Ballot Initiatives Research Articles

Undermining Sanctuary? When Local and National Partisan Cues Diverge

To what extent do national partisan cues exert influence over local voting behavior? Despite being an “immigrant welcoming city,” in November, 2019, Tucson, Arizona, voters rejected Prop. 205—the Tucson Families Free and Together Initiative. We leverage theories of elite partisan cues to explain why voters in a progressive city voted against such an initiative. In contrast to Democratic support for sanctuary cities at the national level, we argue that mixed cues from local Democratic elites contributed significantly to a surprising rejection of the initiative. Using aggregate-level data and a framing experiment, we find that the local political environment split Democratic votes (50% favored, 50% opposed) while keeping Republican voters—who received consistent elite cues of opposition—uniformly against the proposition. This study illustrates how local partisan elite cues can shape ballot initiative voting outcomes, even to the point of overriding negative partisanship and national co-partisan consensus on the same issue.

Advocating for Medicaid Expansion in Republican States: Overcoming “Fractious Federalism” in the Statehouse and Ballot Box

AbstractPartisan and ideological polarization have been major barriers to the implementation of the Affordable Care Act’s Medicaid expansion in Republican-controlled states. Scholars have referred to this situation as “fractious federalism,” with Republican state policymakers toeing the national party line in refusing to cooperate with a major policy initiative. In some cases, however, diverse advocacy coalitions have overcome fractious federalism to pass expansion legislation in deeply Republican states. More recently, such coalitions have resorted to ballot initiative campaigns as another means of overcoming such polarization, and won impressive victories in a series of “deep red” states. Drawing on forty-four interviews with people involved in expansion advocacy in eleven states, I report important insights on the formation and activities of these coalitions in both the legislative and ballot initiative eras of Medicaid expansion politics.

Bringing social values to wildlife conservation decisions

Humans regularly exert a powerful influence on the survival and persistence of species, yet social‐science information is used only sporadically in conservation decisions. Using data obtained from a survey of 46,894 US residents, we developed and applied a spatially explicit “sociocultural index” to inform decision making through an understanding of public values toward wildlife. The classification is defined by opposing values of mutualism and domination, which have been previously shown to be highly predictive of attitudes on a wide range of policy issues. We developed state and county maps that can be used to represent public interests in policy decisions and inform management actions that target human behavior, such as education. To illustrate, we present findings indicating a supportive social context for gray wolf (Canis lupus) reintroduction in Colorado, an issue voted on and passed through a November 2020 citizen ballot initiative. Although the results are particularly relevant for the US, the technique is broadly applicable and its expansion is encouraged to better account for human factors in conservation decisions globally.

Why the Opportunity School District Failed? An Examination of Coalitions and the Politics of School Improvement

In this study, we examine coalition building and coordination using a qualitative case study of the coalition opposing a ballot initiative to create a state-run turnaround district in Georgia. The findings highlight three important strategies in coalition building: (a) incorporating new actors, especially noneducation advocacy groups and noneducator groups in education; (b) incorporating noneducation and African American advocacy groups in the leadership of the coalition; and (c) identifying and coalescing around core beliefs early to unite a diverse coalition. Time to organize, prior relationships, and interest group autonomy were key factors in navigating tensions between coalition breadth and coalition cohesion. Salient coalition coordination strategies included the following: (a) “keep it local and grassroots,” and (b) diverse messaging.

Measuring Institutional Design in U.S. States

ObjectiveThe role of institutions in state politics has been recognized for decades. However, most of this research has evaluated the role of a single institution at a time, such as the role of the ballot initiative or legislative professionalism. Little is known about how institutions may have counterbalancing or reinforcing effects.MethodI propose evaluating institutions collectively much in the way that comparative politics scholars have evaluated the collective set of institutions that create levels of democracy.ResultsThrough an exploratory factor analysis, I find that state institutions can primarily be understood along two dimensions, accountability pressure and checks and balances. I use a Bayesian factor analysis of mixed data to generate institutional scores for all 50 states along both dimensions from 1975 to 2016.ConclusionTheses scores will be a resource to understand how a state`s collective institutional environment affects a wide variety of phenomena, from policy responsiveness to voter turnout or policy innovation.

SHOULD CALIFORNIA'S PUBLIC POLICY ON JUDICIAL NON-JURISDICTION OVER GAMBLING DEBTS BE REVISITED? BREAKING DOWN THE KELLY AND POSTLE DECISIONS

SHOULD CALIFORNIA'S PUBLIC POLICY ON JUDICIAL NON-JURISDICTION OVER GAMBLING DEBTS BE REVISITED? BREAKING DOWN THE <i>KELLY</i> AND <i>POSTLE</i> DECISIONS

Turnout and Amendment Four: Mobilizing Eligible Voters Close to Formerly Incarcerated Floridians

Recent scholarship shows that eligible voters in neighborhoods home to many arrested and incarcerated individuals vote at lower rates than those in less-affected neighborhoods. Little work, however, has investigated how this turnout gap might be counteracted. This paper uses Amendment Four, a 2018 Florida ballot initiative that promised to re-enfranchise most individuals whose voting rights had been revoked due to a felony conviction to investigate whether this turnout disparity can be narrowed by a ballot initiative of particular significance to communities most affected by incarceration. Using prison release records, I identify the neighborhoods and households where formerly incarcerated individuals live and assess the voting history of their neighbors and housemates. I find no evidence that Amendment Four increased these voters’ turnout in 2018 relative to other voters. While ending felony disenfranchisement is necessary, closing the turnout gap resulting from histories of policing and incarceration will require greater investment and engagement.

Stephen Colbert takes on Election 2020: #betterknowaballot, voter mobilization, and the return to playful participatory satire

ABSTRACT Focusing on the Better Know A Ballot initiative launched by Stephen Colbert to encourage voter registration and turnout in the 2020 Election, the research offers an in-depth analysis of Colbert’s satirical interrogation of voting rules across the United States. In focusing on the nuances that come with a federalized system of voting, Colbert effectively revisits his role as satirical election educator-in-chief, producing digital YouTube video content that is designed to be shared by and engage his audience. Colbert’s simultaneous satirical criticism of our election system and his call to get out the vote reflects a full circle return to playful participatory satire all the while offering an important mobilization tool for greater citizen engagement with technology and politics. Like recent efforts by other political satirists, Colbert’s Better Know A Ballot series reflects an increasingly entertaining yet activist take on engagement with US electoral politics.

Community education and perceptions of water reuse: a case study in Norman, Oklahoma

The success of municipal wastewater reuse programs is often dependent on public willingness to use recycled water. Psychological reactions that contribute to behavioral intention have varying levels of influence, with the reaction of disgust or “yuck factor” creating the primary behavioral barrier. Factors influencing disgust reactions to recycled wastewater are of interest to psychologists and water managers alike. Research has shown that community education initiatives can increase willingness to support water reuse projects. A two-part study was carried out with a total of 114 participants in Norman, Oklahoma, where the local government is interested in implementing wastewater reuse to supplement water supply during drought. Participants were asked about their willingness to use this water and their feelings of disgust, as well as their trust of public officials before and after touring the Norman Water Reclamation Facility. Results found that willingness and disgust are inversely related. Political affiliation, education, and previous knowledge of the program had significant effects on willingness to use recycled wastewater. Community education significantly increased willingness to use that water and to support an eventual ballot initiative to expand indirect potable reuse. These results suggest community education can overcome initial reactions of disgust that contribute to behavioral intention.

Citizens of local jurisdictions enhance plant community preservation through ballot initiatives and voter-driven conservation efforts.

Open space areas protected by local communities may augment larger scale preservation efforts and may offer overlooked benefits to biodiversity conservation provided they are in suitable ecological condition. We examine protected areas established by local communities through ballot initiatives, a form of direct democracy, in California, USA. We compare ecological conditions of wooded habitats on local ballot protected sites and on sites protected by a state-level conservation agency. Collectively, we found few differences in ecological conditions on each protected area type. Ballot sites had greater invasive understory cover and larger trees. Community dissimilarity patterns suggested ballot sites protect a complementary set of tree species to those on state lands. Overall, geographic characteristics influenced onsite conditions more than details of how sites were protected. Thus, community-driven conservation efforts contribute to protected area networks by augmenting protection of some species while providing at least some protection to others that might otherwise be missed.

Defeating JUUL’s Effort to Rewrite San Francisco’s E-Cigarette Regulations

In 2019, San Francisco, California, prohibited the sale of electronic cigarettes lacking US Food and Drug Administration authorization. JUUL then promoted a ballot initiative (Proposition C) to replace San Francisco's e-cigarette legislation with legislation JUUL wrote that required future legislation to be approved by the voters. JUUL promoted Proposition C as a way to reduce youth e-cigarette use while allowing adult choice.Health groups argued that JUUL's measure could nullify San Francisco's prohibition on selling flavored tobacco products. Health groups benefitted from having an established campaign network that recently defended the flavor ban. They successfully framed Proposition C as a tobacco industry ploy to undo San Francisco's e-cigarette regulations, particularly the prohibition on selling flavored tobacco products. JUUL ended its campaign on September 30, 2019, and the measure failed on election day, with 82% voting against it.Lessons learned from the campaign include the importance of framing an industry initiative as a threat to local public health lawmaking and the potential for the e-cigarette issue to attract parents as new leaders and engage a powerful constituency to support tobacco control measures.

Ensuring Marijuana Reform Is Effective Criminal Justice Reform

In less than a decade, marijuana legalization has gone from unthinkable to seemingly unstoppable. This essay — written for a special issue on improving Arizona’s criminal justice system — discusses how Arizona should best advance marijuana legalization so that it can significantly improve Arizona’s criminal justice system. Now that Arizona has legalized marijuana via ballot initiative, we do not wade too deeply into the arguments for and against legalization or the criminal justice impact inherent in the repeal of prohibition (such as reductions in marijuana arrests and sentences). Instead, we focus on steps that Arizona policymakers and advocates who are interested in improving the criminal justice system can take to ensure that legalization best advances this goal. First, we set the stage in Part I with a brief history of marijuana prohibition, its role in criminal enforcement today, and the movement to enact state legalization laws. In Part II, we turn our attention to Arizona, beginning with a description of marijuana reform efforts in Arizona and key facets of the Smart and Safe Arizona Act. We then provide recommendations for policymakers and other concerned parties about how to ensure modern marijuana reforms in Arizona (and elsewhere) can and should help build a reform infrastructure that could not only ensure record relief to redress past marijuana convictions but also address broader criminal justice issues that historically intersect with marijuana prohibition.

Standing in the environment: new fashion grassroots and old fashion court advocacy in the time of Trump

Justice Douglas called for judicial standing for the land, wildlife, and aesthetic vistas in the US environment independent of human or organizational actors (Sierra Club 1972, 741–751). In the 48 years since the Douglas dissent, the federal institutions have failed to expand any legal standing to elements of nature. Any environmental protection has been based on current property law theory of nature as the property of humans, to be managed or used. A nascent “Rights of Nature” movement proposes a new way of considering the environment based not on human values and concerns but viewing nature endowed with independent rights and legal standing. Advocates for this Earth Jurisprudence policy image have used local venues of direct democracy, town councils, and citizen ballot initiatives to protect local environmental treasures. The countermobilization of powerful interests at the state level has blocked the Rights of Nature movement. Existing court strategies under current jurisprudence continue to be necessary to offer some hope for protecting pro-environmental gains against negative actions in the executive. The paper proposes a model for predicting the possibilities of success by the Rights of Nature movement in local attempts to protect natural resources. Finally, the paper calls for Congressional and Constitutional actions to protect the right of nature to speak for herself.

Direct Democracy, Corporate Political Strategy, and Firm Value

We analyze a novel data set of corporate contributions to ballot initiatives and referendums at the U.S. state level between 2003 and 2018. Ballot initiatives and referendums allow citizens of 26 U.S. states to vote directly on legislation. Firms make significant campaign contributions to ballot measure committees in favor of or against specific initiatives that exceed on average their political action committee contributions. Firms that contribute to successful (failed) direct initiated state initiatives generate positive (negative) CARs of 0.32% (-0.21%) on average around the election. They also experience significant sales growth in the two years surrounding successful ballot measure campaigns.

Forty Greenhouses and a Dispenser’s License: Affirmative Action and Racial Equity in Marijuana Licensing

Federal and state attempts at creating racially equitable marijuana industries can go much farther to treat the harms of the War on Drugs. If legislatures, or creators of ballot initiatives, seek “race-neutral” policies, they should boost the ability of people with criminal system involvement to have a place in the industry, and to make good on the often-unrealized promise of expungement. However, the most effective strategy is to confront the racist impact of the War on Drugs head-on, and acknowledge the significance of race in creating a legal industry. If laws fail to do so, then as more states pass medical programs or even medical and recreational-combined programs, their data collection shows and will show a lack of diversity in the industry. The silver lining is that the trend may allow future affirmative action schemes to have the evidence to defeat a strict scrutiny challenge. Though frustrating, waiting on legalization that builds more socially and racially equitable systems for the industry is worthwhile. Returning to an industry that has already taken off, primarily with white-owned-and-controlled companies, and trying to infuse racial and social equity, is not a promising strategy to accomplish real and meaningful change.

How State Reforms Have Mellowed Federal Enforcement of Marijuana Prohibition

Modern state medical marijuana laws date back to 1996, when Californians approved the first statewide medical marijuana legalization law via ballot measure; Colorado and Washington voters passed the first ballot initiatives legalizing marijuana for adult use in 2012. By summer 2021, a total of 36 states and 4 U.S. territories had legalized the medical use of marijuana and 18 states, two territories and the District of Columbia had legalized adult use of marijuana. Over this quarter century of state reforms, blanket federal marijuana prohibition has remained the law of the land. Indeed, though federal marijuana policies have long been criticized, federal prohibition has now been in place and unchanged for the last half century. But while federal marijuana law has remained static amidst state-level reforms, federal marijuana prohibition enforcement has actually changed dramatically. In fact, data from the U.S. Sentencing Commission (USSC) reveals quite remarkable changes in federal enforcement patterns since certain states began fully legalizing marijuana in 2012. This essay seeks to document and examine critically the remarkable decline in the number of federal marijuana sentences imposed over the last decade. While noting that federal sentences imposed for marijuana offenses are down 83% from 2012 to 2020, this essay will also explore how the racial composition of persons sentenced in federal court and has evolved as the caseload has declined. Notably, in 2012, the majority of persons sentenced for marijuana offenses in federal court were Hispanic (66%) followed by white (22%), Black (8%), and other races (3%). But by 2020, though the majority were still Hispanic (62%), the number of persons sentenced for marijuana who were Black had doubled to 18% and white offenders were down to 15% with other races at 5%. These data suggest that whites are benefiting relatively more from fewer federal prosecutions. Reports from the Drug Enforcement Administration indicate that marijuana seizures at the southern US border have dwindled as states have legalized adult use and medicinal use of marijuana, and the reduced trafficking over the southern border likely largely explain the vastly reduced number of federal prosecutions of marijuana offenses. Nonetheless, though still shrinking in relative size, there were still more than one thousand people (and mostly people of color) sentenced in federal court for marijuana trafficking in fiscal year 2020 and over 100 million dollars was committed to the incarceration of these defendants for activities not dissimilar from corporate activity in states in which marijuana has been legalized for various purposes. This essay will reflect upon how state legal reforms have mellowed (but certainly not ended) federal enforcement.

Part of the Narrative: Generic News Frames in the U.S. Recreational Marijuana Policy Subsystem

In the growing body of research on policy change and in the relatively new frontier of the Narrative Policy Framework (NPF), the components comprising narratives' structure are still under construction. One opportunity for additional research relates to examining the role of frames. This article examines generic news frames used to report on ballot initiatives legalizing recreational marijuana in three states and conceptually orients these frames within NPF. Using a mixed methods analysis, the findings suggest that in the emerging U.S. recreational marijuana legalization policy subsystem, setting helped explain reporters' use of certain generic frames. The findings provide support for the inclusion of generic frames as part of NPF's narrative theory, open up potential for new research designs, and further clarify media's role in the development of policy narratives. From a practical perspective, the analysis contributes insight into how media inform constituents about new marijuana laws.Related ArticlesCrow, Deserai A., Lydia A. Lawhon, John Berggren, Juhi Huda, Elizabeth Koebele, and Adrianne Kroepsch. 2017. “A Narrative Policy Framework Analysis of Wildfire Policy Discussions in two Colorado Communities.” Politics &amp; Policy 45 (4): 626‐656. https://doi.org/10.1111/polp.12207Fisk, Jonathan M., Joseph A. Vonasek, and Elvis Davis. 2018. “‘Pot’reneurial Politics: The Budgetary Highs and Lows of Recreational Marijuana Policy Innovation.” Politics &amp; Policy 46 (2): 189‐208. https://doi.org/10.1111/polp.12246O'Donovan, Kristin Taylor. 2018. “Does the Narrative Policy Framework Apply to Local Policy Issues?” Politics &amp; Policy 46 (4): 532‐570. https://doi.org/10.1111/polp.12265

Changes in Consumer Preferences toward Non‐GM Foods within an Information‐Rich Environment: The Case of the Washington State Ballot Initiative

AbstractIn this study, we investigate the impact of information on consumer preference for GM foods. In November 2013, the state of Washington voted on ballot initiative I‐522, which would have required the labeling of GM foods. The political campaign preceding the vote gave rise to an information‐rich environment where positive and negative information about GM foods became available to consumers in this state. We estimated the WTP for avoiding GM ingredients before and at the time of the vote and found that the WTP for non‐GM foods declined. This result is consistent with the proposition that information can affect consumer preferences for GM foods.

Drug decriminalization measure in Oregon would not increase treatment funding

Last month, Oregon passed the first statewide drug decriminalization measure in the country, allowing personal‐use possession of illegal drugs, including heroin, methamphetamine and cocaine, The ballot initiative, Measure 110, which was sponsored mainly by the Drug Policy Alliance (DPA), allows people to either pay a $100 fine or go to an “addiction recovery center” that would be funded by the regulated legal marijuana industry in the state.

Renewable energy requirements on the ballot: An analysis of county-level voting results

National polling data consistently find a large, bipartisan group of Americans support state renewable portfolio standards (RPS), policies which mandate generation of electricity from renewable sources. However, when such policies are actually put before voters on the ballot, they have been met with mixed success: out of seven RPS ballot initiatives, only four have been approved. From a newly compiled dataset of county-level voting results, we use ordinary least-squares regression to investigate the determinants of public support for RPS ballot proposals. Two models are constructed based on literature related to legislative adoption of RPS and, separately, public support of pro-renewable policies. Consistent with previous studies, political, economic, and demographic variables are found to be significant in predicting voter behavior. State-level fixed effects, however, are the largest contributors to both models. A synthesis model, combining elements from both the legislative adoption and public acceptance literatures, performs best when fixed effects are removed. As climate advocates increasingly call for policies to more quickly transition the electricity sector to renewable energy sources, this research provides greater insight into the prospects of successfully achieving that aim through a ballot initiative. It also, however, reveals insights applicable to legislature-driven RPS policies.