The History of Ballot Measures: How Citizens Took Back the Law

1. The Setting: America in the Age of the Robber Barons (1870–1900)

“The Bosses of the Senate” (1889) – a political cartoon depicting the U.S. Senate under the sway of bloated money bags labeled as trusts, representing the era’s powerful monopolists en.wikipedia.org. By the late 1800s, America’s democracy was straining under the weight of its own Gilded Age success. Industrialization had made the nation wealthy—but not evenly.

A handful of business magnates — the infamous Robber Barons — controlled vast sectors of the economy. Their influence seeped into the railroads, the banks, the mines and timber industries, and increasingly, the government itself en.wikipedia.orgbritannica.com . In state after state, legislatures fell captive to corporate power, becoming (in the words of the time) “the Senate of the Monopolists, by the Monopolists, and for the Monopolists.”Political machines in big cities – like New York’s Tammany Hall – greased the wheels with patronage and graft, entrenching an iron grip over municipal and state governments en.wikipedia.org.

This political capture was not subtle. Railroad companies dictated state transportation policy and land grants. Mining and timber trusts shaped tax laws to favor their monopolies. Giant corporations sent lobbyists with literal bags of cash to sway lawmakers en.wikipedia.org . Both major parties – Republican and Democrat – were funded by, and beholden to, these industrial interests. The result was a system in which wealth effectively wrote the law, and ordinary citizens saw that their elected legislatures no longer truly represented them britannica.com . Many Americans feared that the historic promise of responsible self-government was being destroyed by these colossal combinations of economic and political power britannica.com.

2. The Progressive Movement and the Demand for Direct Democracy

By the 1890s, reformers across the nation had reached a breaking point. Farmers’ alliances, populist movements, and labor organizations all began clamoring for new mechanisms of self-government—ones that could cut around captured legislatures entirely en.wikipedia.org. If lawmakers wouldn’t represent the public interest, the public would seek the power to legislate directly. This bold idea was part of the burgeoning Progressive Era spirit: to counter the stranglehold of trusts and party bosses by putting lawmaking back into the hands of the people en.wikipedia.org.

The solution they proposed was called Direct Legislation – in modern terms, direct democracy. Citizens themselves would propose, vote on, and enact laws, bypassing the politicians who had been “in the pocket” of wealthy interests en.wikipedia.org. This direct legislative power took three primary forms:

• Initiative – where citizens draft a law or constitutional amendment and, by collecting a required number of voter signatures, place it on the ballot for a public vote oregonhistoryproject.org.

• Referendum – where citizens vote to approve or reject laws already passed by the legislature. (In other words, voters get final say on controversial or suspect laws) oregonhistoryproject.org.

• Recall – where citizens can remove elected officials from office before their term ends, via a special vote, as a check on corrupt or unresponsive officials oregonhistoryproject.org.

⠀These tools—initiative, referendum, and recall—became the foundation of what we now call ballot measures or citizen-led legislation. At the turn of the 20th century, this was a radical shift: empowering average voters to directlywrite laws and punish politicians, a profound democratic escape hatch out of the gilded cage that legislatures had become.

3. The Pioneers: South Dakota, Oregon, and the Western States (1898–1912)

The movement for direct democracy found its earliest champions in the American West. Western states, newer and less set in their political ways, became fertile ground for reformers to push through these unorthodox ideas. One by one, states began to write the people’s legislative power into their constitutions.

🗳️ South Dakota – 1898: The First Step

South Dakota holds the distinction of being the first state to adopt the initiative and referendum system. In 1898, spurred by a Populist reform movement fed up with railroad barons dominating the state’s politics, South Dakotans approved a constitutional amendment establishing these citizen lawmaking rights sdsos.gov. This pioneer amendment gave citizens the power to enact laws they desired and veto laws they opposed, based on the theory that since the legislature might not always adequately represent the people, the people must be able to legislate for themselves sdsos.gov. (Notably, South Dakota’s legislature initially required that initiatives be submitted to the legislature for review before going on the ballot—a hurdle that wasn’t removed until decades later, in 1988, when voters insisted on a more direct process sdsos.gov.) In 1908, South Dakotans used their new powers for the first time at the ballot box, proving that ordinary voters could indeed shape law outside the capitol halls.

🗳️ Oregon – 1902: The Blueprint

If South Dakota was the proof of concept, Oregon was the blueprint that showed the nation how to make direct democracy work on a broad scale. The chief architect was a lawyer-turned-reformer named William S. U’Ren, who led Oregon’s Direct Legislation League.

Oregon’s legislature at the time was famously beholden to railroad and timber interests, reliably blocking popular reforms. U’Ren and his allies decided to force the issue. Through savvy political maneuvering, they got a constitutional amendment for initiative and referendum through a reluctant legislature and onto the ballot oregonhistoryproject.org. In 1902, Oregon voters overwhelmingly approved it by a margin of 62,024 to 5,668 oregonhistoryproject.org. This victory created what became known nationally as “the Oregon System”sos.oregon.govsos.oregon.gov – the formalized process by which Oregonians could propose new laws or changes to the state constitution, or repeal laws passed by their legislature, all by popular vote.

Under the Oregon System, reformers wasted no time. By 1904, Oregonians had instituted direct primaries to break the power of party bosses oregonhistoryproject.org. By 1908, they added the recall of public officials and even the direct election of U.S. Senators (ahead of the rest of the country, which wouldn’t get that until the 17th Amendment in 1913) oregonhistoryproject.org. In short, Oregon became a model of progressive lawmaking, demonstrating that citizens could govern themselves when their representatives failed to do so. The state’s success inspired many others: in the years following, numerous states copied Oregon’s approach, seeing it as a way to finally pass measures that entrenched legislatures kept bottled up. As one historian noted, by the time U’Ren died in 1949, 27 states had adopted some form of initiative or referendum in their systems oregonhistoryproject.org.

🗳️ California – 1911: The People Versus the Railroads

No state better illustrated the clash between corporate power and citizen empowerment than California. By the early 1900s, the Southern Pacific Railroad had so thoroughly infiltrated California’s government that it was often called “The Octopus” for its tentacle-like grip on every lever of power journals.openedition.org. The railroad kingpins effectively owned California politics – bribery had become the accepted method of doing business in the State Capitol in Sacramento initiativeandreferenduminstitute.org. State legislators, judges, even governors often bowed to Southern Pacific’s will.

Enter Hiram Johnson, a brash reform-minded attorney who became governor in 1911 on a promise to break the stranglehold of the Southern Pacific and its cronies. Johnson championed direct democracy reforms as “the antidote to the invisible government” controlling the state. Under his leadership, California’s legislature proposed, and the voters swiftly ratified, amendments to establish the initiative, referendum, and recall in October 1911 initiativeandreferenduminstitute.org. 

At a stroke, California became the 10th state to enact these tools, and arguably the most significant. “Direct legislation,” Johnson said, would enable the people to “remove the stranglehold of the railroads and the interests” on state policy. With initiative and referendum, Californians could finally bypass the politicians bankrolled by the Southern Pacific and directly enact laws in their own interest. And with the recall, they gained a mechanism to toss out any official — even judges — who sold out to the “Octopus.” It was a seismic power shift. As one contemporary journalist quipped, California’s voters had “hooked the Octopus.” The Progressive reformers expected that Californians would use these new powers to tame the trusts and prevent any such monopoly from hijacking the state again journals.openedition.org.

🗳️ Arizona and Colorado – 1912: Expansion of the Model

A 1912 Arizona handbill urging men to vote “Yes” on a Woman’s Suffrage amendment proposed via citizen initiative exhibits.lib.arizona.eduexhibits.lib.arizona.edu. That year, Arizona’s all-male electorate approved the measure by a wide margin, enfranchising Arizona women eight years before the 19th Amendment. Arizona entered the Union in 1912 with a constitution that allowed initiatives, and almost immediately its citizens put that tool to use in dramatic fashion. The very first statewide initiative in Arizona was aimed at securing women’s suffrage – a reform the territorial legislature had stubbornly refused to enact.

After statehood, the new all-male legislature still would not grant women the vote (a suffrage bill in early 1912 failed by one vote in the state senate)exhibits.lib.arizona.edu. So Arizona’s suffragists took the issue straight to the people. Led by activists like Frances Willard Munds, they gathered over 4,000 petition signatures in just six weeks to qualify a suffrage amendment for the November 1912 ballot exhibits.lib.arizona.edu.

On Election Day, Arizona’s male voters overwhelmingly approved it – with about 68%voting yes exhibits.lib.arizona.edu. Governor George W. P. Hunt promptly signed the amendment, making Arizona the tenth state (and by far the youngest) to give women full voting rights exhibits.lib.arizona.edu. It was a landmark victory for both the suffrage movement and the fledgling initiative process. In essence, Arizona’s citizens used their new direct democracy power to leapfrog their own representatives on a major civil rights issue – achieving at the ballot box what the legislature would not.

Colorado soon followed suit in demonstrating the potency of direct legislation. The Colorado legislature approved initiative, referendum, and recall in 1910, and the voters ratified them shortly after. In 1912, the first year Coloradans could use the process, they unleashed a torrent of progressive lawmaking. No fewer than 22 initiatives and 6 referendums appeared on Colorado’s 1912 ballot – a record at the time initiativeandreferenduminstitute.orgballotpedia.org.

Citizens passed measures establishing an eight-hour workday for miners and factory workers, a separate eight-hour day law for women workers, pensions for orphans and widows, and the creation of juvenile courts, among others initiativeandreferenduminstitute.orgballotpedia.org. They even enacted home rule for cities to free local governments from state-level political machine control ballotpedia.org. In short order, Colorado’s electorate tackled labor rights, social welfare, and local governance reforms that the previous power structure had long ignored. The flurry of successful initiatives in 1912 proved that ordinary people, when given the chance, would enact laws to improve working conditions and check corporate and political abuses. The Denver Republican newspaper marveled that Colorado’s ballots were suddenly full of laws “of the people’s own making.”

By the end of this era (around 1914–1915), nearly every Western state – from Washington and Montana to Arkansas and California – had adopted some form of initiative and referendum. The wave even spread to Midwestern states like Michigan and Ohio. By 1920, 23 states had written direct democracy powers into their state constitutions, permanently changing the architecture of American governance journals.openedition.org. The Progressive reformers had aimed to bypass corrupt legislatures, and they succeeded: the people themselves now had a constitutional tool to enact reform laws that their representatives refused to pass.

4. What These Early Ballot Measures Achieved

The citizen-led measures of the early 1900s took direct aim at the injustices and inequities of the Robber Baron era. Across various states, voters used initiatives and referendums to implement reforms that legislators beholden to big business had blocked. Among the key achievements of this first wave of ballot measures:

• Regulating Railroads and Utilities: Populist anger at railroad monopolies translated into laws capping freight rates and preventing railroad companies from gouging farmers and consumers. In Oregon, for example, voters approved measures to prohibit railroads from giving free passes (bribes in all but name) to public officials and to regulate railroad shipping rates sos.oregon.gov. Other states used initiatives to create public utility commissions to oversee railroad and utility pricing, reining in the era’s worst corporate abuse of infrastructure.

  
  

• Establishing Fairer Tax Systems: Progressive-era initiatives often targeted the tax privileges of powerful corporations. In Oregon, voters enacted taxes on corporate entities like telephone, telegraph, and railroad companies via ballot measures sos.oregon.gov. Many states passed graduated state income tax amendments around this time (some via referendum) to ensure the wealthiest — the railroad barons, mine owners, and financiers — paid their share teachdemocracy.orgbritannica.com. These changes began to shift the tax burden off ordinary farmers and workers onto the big trusts that had for so long escaped equitable taxation.
  

• Expanding Suffrage and Political Equality: The use of ballot initiatives helped win voting rights for disenfranchised groups. As noted, states like Arizona (1912) and Oregon (1912) achieved women’s suffrage by initiative when their legislatures would not exhibits.lib.arizona.edusos.oregon.gov. Other states used direct vote to adopt primary elections (ending the closed-door nomination of candidates by party bosses) oregonhistoryproject.org and to mandate the direct election of U.S. Senators before the federal government required it oregonhistoryproject.org. The result was a dramatic expansion of democracy: more power to the people in choosing candidates and more people (women, especially) included in the electorate.
  

• Setting Labor Standards and Social Reforms: Perhaps the most immediate impacts of early initiatives were felt by working Americans. Voters approved laws establishing labor protections that legislatures had avoided for fear of offending industrialists. These included setting maximum work hours (like the eight-hour workday laws in Colorado ballotpedia.org), adopting minimum wage standards, and creating workers’ compensation systems for those injured on the job sos.oregon.gov. Citizens also passed measures for the benefit of society’s most vulnerable: pensions for widows with children, assistance for orphans, and improved treatment for the sick and mentally ill initiativeandreferenduminstitute.org. Progressive health and safety regulations — from pure food acts to child labor bans — likewise found success through popular votes in states where corporate-aligned lawmakers had bottled them up.

  
  

• Breaking Political Machines and Demanding Government Transparency: The mere existence of the recall power put corrupt politicians on notice that the electorate could fire them in mid-term if necessary. While rarely used at the state level, the recall had a chilling effect on open graft. At the city level, numerous corrupt mayors and councilmen were indeed recalled by voters, helping to dismantle some urban machines. Perhaps more important, initiative campaigns themselves forced public debate on issues that party bosses preferred to decide in smoke-filled rooms. The threat of an initiative often pushed legislatures to pre-emptively pass reforms rather than be overridden by voters. In states like California and Oregon, the era of backroom deals and “invisible government” began to wane as sunshine laws, campaign finance disclosure, and civil service reforms (ending patronage hiring) were approved by voters. In short, direct democracy cracked open the closed circle of machine politics. Lawmaking was dragged into the light of day, where the people could watch – and participate.

⠀For the first time in modern U.S. history, citizens had the practical ability to create laws without needing the permission of politicians. This was nothing short of revolutionary. A Nebraska newspaper in 1912 observed, “The people have become their own legislature.” Ordinary Americans, through clipboards and petitions and voting booths, had taken back a measure of control over government that the Constitution had originally left to elected officials. The reforms enacted in those years left lasting marks on American society – from public utilities regulation to labor laws to women’s voting rights – achievements that might have been delayed by decades if not for the safety valve of the ballot measure.

5. The Legacy: Ballot Measures as a Structural Check

By 1920, nearly half the states in the Union had incorporated initiative or referendum powers into their constitutions. (Ultimately, 24 states would adopt statewide initiatives, and many others adopted referendums or local direct democracy in some form.) These Progressive Era reforms fundamentally changed the framework of American governance. They did not replace representative democracy – but they certainly fortified it. The idea was to add a failsafe mechanism: when the normal organs of representative government become unresponsive, gridlocked, or corrupted by special interests, the people have a lawful, constitutional escape hatch.

This structural check has endured for over a century. As of today, 26 states maintain some form of statewide initiative or referendum process (and many more allow it at local levels) ballotpedia.orgballotpedia.org. That persistence is a testament to how meaningful these tools became in balancing power between the public and their officials. In effect, the ballot measure is the citizens’ emergency brake on the train of government. Most of the time, representative democracy chugs along with legislatures making laws on our behalf. But when those engineers go rogue or fall asleep at the switch, direct democracy gives the public a way to grab the controls and steer back toward the public interest.

The legacy is evident in the political culture of many western states. In places like California, Oregon, Colorado, and Arizona, the initiative process became woven into the fabric of how policy is made. Generations of voters grew accustomed to weighing in on major issues at the ballot – taxes, term limits, education, the environment, and more – rather than leaving everything to the state capitol. This ever-present citizen check on power has undeniably shaped policy outcomes (for better or worse) and serves as a continual reminder to elected officials that their constituents can directly overrule or bypass them if sufficiently provoked. In short, the Progressive reformers’ “escape hatch” became a permanent fixture of American democracy’s architecture.

Crucially, the availability of direct democracy has also acted as a deterrent. Even in states where initiatives are rarely used, the mere possibility often influences legislative behavior. Lawmakers know that if public frustration grows too high, an independent campaign can arise to take the issue directly to voters. This has nudged many a legislature into negotiating or enacting reforms to avoid a more sweeping citizen-initiated law. In this way, the people’s lawmaking power operates in the background as a silent guardian – much like a proverbial sword hanging on the wall, altering conduct without ever being unsheathed.

6. The Modern Parallel: New Gatekeepers, Old Lessons

History has a way of rhyming. In recent years, even as ballot measures remain a vital avenue for policy change, there has been a rise of new efforts to curtail this form of direct democracy. It’s an uncanny echo of the struggles from a century ago. Just as the industrial monopolies and party machines of 1910 fought tooth and nail to prevent the people from gaining lawmaking power (or to undermine it once it passed initiativeandreferenduminstitute.org), today’s entrenched interests sometimes try to capture “the process itself.” In other words, if they can’t easily buy off the voters, they look to erect higher barricades around the ballot measure process.

We see this in moves to raise the signature thresholds required for initiatives, shorten the time allowed to gather signatures, restrict who can collect signatures, or increase the percentage of votes needed for an initiative’s approval. These procedural tweaks may sound dry, but they amount to new gatekeeping – making it harder for citizens to access the ballot and easier for powerful groups to block grassroots initiatives. The parallels to a century ago are striking: it’s the same fundamental conflict between concentrated power and popular sovereignty, just fighting on a different battlefield.

In the early 1910s, for example, anti-initiative legislators in California attempted to impose supermajority requirements and ban certain topics from initiatives (like tax measures) to blunt the people’s newfound power initiativeandreferenduminstitute.org. Voters, led by reformers like Dr. John Haynes, had to mobilize repeatedly to defeat these assaults and protect the process initiativeandreferenduminstitute.org. Fast forward to the 2020s, and similar dramas are playing out. In state after state, politicians unhappy with voter-driven outcomes have proposed laws or constitutional amendments to make initiatives more difficult.

To list just a few recent examples: in Missouri, lawmakers sought to raise the approval threshold for citizen-initiated amendments from a simple majority to 57% campaignlegal.org. In Ohio, a legislative proposal (put to voters in an unusual August special election) tried to require a 60% supermajority for any future constitutional initiative to pass campaignlegal.orgcampaignlegal.org.

In Florida, some pushed to jack up the existing 60% requirement to an almost insurmountable 66.7% campaignlegal.org.

North Dakota’s legislature passed a law forcing constitutional initiatives to win not one but two elections (a primary and a general) to take effect campaignlegal.org.

Utah’s legislature debated raising the voter approval bar to 60% for initiatives, right after voters there had used an initiative to create an independent redistricting commission (a reform legislators disliked) campaignlegal.orgcampaignlegal.org.

And in Arkansas, when voters defeated a measure that would make initiatives harder, the legislature simply reintroduced a similar proposal and pushed it through in a low-turnout election anyway campaignlegal.org. If all this sounds familiar, it should. It’s a playbook that could have been borrowed from the railroad lawyers and party bosses circa 1915.

What do these efforts have in common? In the words of one watchdog, they reveal “a pernicious desire to silence voters’ voices and subvert the will of the people” campaignlegal.orgcampaignlegal.org. In plainer terms, they are power grabs by politicians who resent the check that direct democracy places on them. Raising the bar for ballot initiatives allows a small minority (often as small as 41% of voters, in a 60% threshold scenario) to veto changes that a majority wants campaignlegal.org. It inverts the ideal of majority rule and makes it easier for deep-pocketed interests to thwart popular reforms by spending heavily to peel off just enough voters to drop an initiative below a supermajority line.

This trend serves as a reminder that the right to legislate directly is not a Progressive Era relic to be taken for granted; it’s a living, ongoing battleground. Every generation faces its own version of the struggle between representation and capture, between democracy and oligarchy. The forms evolve – railroad barons then, perhaps billionaire donors or partisan gerrymanderers now – but the fundamental tension remains. And the lesson is the same now as it was in 1912: when regular lawmaking is hijacked by special interests, citizens will turn to the tools of direct democracy to set things right, which is precisely why those special interests often scheme to limit those tools.

7. The Fifth Estate View: From Protest to Process

A century ago, outraged citizens had to fight to win the powers of initiative, referendum, and recall. They marched, petitioned, and campaigned to carve out a democratic tool that had never existed in the U.S. Constitution. Today, we inherit the fruits of that fight – but the task before us is a bit different. Rather than winning these tools anew, we are called to maintain them, defend them, and ensure they remain functional and accessible for generations to come.

This is the ethos of what we call the American Fifth Estate. If the Fourth Estate is the press that holds government accountable, think of the Fifth Estate as the body of citizens themselves exercising direct legislative power. The American Fifth Estate exists to continue the lineage of those Progressive reformers, not as a one-off protest movement but as a permanent maintenance movement. Our charge is to keep the machinery of direct democracy well-oiled and out of the hands of those who would sabotage it. We work to expand ballot access, streamline the initiative process where it’s unduly burdensome, and beat back attempts to erect new barriers. In states that don’t yet have an initiative process, we advocate to give citizens that voice. In states that do, we strive to make sure it remains a people’s tool – not one hijacked by big money or strangled by bureaucracy.

It’s important to acknowledge that ballot measures were never designed for convenience or ease. They are, by nature, a challenging process – as they should be, for making laws is serious business. But they were designed to be achievable: a safety valve that ordinary citizens could realistically employ when needed. Our mission in the Fifth Estate is to preserve that delicate balance: initiatives should neither be so onerous that only million-dollar campaigns can manage them, nor so frivolous that ballots are cluttered with half-baked proposals. We champion reforms like lowering excessive signature thresholds (where they’ve been jacked up unrealistically), providing official voter information guides to improve transparency, and leveraging technology (like online petitioning in some jurisdictions) to broaden participation without compromising integrity en.wikipedia.orgen.wikipedia.org. In short, we seek to keep direct democracy open, fair, and robust – the same qualities its Progressive architects intended.

In carrying this torch, we’re guided by the philosophy that ballot measures are not an aberration or threat to representative government; they are a constitutional feature intended to safeguard it. The goal is not to have citizens making every law themselves – it’s to ensure that when the usual system breaks down, there is a constitutional path for the people to step in and correct course. Think of it as democracy’s circuit breaker. Our work is to prevent anyone from disabling that circuit breaker, because the next overload or crisis of representation is always potentially around the corner.

🪶 Final Reflection

The era of the Robber Barons taught Americans a lesson that resonates to this day: democracy only works as long as the people are awake and active in their own governance. When Gilded Age corruption and monopolies threatened to eclipse self-government, citizens innovated a remedy in the form of direct democracy. In doing so, they reaffirmed a fundamental principle: law-making is not the exclusive privilege of politicians – it is the inheritance and right of the people themselves. Every signature gathered, every petition circulated, every voter pamphlet read and every vote cast on a ballot measure is an act of civic self-empowerment and a nod to that history.

It’s often said that ballot measures were born out of corruption – a tool forged in response to the failure of representative bodies. Yet they endure as proof of the capacity of citizens to govern themselves, peacefully and constructively. The mere existence of the initiative and referendum reminds those in power that ultimate sovereignty rests with the people. As long as a citizen with a clipboard (or in modern times, perhaps a secure online form) can propose a law and rally their neighbors behind it, the spirit of self-government remains alive.

In the end, the people still hold the pen. We hold it as heirs to the Progressives who handed it to us, and it’s our job to keep writing the story of democracy with it – to use it when necessary, to defend it always, and to remember that the fight for a government of, by, and for the people is never truly finished, but carried on with each new generation.