Progressives cheered last year when voters in several red states approved left-leaning ballot initiatives.
Floridians voted to raise the minimum wage to $15. South Dakotans voted to legalize medical and recreational pot. Missourians voted to expand Medicaid to adults who earn under $18,000 a year. Arizonans voted to tax the rich to fund public schools.
But this year, Republican lawmakers in all those states â plus Idaho, Oklahoma, Utah and others â are trying to undermine such voter-approved measures and to make it harder for future ballot initiatives to pass. At stake is the power to make state laws.
Attacks on the initiative process have escalated, said Matthew Schweich, deputy director of state campaigns for the Marijuana Policy Project, a Washington, D.C.-based advocacy group that in 2020 backed successful cannabis legalization campaigns in Montana and South Dakota.