The New York Times reports:

Voters frustrated by one-party control in Republican states over the last decade have increasingly turned to citizen-sponsored initiatives to enact policies that their legislatures won’t. They expanded Medicaid, adopted paid sick leave, raised the minimum wage and safeguarded access to abortion.

Now, the legislators are striking back.

In North Dakota, Utah and South Dakota, legislatures are sponsoring measures on the November ballot that would raise the threshold for approving citizen amendments to 60 percent, not a simple majority.

In Missouri, the legislature placed a measure on the ballot that would set an even higher bar: Citizen-sponsored amendments to the state constitution would have to win in each of the state’s eight U.S. House districts. An initiative that wins 95 percent of the vote statewide could lose if it fails in a single district.

And in Florida, Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a bill imposing a raft of new requirements, fees and criminal penalties around collecting signatures on petitions for ballot measures. The result: All 22 initiatives proposed by citizens this year failed to qualify for the ballot.

The legislators argue that the nation’s founders never intended a pure democracy, and that in a representative democracy, elected legislators are entrusted to carry out their own judgments. Moreover, opponents say, citizens’ initiatives — established during the progressive era more than a century ago as a check on wealthy special interest groups — now allow such groups to hijack the will of the people.

“We live in a republic,” Stuart Adams, the president of the Utah Senate, declared in a speech last year. “We will not let initiatives driven by out-of-state money turn Utah into California.”

Even after initiatives have passed, the legislatures have resisted the will of the voters. After 58 percent of Missouri voters approved a law establishing paid sick leave, the Missouri legislature passed its own law repealing it. In Nebraska, the legislature watered down a similar measure that 75 percent of voters had approved. [Continue reading…]