2026 ballot measures

Heading into Tuesday’s midterm elections, the ballot measure landscape reveals a struggle over whether government will respond to people’s needs—and whether communities will retain the power to act through direct democracy when it does not. Economic anxiety, contested rights, and efforts to restrict direct democracy are converging around questions that reach beyond any individual proposal: Who benefits from policy change? Whose priorities will guide government? And what happens when elected officials advance an agenda their constituents reject?

Recent elections suggest that voters are responding to more than a disconnect between their priorities and those of elected officials: they reveal a willingness to take power into their own hands when government fails to deliver. In Oklahoma, voters approved Medicaid expansion in 2020 after years of legislative inaction, using a citizen initiative to secure healthcare access that elected officials had resisted. In Missouri, voters approved Proposition A in 2024 to raise the minimum wage to $15 and establish paid sick leave, translating demands for economic security into a direct policy decision. Voters have also acted to defend their ability to make those decisions: in Ohio’s August 2023 special election, they rejected a legislative proposal to raise the constitutional amendment approval threshold to 60 percent and impose additional petition requirements.