Emergency ballot battles rage across the US

Education, abortion, and more are at stake

Welcome to a Saturday edition of Progress Report.

The New York Mets have won nine games in a row. There are 58 days left until the presidential election. Donald Trump announced that “when” he wins the election, he will round up the failed cheaters and haters and toss them in prison. Crazy times all around.

With so much news happening, I want to dedicate this edition of the newsletter to some of the fiercest yet under-exposed battles raging across the country right now. I’ll be back on Sunday with a second newsletter chock full of other key news, for premium subscribers.

Note: To make this work as accessible as possible, I’ve lowered the price for a paid subscription back down to Substack’s $5 minimum. If you can’t afford that right now, please email me and I’ll put you on the list for free. Every paid subscription makes it easier for me to comp one while becoming sustainable.

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Missouri: A county judge in Missouri ruled on Friday night that a reproductive rights amendment did not meet requirements to go before voters, putting one of the nation’s most prominent pro-choice initiatives in limbo days before the deadline to finalize the ballot.

The judge said that the amendment, which specifically guarantees the right to an abortion up until fetal viability, violated state law because organizers did not inform petition signers that it would repeal Missouri’s near-total abortion ban. If that sounds like a desperate reach by someone who simply wanted to find a way to toss an abortion amendment, well, the judge who wrote the decision is named Christopher Limbaugh, and yes, he is the cousin of the late right-wing radio bloviator Rush Limbaugh.

This hasn’t been remarked upon in national news beyond a single sentence in the New York Times, but I’d say it’s pretty notable, given that 380,000 people signed petitions in support of the amendment and the judge seems to share his cousin’s political convictions. The Limbaugh family is actually something of a conservative political dynasty in Missouri, and Christopher is only the latest state judge in the family.

Limbaugh previously served as general counsel to Gov. Mike Parson, who appointed him to the bench in 2021 after circumventing the normal and more transparent selection process. A year later, Parson signed the state’s near-total abortion ban into law and has since touted the dearth of abortions performed in the state. That same year, Limbaugh was floated as a GOP candidate for attorney general, but did not run. Parson made him a circuit judge just last month.

Given the gravity of the issue, Limbaugh held off on immediately tossing the amendment from the ballot, giving Missourians for Constitutional Freedom, the group behind the proposal, until Tuesday to appeal.

Utah: We are now in the thick of Emergency Lawsuit to Block Ballot Measure season, and in Utah, the entire system is on the line.

Attorneys for several organizations filed a lawsuit on Thursday seeking to toss a ballot measure that would grant lawmakers the power to repeal citizen-passed amendments. The lawsuit alleges that the ballot description of the measure is grievously misleading, as it purports to “strengthen” the initiative process while actually doing the exact opposite.

The proposed measure, and its misleading language, is the sort of gross scheme you see in solid red states with closed primaries, which tend to be run by lawmakers who are far more extreme than a majority of voters.

This saga began in July, when the Utah Supreme Court ruled that a GOP gerrymander violated a fair redistricting amendment approved by voters in 2018. Republican lawmakers threw a fit and rushed back to the capital, where they voted to put their misleading amendment on the November ballot. The measure would also ban foreign entities from taking sides or funding ballot measures in Utah, a sweetener for paranoids that Republicans hope drags the initiative over the line.

Idaho: Attorney General Raul Labrador took the L on Thursday, as yet another judge denied his latest attempt to block a ballot initiative that would implement open primaries.

Idaho Republicans have worked tirelessly and largely fruitlessly to block a series of progressive and good government initiatives in recent years, motivated by both ideology (they hate Medicaid expansion) and self-interest. Labrador is a far-right extremist who wants to run for governor, so the prospect of open primaries and their tendency to help more moderate GOP candidates presents a legitimate threat.

Nebraska: The state Supreme Court has expedited yet another attempt to foil public school advocates, agreeing to bypass lower courts and hear the latest lawsuit against an initiative that would repeal school privatization policy. Brief oral arguments are scheduled for Tuesday, at which point the Nebraska high court will decide once and for all whether voters are allowed a say over their state’s education system.

I’m actually working on a longer piece about the larger battle over school privatization in Nebraska, which simmered for years before exploding in 2023, so here’s the skinny:

This spring, after nearly a decade of trying, Nebraska Republicans, their caucus infused with an influx of Betsy DeVos-funded lawmakers, finally enacted a private school voucher program. It passed by the barest of margins on the last day of the legislative session, thwarting the will of voters who had anticipated voting on subsidies for private schools in November. But instead of wallowing, teachers, parents, and activists got to work on a second initiative to repeal the new program before it expands, and overcame public confusion and disaffection to collect the requisite signatures for qualification.

They face the combined force of right-wing zealotry and the bottomless pockets of conservative power players. Legislators have told me that colleagues who know that their constituents oppose vouchers still found it impossible to vote against the program, lest they risk a sudden primary challenge funded by DeVos, the Ricketts family, or the ultra-conservative Peed family (yes, that is their real surname).

The beauty of the ballot initiative is that lawmakers don’t have to stake out any position or take any politically risky vote.

The activists behind the repeal initiative collected more than 100,000 signed petitions in 90 days last year for an initiative aimed at repealing a prior proto-vouchers law, which gave enormous tax breaks to Nebraskans who donated money to private schools to create “opportunity scholarships.”

The legislature responded by dropping the pretense and voting to just create a full-on voucher program. That sent the activists scrambling to gather over 68,000 signed petitions in 67 days for a new initiative that replaces the defunct original.

A preponderance of initiative petition signatures were gathered from rural counties, where opportunities to collect large batches of them at once are few and far between. The prospect of diverting state funding to private schools represents an existential crisis for those communities: Nebraska already ranks near the bottom in public school funding nationwide, and more than half of the state’s counties don’t even have private schools, rendering vouchers nothing more than a parasite in those places.

The program will start out by funneling $10 million to private schools, but as other states have shown, vouchers quickly consume billions of dollars, depriving public schools of funding and enriching private schools that do not have to accept ESL, special needs, or even students who are not the “correct” religious affiliation.

Both school privatization laws were sponsored by Sen. Lu Ann Linehan, whose daughter works for DeVos’s American Federation for Children. She tried to have the new initiative tossed earlier this summer, but to no avail. This latest lawsuit was filed on behalf of the parent of a student who receives an opportunity scholarship, but revolves around a vague legal technicality concerning how the financial outlay for the voucher program is categorized.

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