Category: Ballot measures

February 1 is the deadline for initiative petition signatures to be certified by the Florida Secretary of State to qualify initiated constitutional amendments for the 2020 ballot. Since state law gives local elections officials 30 days to verify signatures, petitioners needed to submit signatures on or before January 2, 2020, to guarantee that an initiative…

  On December 23, 2019, the campaign Michigan Values Life filed 379,418 signatures for a ballot initiative to ban an abortion procedure. The ballot initiative defines the procedure as dismemberment abortion, which is also known as dilation and evacuation abortion. The ballot initiative would define dismemberment abortion as an abortion which uses an instrument, device,…

On December 19, the South Dakota Secretary of State’s office announced that New Approach South Dakota’s initiative to establish a medical marijuana program had qualified for the ballot. The group reported submitting more than 30,000 signatures in November, of which 25,524 were deemed valid. To qualify, 16,961 signatures were required. The measure would establish a…

On December 18, 2019, the Wisconsin Justice Initiative, a nonprofit organization, filed litigation in the Dane County Circuit Court that challenges the Marsy’s Law Amendment, which is on the ballot for April 7, 2020. Marsy’s Law was designed as a type of constitutional bill of rights for crime victims. As of 2019, 13 states had…

In the general election of 2000, Massachusetts voters approved Question 4 with 59 percent of the vote. The initiative enacted a law that would lower the state’s personal income tax from 5.9% in 2000 to 5% by 2003. In 2002, the Massachusetts General Court passed House No. H.5250, which replaced the schedule adopted by Question…