In 2024, direct democracy will be more consequential than ever

It could be a year of huge progressive wins

Welcome to a New Year’s Day edition of Progress Report.

Before we jump into 2024, I want to thank you all for navigating a complicated and exhausting 2023 with me. Your confidence, input, and encouragement have always fueled this work. Additional gratitude goes to our paid subscribers and donors — without you, Progress Report wouldn’t be around today. This is a labor of love, but I invest a lot of time, sweat, and savings, too.

Improving the newsletter is always one of my New Year’s Resolutions, and with 2024 poised to play a somewhat significant role in determining the future of human civilization, I’m working on a major action plan. It includes:

• Growing our original reporting

• Exposing more far-right plots and malfeasance, as we did so often with their education plans in 2023

• More involvement in campaigns to pressure Democrats as needed

• Shining the spotlight on more grassroots campaigns and candidates to direct more resources to their vital work

The north star has always been to maximize Progress Report’s impact in the real world, and that will be the case more than ever this year.

This is the second part of my preview of 2024. Instead of going multi-subject, this one is focused entirely on the consequential ballot initiatives that voters will likely face this coming year.

Please consider a subscribing and/or donating to keep Progress Report afloat and sustainable. Far-right extremists are financed by billionaires and corporations, who invest in conservative outlets, think tanks, and law firms to advance their interests. We rely on forward-thinking readers like you. Please help us fight the good fight.

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Asserting economic and social justice, including the right to organize the workplace

Brimming with new confidence and public support, labor unions will look to use the momentum gained from a year of wins at the picket line to score some big wins at the ballot box.

Perhaps the most audacious of the potential labor-linked initiatives is a proposed constitutional amendment in Arizona that would repeal the “right-to-work” clause in the state constitution. The law, which pits workers against one another and drains unions’ finances, has been in place since 1946, when powerful mine-owners wanted to stop worker organizing.

Arizona went on to become one of the foremost conservative-libertarian states in the country, but that’s been changing in recent years, especially since the #RedForEd wildcat teachers strike in 2018. A coalition of unions and pro-worker nonprofits filed the proposed “right-to-work” repeal this pst fall, and should it qualify, it will be one of the premier battles of the year.

The minimum wage rose in 22 states today, and most increases were the product of successful ballot initiatives (or in some cases, legislative attempts to stave off initiatives that would have called for even higher pay bumps).

This year, labor and allied groups will seek to qualify $15 minimum wage initiatives in Ohio and Oklahoma; the pursuit of a similar initiative in Michigan will depend on how the state Supreme Court rules in a lawsuit over how the GOP gutted a voter-approved increase in 2018.

The minimum wage reached $16 in California today, and come November, voters in the state will likely have the chance to weigh in on raising the wage to $18-an-hour. That would hardly be audacious; come April, fast food workers will make a minimum of $20-an-hour, while health care workers will start earning minimums of either $18, $20, or $23-an-hour, depending on where they work.

There is no state with a more acute housing crisis than California, in part because new affordable housing construction must be approved by residents. Article 34, a constitutional amendment approved by voters in 1950, was primarily the work of the real estate lobby, which ran an overtly racist campaign that appealed to people’s fears about neighborhood integration.

The amendment passed by a very slim margin, yet every effort to get it repealed has failed, and it’s still being used today to block affordable housing. Advocates are hoping to finally put together a coalition that can get it repealed next year.

In more conservative Nebraska, unions have several initiatives on the march, including one that would guarantee five days of paid leave from work and another that would repeal the warped school voucher program that gives people tax deductions for donating to private schools. The state teacher’s union is sponsoring that initiative, while the powerful teacher’s union in Clark County is planning to push an initiative in Nevada that would grant its members the right to strike.

Medical marijuana could also be on the ballot in Nebraska. Wild.

Two years after the Massachusetts Supreme Court blocked a misleading initiative that would have permanently misclassified gig workers as disposable independent contractors with few rights, the corporate front group financed by Uber, Lyft, and DoorDash is pouring millions into a second attempt. This time, they have to contend with a lawsuit from the state attorney general as well as a rival initiative that would guarantee drivers the right to organize.

On the subject of initiatives being pushed by wealthy front groups, up to six regressive amendments could wind up on the ballot in Washington State this year. Some would repeal progressive policies that were recently signed by Gov. Jay Inslee, including a capital gains tax, a carbon pricing system will pay for electric vehicles and other environmental initiatives, and a limit on police vehicle pursuits. They also want to explicitly ban local governments from imposing income taxes and institute a “parental rights” regime that would allow weird parents to review text books and opt their kids out of sex-ed.

The initiatives are sponsored by the head of the Washington GOP and being financed by a GOP mega-donor and investor named Brian Heywood, who said he fled California in 2010 because it was too liberal. He sure chose an interesting place to move.

Here in New York, voters will get to weigh in on an equal rights amendment that would prohibit discrimination against people who have been historically subject to such treatment, including LGBTQ+, Black, Hispanic, disabled people, immigrants, women, and pregnant people.

Battles over democracy using direct democracy

After multiple rejections by GOP Attorney General Dave Yost, activists in Ohio were cleared to begin collecting signatures for a constitutional amendment that would create an independent redistricting commission. If passed, the amendment would finally bring an end to a dozen years of extreme Republican gerrymanders that have all but turned Ohio into a single-party state in both the legislature and Congress.

Another independent redistricting amendment is being pursued in Nevada, though the politics of this one are a bit different. In a state where statewide elections are regularly decided by razor-thin margins, Democrats’ control of redistricting has ensured them dominance of the Congressional delegation and near-supermajorities in the legislature. The state Democratic Party has sued to stop the amendment on technical grounds, arguing that it’s invalid because it doesn’t create a funding source for the independent redistricting commission.

The biggest obstacle to success may be the organizers themselves; Fair Maps Nevada has tried this twice already, in 2020 and 2022, but raised almost no money and failed to make the ballot each time. On the other hand, a constitutional amendment to implement open primaries and ranked choice voting is already on the November ballot. Democrats don’t like this one, either, but it will likely be hard for them to bump off. Nevadans approved it in with 53% of the vote in 2022, and should it pass a second time, it will become the law of the land there.

Democrats took a different stance in Oregon, where the legislature voted to send a ranked choice vote amendment for state and federal offices to the ballot in November.

Ranked choice activists are hoping to qualify in Missouri, too, after they fell short of the needed petition signatures in 2022. There are actually multiple versions of the ranked choice vote amendment being considered, each of which would have a different number of candidates permitted in a general election.

In Arizona, South Dakota, and Montana, activists are working to qualify amendments to create open primaries, which would see candidates from all parties compete in one primary and send the top vote-getters to a general election. Montana advocates want to create a top-four general election, while South Dakota and Arizona would have one head-to-head matchup.

The effort in Arizona faces several significant roadblock. One proposed amendment would outlaw ranked choice voting, and an already-qualified amendment would mandate partisan primaries in most elections. Republicans have been pushing these kinds of laws for the past few cycles, as it’s been proven repeatedly that when their candidates run without the GOP label, their ideas tend to sink them. Ohio Republicans did this with their state Supreme Court elections in 2022 while Florida will try to do the same for school board elections next November.

Connecticut has been working to liberalize its relatively restrictive voting laws since the pandemic. Over the summer, Gov. Ned Lamont signed a state-level Voting Rights Act that restored many of the protections gutted by the Supreme Court, and next fall, voters will have a chance to finalize a constitutional amendment that guarantees no-excuse absentee voting.

Abortion-related amendments — and dirty far-right tricks — coming to a town near you

When voters in Ohio overwhelmingly approved a constitutional amendment to guarantee reproductive rights in the state, they also sent a message to people across the country. To pro-choice activists, the victory was a bright green light to proceed with their own ballot initiatives, even in red states. To Republican officials and conservatives, the message was that they’d have to try harder to prevent people from voting to protect their personal liberties.

Both sides took their respective messages to heart, setting the stage for what is likely to be a year of political combat over a record number of abortion-related measures.

Constitutional amendments codifying the existing right to reproductive freedom is already on next year’s ballot in both New York and Maryland, where they are almost guaranteed to pass.

Abortion is currently legal in both Colorado and Montana thanks to voters’ strong rejection of anti-choice ballot measures over the past few years. Now, activists in both states are collecting petitions for constitutional amendments that guarantee those rights.

In other states, a mix of right-wing political scamming, counter-initiatives, and voting rights limitations threaten to make it far more difficult.

Activists in Arizona, where abortion is illegal after 15 weeks, are collecting signatures for an amendment that would restore reproductive freedom up to the point of fetal viability, which is 22 to 24 weeks. They say that they’re on track to secure the number of petition signatures required by July, but they’ll have to contend with a lively effort by the religious right to win in November.

A judge in Nevada struck down the language of a proposed reproductive rights amendment for containing more than one subject, though activists continue to collect signatures as they wait for the state Supreme Court to hear their appeal.

Arkansas attorney general Tim Griffin also tossed out an abortion rights amendment for having what he dubiously labeled unclear language; that one would have protected the right to end a pregnancy within 18 weeks and guarantee protections for rape, incest, and the life of the mother. Activists are regrouping and hoping to satisfy his vague demands.

A similar injustice is in progress in Florida, where activists recently finished collecting what they say should be more than enough signatures to qualify a reproductive rights amendment for the ballot. Attorney General Ashley Moody filed a lawsuit to block the amendment on the basis that “point of viability” is ill-defined and would therefore “hoodwink” voters. Doctors in the state very much disagree, but Moody’s got ideological allies on the state Supreme Court, which is dominated by Ron DeSantis appointees.

The court is currently debating the constitutionality of a GOP-approved 15-week abortion ban, despite nearly 40 years of precedent asserting that a right-to-privacy amendment passed in the 1980 includes reproductive rights.

There are petitions for several abortion rights amendments circulating around Missouri right now, but as I’ve written before, the state’s pro-choice movement is in a state of chaos at the moment. It was forced to spend months in a court battle with Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft over his attempt to insert hideous language into various abortion rights amendments, and though the state Supreme Court finally ruled in their favor, it cost them precious time and fundraising opportunities.

As the coalition debates internally over which policy to pursue, a “pro-choice Republican” is collecting petition signatures for an amendment that would protect abortion rights up to 12 weeks and provide an exception for rape and incest.

An effort to get a weaker abortion rights amendment on the ballot in underway in South Dakota, where abortion is fully illegal and even helping somebody end a pregnancy unless it’s an emergency is a felony.

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