Most of the ballot on Tuesday is people. Some of it is laws. There are 145 statewide ballot measures this November, by Ballotpedia’s count, on abortion, taxes, school sports, voter ID and more. A few of them are about something underneath all of that: how many votes it will take to pass the next question.
Four states are asking voters to make some future questions harder to pass. Each of those measures needs only a simple majority to pass itself. I think that’s backward, and there’s a better rule already on the books in Oregon.
Florida shows how this plays out. In 2006, Florida voters adopted a rule that constitutional amendments need 60 percent. The rule itself passed with 57.78 percent. In 2024, an abortion-rights amendment won 57.17 percent and failed under it. So did an amendment legalizing marijuana, with 55.90 percent. By Ballotpedia’s results, 13 Florida amendments since 2010 won a majority and failed anyway.
A measure that raises the bar should have to clear it. A rule that future questions need 60 percent should itself need 60 percent. A two-thirds rule should need two-thirds.
It isn’t my idea. Oregon voters adopted it in 1998. Oregon’s rule covers measures from citizens and from the legislature alike. California’s legislature wrote a narrower version, ACA 13, that covered only citizen initiatives. It was headed for the 2024 ballot and was moved to this year. Then the legislature pulled it, as part of a deal with the California Business Roundtable and the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association, who withdrew their own initiative for a two-thirds rule. Proposition 43 came out of that deal. It’s the legislature’s own referral, so ACA 13 wouldn’t have reached it anyway. Under a rule like Oregon’s, it would need two-thirds. In California it needs a majority.
The case for a higher bar is real, and I want to give it its due. A constitution should be harder to change than an ordinary law. Of the 49 states that put amendments to voters, 38 let a simple majority approve them and 11 ask for more. Utah state senator Lincoln Fillmore put the argument as a question: “How easy do you want it to be to raise taxes on your neighbors?” That’s a fair question. But if the argument is that strong, it can win 60 percent. Utah state representative Andrew Stoddard’s answer is that legislators wouldn’t face the same bar when they change the tax code. He’s right about that too.
Since 2016, when voters have been asked, they have mostly said no. South Dakota rejected a higher bar in 2018 and again in 2022, the second time 67 to 33. Arkansas rejected a 60 percent rule in 2022, and Ohio rejected one in August 2023, 57 to 43. This August, Missouri voters turned down a different kind of higher bar for citizen amendments, a majority in every congressional district, 80 to 20. Two passed. Colorado’s 55 percent rule in 2016 got 55.69 percent, so it cleared its own bar. Arizona’s 60 percent rule for tax measures in 2022 got 50.72 percent.
My rule has to apply to the side I might like, too. Missouri’s Amendment 6, a citizen initiative, would bar the legislature from changing a law voters passed unless 80 percent of both chambers send the change back to voters and voters approve it. It protects initiatives instead of limiting them, and it writes the simple-majority rule into the constitution. It’s also a package: it makes the initiative a fundamental right, lets courts rewrite ballot summaries, and more. (Several of the higher-bar measures above came bundled with other changes too.) But it’s the same move pointed at the legislature: a simple majority today making the next change much harder. The bar it sets is for legislators, not voters, so my rule doesn’t fit it exactly. It deserves the same suspicion anyway.
Missouri’s Amendment 3 is a different problem. A yes vote would repeal the abortion-rights amendment Missouri voters approved in 2024. It would ban abortion except in medical emergencies, for fetal anomalies, and for rape or incest before 12 weeks. And it would ban gender transition surgery, cross-sex hormones and puberty blockers for anyone under 18. That’s one question with one vote.
The ballot title, as rewritten by the appeals court, lists both parts. But NPR reports that much of the advertising mentions only the ban on gender-affirming care for minors, which would strengthen bans already in state law. Ballotpedia rates the official summary at a college reading level.
Whatever you believe about abortion, and whatever you believe about care for transgender minors, those are two questions. A voter who wants one and not the other has no way to say so. A lawsuit argued that the bundle broke Missouri’s single-subject rule. Courts found the state’s ballot summary insufficient, and the appeals court certified new wording. The bundle stayed on the ballot. North Dakota voters adopted a single-subject rule for their own amendments in June, with 66 percent. That’s the right rule. Supporters argue the two parts are one subject. I read them as two questions.
One more measure, because it’s the clearest case for reading to the end. Colorado’s Amendment 85 is two sentences long. The first says ballot questions must be in plain language, at no more than an eighth-grade reading level. I like that. The second says: “No statute may interfere with this provision by mandating language preceding, following, or in a ballot title of an initiative.” Colorado has laws that do exactly that. One is Proposition GG, which Colorado voters approved with 72 percent in 2022, and which requires income-tax measures to show on the ballot how they’d affect different income groups. Opponents, including New Era Colorado and the Bell Policy Center, say Amendment 85 would take that kind of information off the ballot. Read only the first sentence and you’d vote for clearer ballots. Read both and you’re deciding whether to keep the tax tables.
The first plank of this campaign is “Read the Whole Thing Before You Respond.” On a ballot, that’s literal. For every measure, I’d ask two things:
Your state’s official voter guide prints the full text of every measure. Ballotpedia’s sample ballot lookup shows what’s on yours. Read the measure, not the ad. And if you’re still sorting out when and how to vote, the five-minute plan is here.
I don’t endorse candidates, and I’m not going to tell you how to vote on abortion, taxes or school sports. I’ll tell you where I’d start reading: with who gets to decide next time, and by how much.