This Week in Statehouse Action: Wake Me Up edition
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This Week in Statehouse Action: Wake Me Up edition
(Get it?)
Because September is very much ending.
And Election Day is less than six weeks away.
So! What’s up in those down-ballot races that get short shrift in every missive that’s not this one?
Glad you asked!
But this week we’re gonna talk less about electing people and more about electing laws, basically.
It’s a little bit of a journey, though, so bear with me!
And this journey starts in the Badger State.
Wake Me Up Before You Go Go:
Democratic Gov. Tony Evers has called a special session of the Wisconsin legislature for Oct. 4.
The reason?
To give Wisconsinites a greater say in the laws that rule their lives:
Twenty-five (technically 26, but the Mississippi constitutional requirement that petition signatures come from five congressional districts in a state that’s had just four districts since 2000 makes that one moot until the legislature bothers to fix it) states have some sort of ballot initiative and/or veto referendum process.
Wisconsin is not among them.
Evers’ call for a special session aims to change that:
He’s called on lawmakers in the GOP-controlled Assembly and Senate to consider legislation allowing voters to pass new laws or amend the state’s constitution via ballot measure.
It’s not an alien concept to Wisconsinites; after all, neighboring Michigan has been doing it for years.
But that’s why Republican lawmakers in Wisconsin will never allow it:
You see, it was a citizen-initiated Michigan ballot measure that gave the state its new independent redistricting commission.
And that commission gave the state its least-gerrymandered legislative maps in decades.
And as a result, Michigan Republicans are at risk of losing their stranglehold on the legislature for the first time in a decade.
You’d better believe that GOPers in a similarly situated state right next door took notice:
Both Wisconsin and Michigan are swing states with Democratic governors that Biden narrowly won in 2020.
So both state’s legislatures should be competitive.
But after the 2010 round of redistricting, no one could claim with a straight face that lawmakers in those states were running on fair maps.
In fact, both Michigan’s and Wisconsin’s legislative maps from the last decade were ranked as some of the most gerrymandered in the entire country.
Obviously, it wasn’t in Michigan Republicans’ interest to relinquish their power to draw themselves into another false majority for another decade, so they did nothing to reform the redistricting process:
But via the power vested in them by Michigan’s ballot initiative process, voters were able to fix what lawmakers wouldn’t.
In 2018, they placed the Michigan Independent Redistricting Initiative – AKA Prop 2 – on the ballot.
It passed with over 61% of the vote.
And that ballot initiative is why Michigan Republicans can no longer count on their gerrymanders to protect their majorities over the next 10 years.
But over in Wisconsin, Republicans are settling in to enjoy another decade of false majorities in a swing state where Democrats can–and do–win statewide elections.
And they’re certainly not going to take that away from themselves via some sort of legitimate redistricting reform.
So on what planet would they give Wisconsin voters the chance to do it themselves?
To be clear, Evers called the special session with the ultimate goal of giving voters the choice to repeal the state’s 173-year-old abortion ban themselves:
Which, because of GOP gerrymandering, the GOP-controlled legislature will never do on its own.
But because they’re desperate to preserve GOP gerrymandering, the GOP-controlled legislature will never give voters the chance to have a say.
So the only thing to watch for in the Wisconsin legislature on Oct. 4 is how fast Republicans gavel it out.
I give it 20 seconds
Wake Up Call:
Speaking of ballot measures …
Arizona is another state with a long history of them:
And Arizona is now also a state that narrowly went for Biden in 2020, on top of also being a state with two Democratic U.S. senators.
Additionally, the legislative margins in the state are slim: 29 D/31 R in the House, 14 D/16 R in the Senate.
Which makes Republicans nervous.
And when Republicans get nervous about losing power, they tend to take steps to consolidate it for themselves.
Which often means taking it away from other people.
In this case, Arizona voters:
Voters will decide on three ballot measures here in November:
two that could, jointly or separately, allow the legislature to mess with successful measures,
another that makes ballot measures harder to pass in the first place.
That last one is the most straightforward, so we’ll start there:
Prop. 132 would require any initiative that would approve a new tax pass with 60% of the vote instead of a simple majority.
Sounds innocuous enough, until you consider the impetus for it:
Back in 2020, Arizona voters had the audacity to approve a ballot measure (Prop. 208) that would have taxed wealthy Arizonans making more than $250,000 a year an additional 3.5% to support public schools and raise teacher salaries; it was expected to raise nearly $830 million for K-12 education.
Conservative judges in the state did their part for their side of the aisle and struck it down earlier this year, but the apparent willingness of voters to defy Republicans as they work to choke off funding for public education must have spooked the GOP a bit.
Because after Prop. 208 passed with a little under 52% of the vote, it’s no coincidence that Republicans in the legislature wanted to figure out how to stop such a thing from happening again.
Earlier this year, Prop. 132 was placed on the ballot by “legislative referral,” which just means that a majority of each (GOP-controlled) chamber had to approve it.
So that’s a simple majority vote of the legislature for a ballot measure that needs a simple majority vote of the electorate to raise the threshold for future tax-related ballot measures to 60%.
Not the most democratic move.
But wait! It gets worse:
Prop. 129 would require any voter-initiated ballot measure to be about a "single subject"--a rule that conveniently would not apply to measures placed on the ballot by the (GOP-controlled) legislature.
And if you think this sounds innocent enough, keep in mind that multiple conservative state courts have applied similar requirements to disqualify ballot measures perceived as counter to GOP interests.
The approval of Prop. 129 will give the Arizona Supreme Court–conveniently packed by the GOP in recent years–with an extremely useful tool to invalidate voter initiatives.
Finally, Prop. 128 gives the (GOP-controlled) legislature the power to amend or repeal a ballot measure if courts strike down any part of it—and not just the bit that was invalidated.
Any or all of it.
Even after voters have already approved it.
I know this is all super weedy already, but there’s one more crucial wrinkle in this:
Specifically, a court ruling in Arizona just last week added another layer to this whole mess.
On Friday, a judge lifted a decades-old injunction blocking a 1901 law banning abortion in the state.
Yes, a law that was on the books before Arizona even became a state is now in full effect.
And it bans abortion in all cases except to save the life of the mother:
So, should the legislature remain under GOP control and/or if Republican Kari Lake wins the governorship, the only way to reinstate abortion freedom in Arizona would be via a citizen-initiated ballot measure.
Which could become much more difficult after November, should Props. 128, 129, and 132 pass.
Republicans have completely controlled state government here since 2009, and in that time, ballot measures have been voters’ only recourse in terms of implementing progressive policies:
Since 2016, voters were on a bit of a streak: they raised the minimum wage, legalized weed, and required employers to provide paid sick time to their employees.
This super pissed off GOP lawmakers, who apparently only like democracy when they win, and they struck back.
We’ll see how hard they hit on Nov. 8.
Shake Me, Wake Me (When It’s Over):
This phenomenon of Republicans working to undermine the grassroots tradition of direct democracy is definitely not limited to Arizona:
On Nov. 8, voters in Arkansas and South Dakota will vote on constitutional amendments to require 60% thresholds for certain citizen-initiated and referred ballot measures.
Yes, it will take merely a majority vote to pass a ballot measure that will raise the bar for passing future ballot measures.
And don’t expect these attacks on ballot initiatives to stop.
Many of the states that provide for this kind of direct democracy are fully controlled by the GOP:
Specifically
Arizona
Arkansas
Florida
Idaho
Missouri
Montana
North Dakota
Ohio
Oklahoma
South Dakota
Utah
Wyoming
You can check out the full list of states here.
And if folks in these states decide they want to pass some new laws Republicans don’t like, expect lawmakers to go the way of Arizona or Arkansas–that is, to make passing ballot initiatives harder.
Or they could just end the practice altogether.
Although in most of these states, that would require …
… a ballot measure.
Wake Up Little Susie:
One more note before I go, since I’ve spent so much of the past couple of editions griping about the lack of Democratic establishment focus on crucial state legislative and other down ballot races.
Well, the establishment sorta stepped up!
…by which I mean that Joe Biden sent out an email for the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee.
Yes, it was to the DLCC’s existing list, so there may not be a ton of new money to be had there (though Biden’s name is sure to motivate some folks who’d been keeping their wallets closed).
But it’s an important signal from a Democratic administration about the importance of these races.
And the context is important, too:
Consider that Barack Obama didn’t do the first thing for state legislative races until his final year in office, when he finally decided to endorse some folks (never mind that plenty of them were in safe blue districts–yes, I know what the article says, but as you can also glean from the article, I WAS THERE).
So Biden getting involved in statehouse races in the second year of his first terms is a great head start!
Also consider that the U.S. Supreme Court will take up Moore v. Harper–an utterly terrifying case concerning the Independent State Legislature Doctrine, which I’ll dig into in this space very soon but you can read a bit about here–in this upcoming term, with a potentially earth-shaking decision coming this summer.
So this is good!
We’ll see if it’s good enough.
Welp!
Thanks for hanging in, folks.
In fact, I’m so grateful that I think I’ll share a picture you might enjoy.
It’s me looking dumb with a dairy cow.
…okay, technically a dairy heifer.
You’re welcome!
