In the News

“Attacks, through state legislatures, on the ballot measure process have been pretty consistent and pretty aggressive for the last several (election) cycles,” said Kelly Hall, executive director of the Fairness Project, which has helped pass progressive measures in red states.

“This argument about rural hospital closures has been an incredibly compelling argument to voters,” said Kelly Hall, the executive director of the Fairness Project, a national nonprofit that has successfully pushed ballot measures to expand Medicaid in seven states.

In recent years, the ballot initiative process has seen many traditional progressive policy ideas pass, even in red or purple states. According to the Fairness Project, a nonprofit organization that helps support progressive ballot measures, dozens of initiatives have passed with bipartisan support in recent years

“I call these bills ‘death by a thousand cuts,’” said Kelly Hall, the executive director of the progressive ballot initiative group The Fairness Project. “When you hear about each one in isolation, they seem like not that big a deal. But taken together, they have an exclusionary effect on people’s participation in democracy.”

A left-leaning advocacy group called the Fairness Project has created a playbook for using ballot initiatives to go around GOP-led state legislatures. Since 2016, it has backed successful initiatives to raise the minimum wage and expand Medicaid.

There have also been recent successes with ballot measures for economic and social justice, owing to the work of the Fairness Project. Founded in 2015 by SEIU-United Healthcare Workers West, the project has won 31 of 33 ballot measures (affecting 18 million people) to raise wages, stop predatory payday lenders, expand health-care access, and more.

Kelly Hall, executive director of the Fairness Project, which backs progressive state ballot measures across the country, described last year’s abortion rights victories as “accelerant on an already burning fire.” But Hall also pointed to recent triumphs on issues such as Medicaid expansion and minimum wage hikes as driving factors.

“People's enthusiasm for ballot measures has to also include space for protecting the process itself,” said Kelly Hall, executive director of the Fairness Project, which funds and organizes progressive state ballot measure efforts across the country.