2024 sees more bills passed to make initiative processes easier

During the 2024 legislative sessions, 326 pieces of legislation related to direct democracy—ballot initiatives, referendums and recall petitions—were proposed. As of August 5, Ballotpedia reports, 33 bills and resolutions were enacted, close to the annual average of 34 enacted bills between 2018 and 2023.

Of the 33 enacted pieces of legislation, 10 were designed to make the initiative process more difficult, including four constitutional amendments requiring voter approval (two in Arizona, one in Colorado and one in North Dakota). This is above the average of seven such bills enacted annually between 2018 and 2023.

This year also saw the highest number of enacted bills designed to make the initiative process less difficult, with five such pieces of legislation. In comparison, 2023 had four such enacted bills, higher than the 2018-2023 average of two.

Summary of 2024

In 2024, 326 bills related to initiative, referendum and recall were introduced in state legislatures and 33 of the bills were enacted (10.12%), including the four ballot measures to be decided on Nov. 5, 2024.

Proposed Legislation: In 2024, 326 bills and resolutions related to ballot initiatives, referendums and recall petitions were introduced in 40 states. This number marks an increase from the annual average of 302 proposals between 2018 and 2023. Lawmakers approved 45 (11.7%) of the 385 pieces of legislation introduced in 2023, which was the year with the highest number of proposed bills related to direct democracy laws.

• Of the 40 states with proposed legislation, 21 had an initiative or referendum process. There were five states that had an initiative or referendum process that did not see any legislative proposals related to changing the state's process in 2024.
• 145 (44.7%) were introduced in the 23 states with Republican trifectas, 130 (39.9%) were introduced in the 17 states with Democratic trifectas, and 51 (15.6%) were introduced in the 10 states with divided governments.
• Missouri, which has an initiative and referendum process, saw the most introduced bills at 44; however, none of these bills were passed and enacted.

Enacted Legislation: 33 bills and resolutions were enacted in 2024 including the four ballot measures to be decided on Nov. 5, 2024. Utah had the most enacted pieces of legislation in 2024 with five bills enacted of the eight proposed.

Partisanship across parties

Partisanship: 16 of the 33 enacted bills (48.5%) received bipartisan backing, 14 (42.4%) were passed with Republican majorities and three (9%) with Democratic majorities. In 2024, Republicans had trifectas in 13 (50.0%) of the 26 states that provide for statewide initiative and referendum. Democrats had trifectas in 10 (38.5%), and three (11.5%) states had divided governments.

• Of the 10 bills to make the ballot initiative process more difficult, six were passed with Republican majorities, three were passed with Democratic majorities and one was passed with bipartisan support.
• Of the five bills passed to make the process less difficult, three received bipartisan support, one was passed with a Republican majority and one was passed with a Democratic majority.
• In 2023, John Matsusaka, Director of the Initiative & Referendum Institute, published an analysis of state constitutional amendments that increased the cost of proposing or approving ballot initiatives. He found that from 1960 to 2022, "proposals to restrict initiative and referendum rights were common throughout the period." His data indicates that there was a shift around 2000. Before 2000, about 50% of the amendments originated in Republican-controlled legislatures, while about 25% originated in Democratic-controlled legislatures and 25% originated in divided legislatures. After 2000, Republicans continued proposing constitutional amendments but the numbers fell for Democratic-controlled legislatures and divided legislatures.

Constitutional Amendments

Of the legislation enacted in 2024, four were constitutional amendments needing voter approval. From 2018 to 2023, there were 21 ballot measures related to the citizen-initiated or other ballot measure processes. Voters approved 11 (52.4%) and rejected 10 (47.6%) measures. Legislatures referred 17 (81.0%) of the measures, and the other four (19.0%) were citizen-initiated. The 2024 ballot measures would make the following constitutional changes:

• Arizona Proposition 134: Create a signature distribution requirement for citizen-initiated ballot measures based on state legislative districts;
• Arizona Proposition 136: Allow for challenges to a ballot initiative's constitutionality within at least 100 days of the election date, rather than typically after the election;
• Colorado Senate Concurrent Resolution 2: Change deadlines for filing initiative and referendum petition signatures, thereby removing one week from the total circulation time, in order to allow one extra week for the secretary of state to certify ballot order and content and election officials' deadline to transmit ballots;
• North Dakota Constitutional Measure 2: Establish a single-subject rule for initiatives; increase the signature requirement for constitutional initiatives; and require constitutional initiatives to be approved at two elections.

Ballotpedia provides comprehensive coverage of ballot measure legislation in 2024 here. Typically, more pieces of legislation are proposed and enacted during odd-numbered years, like 2023, than even-numbered years, like 2024. This is likely because many state legislative sessions are two years long, starting in the odd-numbered year, and more bills are introduced at the start of the two-year session.

This story was produced by Ballotpedia and reviewed and distributed by Stacker Media.