Ballot Initiative Efforts on Upswing in 2016, Despite Absence of Hot-Button Marriage and Abortion Questions

BOULDER, Colo. — It’s another big ballot initiative year in Colorado—because almost every general election year in this state is a big ballot initiative year.

The fact that Colorado voters will weigh at least seven statewide ballot initiatives is the least surprising thing about this year’s election. The average number of initiatives that appear on a Colorado general election ballot is nine. That means we’re below the average this year, which you wouldn’t guess based on extensive news commentary and on the ballyhooed and ironic attempt by a well-funded group to use the ballot-initiative process to rein in the ballot-initiative process.   

There were some 50 initiative proposals submitted to the state for the 2016 ballot, not counting reworked repeat submissions.

In addition to the big-money proposal to “raise the bar” and make it more difficult to land initiatives on the ballot, approved ballot proposals in the state so far include ones that would legalize doctor-assisted suicide, raise the minimum wage, launch a state-based universal public health care system, hike taxes on cigarettes, return the state to primary election voting for presidential contests in place of the current caucus system, and open primary elections to unaffiliated voters—the largest voting bloc in the state.  

That list doesn’t count municipal initiatives, which also can pile up. In Boulder, a healthy living, good-government university town, four municipal initiatives have made the ballot, including one that would tax sugar-heavy drinks and one that would impose term limits for city council members.   

In 2014, only four initiatives made the statewide ballot in Colorado. The increase in activity this year mirrors a trend across the 24 states where the initiative process is available to residents, according the National Council of State Legislatures.

“The headline is that there are twice as many ballot initiatives nationally in 2016 as there were in 2014,” said Wendy Underhill, elections program manager at NCSL.

Underhill ties the national uptick in part to a budding personal theory that the “ballot initiative industry” of special interest groups that pay for marketing campaigns and signature-gathering efforts thrives like most every other industry when the economy is doing well, as it has been for the last two years.

“But that’s just something I’ve been thinking about,” Underhill said, laughing. “I have no direct evidence for that.”

Her other, for now, more solid theory ties the increase in initiatives to low voter turnout in the 2014 midterm elections, because the number of signatures required to put an initiative on a state ballot is in most cases based on turnout tallies from the previous general election.

In California this year, it took 585,407 valid signatures for an initiative to make the ballot. In 2014, by contrast, it took 807,615 valid signatures, a whopping difference of more than 222,000 signatures. In Arizona, the number of required valid signatures this year dipped by more than 33,000. In South Dakota, the number dipped by almost 4,000.     

Elena Nunez, executive director of the public-interest nonprofit Colorado Common Cause, said she guesses the initiative process remains popular now for the same reasons it was popular when it was first introduced in the 19th century, mostly in western states where railroad and mining interests controlled politics.

“It’s a tool to hold the legislatures accountable,” Nunez said. “There are often structural conflicts of interest that keep lawmakers from passing popular proposals and, in hotly contested elections, lawmakers can be hesitant to take up hot-button issues.”  

In Colorado this election season, an example in each case stands out.

In the spring, lawmakers voted against an elections bill drafted in response to chaotic springtime caucus meetings that made national news after thousands of residents across the state waited for hours in lines without getting a chance to vote. The bill would have eliminated caucus voting for presidential elections in favor of primary voting.

“Look, there’s not one unaffiliated voter in this building,” said bill sponsor Rep. Tim Dore the week before his bill died in a Senate committee. He was sweeping his hand toward the ceiling of the state capitol. “No one here wants open primaries, and, you know, caucus voting is supported by activist party members, which, I mean, it’s no secret that most politicians are activist party members, right?”        

Earlier in the legislative session, Democratic lawmakers under pressure from leadership pulled an assisted suicide bill from the House floor. Lawmakers didn’t want to have to vote for or against the bill in an election year.

“I am profoundly disappointed in you, colleagues,” said state Rep. Lois Court from the front of the chamber, citing poll numbers that showed wide majorities of Coloradans supported the bill. “You have disappointed 65 percent of your constituents. This is a deeply personal decision—and we are denying the 65 percent of Coloradans who wanted the opportunity to make this decision.”

The legislative session wasn’t even over before ballot initiative groups were collecting signatures on both the primary elections and assisted suicide proposals.

Equally notable, perhaps, is what will not appear on the ballot this year. There will be no anti-abortion personhood proposal and there will be nothing on marriage or religious freedom.

That’s also a national trend, said NCSL’s Underhill.

“Marriage and abortion have been perennials,” Underhill said. “They’re nowhere on ballots this year. Nowhere in the country, when I checked in August.”

Initiatives appearing on ballots in several states include measures to legalize marijuana, rein in or protect energy production, outlaw or strengthen the death penalty, and raise the minimum wage—an issue lawmakers at the federal level have been gridlocked on since 2009.

Also popular this year are efforts to tweak what Underhill called “the mechanics of democracy”—efforts like the one in Colorado to institute primary elections.   

Other examples include an initiative in Alaska that, if approved, would automatically register residents to vote when they apply for the state’s annual Permanent Fund dividends. In Maine, Question 5 asks voters to put in place ranked choice voting that lasts several rounds and would replace one-round winner-take-all elections. A South Dakota proposal would launch an independent redistricting commission to address gerrymandering. And Washington state voters will consider revising campaign finance laws to include a state public funding option.   

Underhill said it’s not just that citizens turn to the initiative process after being frustrated by legislatures. The initiative topics often are issues that lawmakers will come to address.

“It’s a feedback loop,” she said.