With Republican allies of President Bush controlling all three branches of the federal government, Progressives need a new game plan for 2005-2006. Right now there's no way for Progressives to set the political agenda in the nation's capital, but they can do it at the state level -- as the Republicans did with anti-gay-marriage propositions on ballots in 11 states this year.

Progressives can sponsor state ballot initiatives in even more states to require a verifiable paper trail from voting machines, raise the minimum wage, require development of clean energy sources to fight global warming, and restrict the size of "factory farms" whose livestock waste fouls the rural environment. The latter three issues are proven winners in recent state elections, and more than half the U.S. House of Representatives supports paper trail voting machines, but Republican Majority Leader Tom "The Hammer" Delay won't let the bill come up for a vote.

Statewide ballot measures requiring voting machines to have verifiable paper trails could do the job state-by-state while building momentum for Congress to pass similar national legislation. Also, voters have already passed initiatives to raise the minimum wage in Nevada and Florida this year -- "red" states -- by overwhelming majorities of 68% and 71%, respectively. With that kind of margin in Nevada and Florida, such initiatives would pass almost anywhere. Nevada's minimum wage measure will be on the ballot again in 2006, due to a unique requirement there that voters approve it twice before it can take effect.

In Colorado, voters this year passed an initiative requiring the state's electric utilities to develop clean, renewable energy sources over the next decade. California's legislature passed a similar bill last year. And voters in at least two heartland states have recently passed initiatives to restrict the growth of factory hog farms. This may not be a big issue in coastal states, but it's a hot button in the rural Midwest and Great Plains, where factory farms are often so big they produce as much fecal waste as a major city -- only without sewage treatment.

In 24 states and the District of Columbia, voters can put initiatives on state ballots by citizen petition, and pass them by popular vote. In all states except Delaware, legislatures can put such propositions on the 2006 ballot as state constitutional or bond measures. But there isn't a moment to lose: In many states, such measures must be finalized and petitioned (or approved by legislatures) in 2005 to be on the ballot in November 2006.

As long as Tom DeLay retains his "hammer-lock" on what comes up for a vote in the House of Representatives, Progressives' Congressional strategy will have to be primarily defensive: Blocking funding for new wars, the Bush/Cheney "Viva Las Vegas" Social Security privatization plan, and more tax cuts for the rich; and in the Senate, opposing right-wing activist court nominees. Progressives will need a coherent platform that can tie together these negative issues with their positive proposals on state ballots, something along the lines of the 1994 "Contract With America" that helped Republicans win a majority in the House for the first time in half a century. In addition, Progressives need a moral vision consistent with all these issues, along the lines being suggested by Dr. George Lakoff of the Rockridge Institute, author of Moral Politics and Don't Think of an Elephant (www.rockridgeinstitute.org).

Ballot initiatives can blaze a trail to a Progressive victory in November 2006. Few politicians would publicly oppose an "Honest Vote Count," a "Living Wage," or a "Clean Energy/Clean Land" initiative. And in the 24 states, mostly in the West, where voters can put initiatives on the ballot by citizen petition and pass them by popular vote, there's nothing Tom Delay or anybody else can do to stop them.

For more information on how to put Progressive propositions on state (or local) ballots and run campaigns to pass them, contact the Ballot Initiative Strategy Center, at www.ballot.org.

David D. Schmidt (daviddschmidt1@msn.com) is author of Citizen Lawmakers: The Ballot Initiative Revolution (Temple University Press, 1989), former editor of a nationwide newsletter on ballot initiatives (1980-1989), and as an advisor to several state proposition campaigns in the 1980s-1990. He lives in San Francisco.

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