There is a lot of buzz these days about gerrymandering, what with Texas House Democrats risking arrest and fleeing their state in protest over an aggressively redrawn congressional map that favors Republicans. But there’s another, equally nefarious attack on voting rights and democracy going on in America right now that’s flying under the radar: the direct and indirect suppression of citizen-initiated ballot measures.
As of this writing, 26 states and the District of Columbia allow at least one type of ballot initiative through their election system. After collecting a prescribed minimum number of signatures, citizens in these states can place proposals for new laws, proposals for constitutional amendments, or referendums on current laws on election ballots. Voters then have the ability to directly decide whether to approve or reject them. These kinds of ballot initiative opportunities have been around since 1898, and are the closest thing we have in America to direct democracy.
But ballot measures have been under attack, and massively so, over the last decade. Republican politicians have grown angry as voters increasingly turn to the ballot initiative process to enact populist policies that their party opposes, like reforming campaign finance laws, expanding Medicaid eligibility, hiking taxes on the rich, and raising minimum wages. And rather than respect the directly expressed will of the constituents they were elected to represent, instead they’ve used shady tactics to hamstring the ballot initiative process itself and make it harder for voters to enact policies they don’t like. For example, just this year, the majority-GOP legislature in Arkansas passed a law that requires petition signers to read ballot language in the presence of a canvasser or have it read to them, lest the canvasser be charged with a misdemeanor. The Florida GOP legislature passed a law which requires all canvassers to be Florida residents, shortens the window of time available to organizers to submit signatures to the supervisor of elections, and increases filing fees. The South Dakota GOP legislature passed a law which requires a minimum number of signatures from all of its state Senate districts.
While state-level Democrats are leading the resistance against these kinds of tactics and have refused to join their Republican colleagues in directly weakening ballot initiatives, they have become complicit in a number of schemes that harm them in an indirect manner. Here’s how it works: they let voters have their way with ballot initiatives, and then when the dust settles, legislatures (and in some cases, city councils) work to pass new laws that effectively undo the will of the people.
For this week’s Closer Look, we’ll look at three places—the District of Columbia, Missouri, and Michigan—where this indirect erosion of ballot initiatives happened with minimum wage laws. We’ll then offer a reflection on why ballot initiatives are so important and how they align with our goal of spreading the power.
District of Columbia (D.C.)
Last week, the Democrat-controlled D.C. Council voted to pass an amendment to their 2026 budget package which modifies Initiative 82. This was a 2022 ballot measure which would have gradually phased out the city’s tipped minimum wage to equal the full minimum and which passed with overwhelming support. The D.C. Council had voted in June to pause the next incremental wage increase for tipped workers that was slated to go into effect on July 1, and effectively froze their pay at $10 an hour. The new amendment extends that $10 freeze until July 1, 2026, and then incrementally increases tipped workers’ base pay to ultimately be 75% of the full minimum wage by 2034.
Councilmembers argued that increased payroll costs from Initiative 82 were overburdening the city’s struggling restaurant industry. We gave you some figures on D.C. restaurant employment levels back in June that proved them wrong, but now we can add a new report from the Economic Policy Institute to the mix to further emphasize our point. They found that restaurant employment growth and full-service restaurant establishment growth in D.C. has been strong since the implementation of Initiative 82 and outpaced other jurisdictions in the DMV area and the nation overall. In other words, their findings squarely refute the idea that D.C.’s restaurant scene is struggling, which undercuts the argument to preserve the city’s tipped minimum wage.
In the end, all this amendment amounts to is a handout to D.C.’s Restaurant Association and a direct obstruction of the expressed demands of voters. It’s also worth noting, to add insult to injury, that this is the second (!) time in seven years that D.C. lawmakers overruled their constituents on the tipped minimum wage. In 2018, the council voted to overturn Initiative 77, which would have also gradually phased out the tipped minimum wage.
Missouri
In November 2024, 57% of voters in Missouri voted to pass Proposition A, which would raise the state’s minimum wage to $15 an hour in 2026 and then index it to inflation thereafter. It’s worth noting that it also instituted requirements for employers to provide paid sick leave, but for the purpose of this newsletter, we’ll focus on the minimum wage portion. Just eight months later, however, the state Republican-controlled legislature passed a bill that kept the $15 minimum wage increase on the books but repealed the stipulation for future inflation adjustments. Governor Mike Kehoe signed the bill into law, leaving Missouri voters without a key provision of the ballot initiative they approved.
Like their D.C. counterparts, Missouri lawmakers worried that the change would hurt businesses and lead to job losses. Not only did they apparently fail to read all of the available evidence on minimum wage increases—which has offered no support for this idea—but they also failed to see that over 500 businesses publicly supported Proposition A.
The silver lining to this saga is that there is already movement in Missouri to fight back against state Republicans’ power grabs. Soon after Gov. Kehoe signed the bill into law, Missouri Jobs for Justice filed a new initiative to amend the state constitution to get voters what they want. While it will be some time before we know if their efforts are successful, we commend Missouri voters for continuing the fight for a living wage for workers.
Michigan
We had a lot to say about the minimum wage drama that went down in Michigan back in February. In case you’re new here, here’s a refresher: In July 2024, the Michigan Supreme Court ruled that the state’s GOP legislature acted unconstitutionally in 2018 when it adopted a voter-approved initiative affecting the state’s minimum wage and tipped minimum wage, but then amended it. The Court ordered the original law to go into effect on February 21, 2025, with adjustments for inflation; consequently, the state’s minimum wage would have reached $15 an hour by 2028 and the subminimum tipped wage would be phased out by 2030.
Unfortunately, that never came to pass. On the day the Court-ordered wage increase was scheduled to go into effect, with the support of a number of fellow Democrats, Governor Gretchen Whitmer signed a bill into law which sped up the state’s $15 minimum wage increase to 2027 but also preserved the subminimum wage for tipped workers at 50% of the standard minimum. Our Founder and President, Erica Payne, didn’t mince words when the news dropped: “[Whitmer’s] failure to raise and fortify the wage floor will trap workers in a cycle of poverty that undermines the American economy and threatens the foundation of democratic capitalism for us all.”
Just like in Missouri, the good news is that there’s already momentum in Michigan to fight back against lawmakers’ double subversion of the will of voters. Groups like One Fair Wage are leading the charge to put a referendum on the November 2026 ballot which would give voters the opportunity to repeal the new law and institute the minimum wage changes as originally directed by the Michigan Supreme Court.
Conclusion
In addition to taxing the rich and paying the people, one of our priorities as an organization is to “spread the power.” This takes many forms, from getting big money out of politics to safeguarding voting rights to stopping gerrymandering. It also means protecting citizen-led ballot initiatives, especially at a time when they appear to be under attack, as outlined above.
Legislators may see ballot initiatives, particularly ones they don’t like, as a circumvention of or affront to their authority. But they’re not. Rather, they act as a check on their power, just as the other branches of government do. When lawmakers refuse to enact the change that people want, ballot initiatives provide a backstop for voters to do so themselves. And if lawmakers care about doing what’s best for their constituents and properly representing their interests, this shouldn’t bother them in the slightest.
And for voters who have witnessed first-hand these attacks on ballot initiatives, we see you and hear you. We understand how disheartening these kinds of obstacles to success can be. But by refusing to accept defeat and instead rallying behind ballot initiatives again for future election cycles, our elected officials will be forced to reckon with the power of the people. To politicians intent on oppressing working people, there is nothing more frightening to them than a mobilized and energized labor movement.
At the end of the day, no matter where you stand on the minimum wage, or any other issue for that matter, we should all be able to agree that voters should be able to exercise the power afforded to them through the ballot initiative process. And we should all be able to agree that any attack on that power, whether direct or indirect, is an unacceptable attack on democracy that we should fight back against.