than employees. That is a progressive's nightmare built with a progressive tool.

Complexity is the second. Some measures are long and technical, and voters have little time to study them. California's Proposition 13 in 1978, which capped property taxes, reshaped school and local government finance for decades in ways many voters could not have predicted.

The third is minority rights. A simple majority can vote to take rights away from an unpopular group. In 1994, California voters approved Proposition 187, which sought to deny public services to undocumented immigrants and was largely blocked by the courts. In 2008, California voters approved Proposition 8, which banned same-sex marriage until federal courts struck it down.

Here is my answer. Every one of those problems is real, and none of them is unique to the initiative. Money shapes legislatures too, often more quietly. Legislators also pass complicated laws whose effects they do not foresee. Legislatures have taken away minority rights many times, which is why constitutional courts exist for both kinds of law. The real question is whether, on balance, a state is better off when its voters have a way to act when their representatives will not. The record of the past decade, from Medicaid expansion to minimum wage increases passing in states that otherwise vote conservative, suggests the answer is yes, and that the tool lets people find common ground their parties cannot.

Progressives should also be honest about where they have misused it: measures drafted carelessly, budget mandates locked into constitutions that later boxed in progressive governments, and campaigns that treated a ballot win as the end rather than the beginning of the fight to implement it.

What you can do

• Find out what powers your state gives you. Our voting guide explains your state's ballot measure rules, signature deadlines and how to check what is on your next ballot.
• Sign carefully. Before you sign a petition, read the summary and ask who is paying the circulator. It is your right to know what you are putting on the ballot.
• Defend the process. Follow attempts to raise thresholds or override voter-approved laws on our democracy and the rule of law page.
• Track the map fights. Ballot measures are central to redistricting reform. Follow them on the voting rights and redistricting page.
• Volunteer for a campaign. Signature drives run on volunteers who stand outside libraries and farmers' markets. U'Ren's whole system started with a handful of them.