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This year, there were attempts to restrict ballot initiatives in at least a dozen states

Legislators in at least 11 states introduced or supported bills to make it harder to pass, propose or implement citizen-initiated statutes or constitutional amendments. In three states, voters saw questions on their ballots asking them to raise the bar for approving such changes.

That backlash "really accelerated in 2021 and 2022," says Kelly Hall, executive director with The Fairness Project. That group claims success in 31 of the 33 left-leaning ballot initiatives it has supported since 2016.

At the same time, there has been an increase in the number of bills to tweak the initiative process, from 33 in 2017 to more than a 100 in 2021 and 2022, according to the Ballot Initiative Strategy Center, a group which provides research and support to groups promoting ballot measures.

While not all would restrict the process, many propose new requirements for the number of signatures needed, where the signatures must come from, or increase the threshold to pass a measure.

Some are simply cumbersome, like "requiring the language to be printed all on one sheet of paper, meaning you have to carry around a bath towel-size petition," Hall says. While not impossible to follow, these new rules add up to "death by a thousand cuts" for future initiatives, she says.