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That “threw fuel on the fire when it comes to efforts to restrict ballot measures,” Hannah Ledford, deputy executive director and campaigns director of the ballot measure group Fairness Project, said in an email. Every state that put abortion on the ballot in 2022 voted in favor of protecting access to the procedure in some way, including Republic

Kelly Hall, executive director of The Fairness Project, said the 2022 victories for abortion rights advocates are a motivating factor for GOP state lawmakers to push the changes to the ballot-measure process. "Lawmakers who are elected to represent the people are clear they don't want the people's view to be expressed in law," she said.

“It’s important to situate the attacks on the ballot measure process as part of the broader set of attacks on voting rights and democracy writ large,” said Kelly Hall, executive director of the Fairness Project

Fairness Project executive director Kelly Hall said in a statement that Republicans are “threatened by the idea of voters being able to make progress without permission from the legislature.”

The Ohio back-and-forth comes amid similar Republican efforts to restrict direct democracy in Missouri, North Dakota and Mississippi, according to Fairness Project, a Washington-based group that pushes ballot measures across the U.S.

Kelly Hall, executive director of the Fairness Project, a group working on ballot measures around the country sees Missouri as a microcosm of a larger anti-democratic dynamic manifesting across the country. “Politicians are going well beyond their legal obligations in their roles, their legal responsibilities to faithfully execute their offices.

“This is not isolated to Ohio,” said Kelly Hall, executive director of the progressive ballot measure group The Fairness Project.

“There are a lot of elected officials leading state legislatures that are being unapologetic, brazen, relentless — choose your adjective — about the fact that they don’t care what voters think on this issue and that their ideological stance on this is going to dictate the outcome,” said Kelly Hall, executive director of the Fairness Project.